Danmark Uge 2
- casgibb
- Sep 4, 2023
- 8 min read
Week Two: Investigating Copenhagen life, unearthing hidden narratives, and digging into what modern colonialism looks like.
welcome back!
This week held so much depth, fun, and opportunities for interconnection that I hardly can touch on it all in a single post, but get ready for some of my favorite highlights!
Highlight 1: We visited the oldest pub/bar in Copenhagen, which is currently celebrating its 300 year anniversary! In the pub, we sat at the aged wooden tables and discussed the film "A Royal Affair" and its connections the the 1700s monuments placed around Copenhagen.
Highlight 2: Eating fun Danish snacks and candies in the King's Garden! Having visited our favorite grocery store, Netto, we all chose some tasty looking Danish snacks and beverages and chatted in the garden. We observed (what we believed to be) university students playing modified baseball and even got to toss the ball back in-bounds a few times. Pictured below is a marshmallow ice cream cone I was gifted by Jamie!
Highlight 3: While at the SMK, Denmark's National Art Gallery, there were a lot of concerning pieces displayed. However, I was fond of the piece pictured below. It features for portraits of a man, each with a different woman behind him. The hidden power of female voices is truly and so accurately illustrated in this piece and, perhaps, my favorite installation at the museum.
Highlight 4: We arrived in Aarhus during their city festival (apparently one of the biggest in Europe)! Below is my favorite light installation, which played classy/jazzy music and lit up the nearby square throughout the day! It was a beautiful way to be welcomed into the city.
What was I thinking about?
With countless museum and gallery explorations under my belt, I’m currently in the midst of wrapping up my last day in Aarhus - another Danish city where we’ve met with students and professors to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the Danish education system and how colonialism is taught/perceived at the university level. This past week has been an absolute whirlwind - we really dug into the themes of the program, starting with disenfranchised Copenhagen, then shared colonial pasts, design and architecture, national art, Nella Larsen, and ending with this excursion to Aarhus.
While each theme posed a never ending series of questions in my mind, the day featuring “shared colonial pasts” and the narratives that arose from that left me a bit more reflective than I was initially anticipating.
Since submitting my application for this program back in March, I’ve been racking my mind as to what drew me to the topic of this program - how could I be so curious about something so disconnected from my academic trajectory?
Why this? Why colonialism? Why art? Why activism?
What Stood Out?
“Sugar changed the world’s palette” - a simple, yet entirely perspective altering commentary on colonialism that Helle Stenum introduced following the viewing of her film, “We Carry it Within Us”.
“We Carry it Within Us” is a 2017 documentary that follows the narrative of the often silenced colonial perspective of the Danish West Indies. 2017 marked the centennial anniversary of the sale of the West Indies to the United States, during which the islands were renamed the “US Virgin Islands”. The film touches on the hurt the sale caused, namely due to the lack of representation and input the people on the island had in the decision to be sold to the US. More broadly, Helle’s documentary walks us through the different landmarks in Denmark and the US Virgin Islands that hold history, pain, or value to the generations that have been impacted by Danish colonial rule. All together, the stories and narratives shared form a captivating, yet heartbreaking, piece about the ongoing impact of Danish colonialism.
At the moment Helle spoke that five word phrase, the weight of her statement did not fully sink in - I sat there thinking to myself “yeah, Denmark imported sugar from the colonies and surely traded it with its partners. What made this good different then the tobacco from Virginia or Cotton from the South?”
But I wasn’t fully grasping the heaviness of her phrase. . . Denmark, along with other colonial powers, unethically and forcefully took sugar from their colonies and introduced it to the entire world.
How does this affect us?
Take a moment to think about the last 24 hours. Can you name one item you consumed that did not have sugar in it? If you’re anything like me, that answer is no. In fact, I can’t think of a meal in the last 24 hours that hasn’t had some form of sugar incorporated.
The commodity of sugar has entirely changed and shaped the modern culinary industry and consumer interests.
who is responsible?
As a supply chain major, I cannot help but be curious about how that vast distribution became possible. We all know that the sugar originates in the colonies, which for Denmark was the Danish West Indies, but where does it go after it reaches Denmark?
Tracking down exact trade routes or patterns of international trade during the colonial period proved to be difficult, so I began wondering why there was such a lack of information.
Perhaps records for trade were less extensive or less prevalent than today’s standards, but that does not entirely account for the absence of public information about where and who the sugar went to. Could this be hidden out of a feeling of responsibility?
Are the people who bought that sugar also responsible for colonialism? Is knowing the source giving consent and affirming their actions?
Oftentimes, we see influencers sponsored by fast fashion brands as a way for them to make money, while also promoting the brand’s products to their wide platform. However, in the case of some of these companies, like Shein, the workers and assemblers of these clothing articles are put under inhumane, unethical working conditions in developing countries with a much lower minimum wage and less stringent worker’s rights laws. While these conditions may not have been public knowledge during their initial partnership, many influencers still choose to promote these fast fashion brands on their platforms.
Do these influencers deserve backlash? They know where these pieces are coming from and what the conditions are like, but they aren’t the individuals employing them, so, does it really matter?
To what degree is the consumer responsible for what they buy?
If Germany purchases sugar from Denmark, which came from the Danish West Indies, a well-known fact, are they then responsible for the aftermath, trauma, and generational hurt that those islands are still experiencing? What part of the blame are they sharing? How much of the blame should they be sharing?
In my supply chain experience, I’ve seen the benefits that an ethical, humane supply chain can do for a company. Consumers, especially in recent years, have shown interest in supporting businesses that make a difference (whether that be through supporting their workers or being more eco-conscious). While that might not have been the mindset of colonial empires, I cannot help but wonder how differently history would have played out if they did.
Starving a company of orders forces them to shut down or change directions. If colonial consumers stopped buying goods from colonies, like sugar, would colonialism have grown to the size it did as quickly as it did?
Dozens more questions concerning the “what ifs” of the colonial supply chain are ringing around in my mind, but this one about consumer responsibility seems to always come up.
Am I responsible?
To what extent do my choices hold responsibility for the inhumane treatment of workers around the world? Should I feel guilty for grabbing the cheapest carton of milk or shopping at fast fashion stores to accommodate my college-sized budget?
Maybe I should. It’s easier to blame others, like the top 1%, for not doing anything about this labor crisis. It’s easy to wish that someone else would “fix the problem”. But, how can I claim to want to “fix the problem”, when I’ve not exhausted my resources and means to do so as well?
That’s not to say that corporations are not liable and ultimately responsible for the conditions, wellbeing, and overall happiness of their workers, but if for decades we’ve tried and tried to get them to change, with no luck, why are we not exhausting other means?
Will it hurt to buy the slightly more expensive milk? Yes. Do I have the money to do so? I probably could make it work. Being able to make a social impact and statement by opting to support companies, through my purchases, who ensure positive working environments for their employees is often a privilege for those with less restricted budgets. While I may not be the prime example of a person who can make a true impact with their spending, my actions are at least a start.
Nevertheless, in combination with our trip to Denmark’s National Gallery, Statens Museum for Kunst (SMK), the remaining convictions from this film, alongside our gallery visit, has truly enraged me with the idea of whose stories are getting to be told and heard.
What did we find at the smk?
Part of our assignment for our SMK visit was to choose a painting in the gallery and tell its history, story, relation to the program’s topics, and our interpretations.
Partnering with Meheq, we chose “A Stretch of Coast in Greenland. Midnight” by Carl Rasmussen, made in 1872. The painting (see right) features Rasmussen’s interpretation of the Greenland coastline, which he used as reference during his journey to the island over the course of a few years.
The painting itself is beautiful - the bright skies and immeasurable glaciers creates a land of peace and serenity.
What fractures this utopia is the Inuit depictions you see in the darkened portion of the piece - painted almost childlike, scared, and at a loss for direction. While I will not drag on about the problematic nature of these depictions, as many of you listened to Meheq and I’s share-out this week, I will be rehashing a concept Meheq brought up during our presentation - whose narrative is being told here?
Native Greenlanders? The Inuit people?
No. Carl Rasmussen’s “vision” is all that is shown. He paints the landscape and people of a country he has visited for a mere couple of years and, without native experience, heritage, or legacy and, for it, gets labeled as one of the first “Greenland painters”, as if painters and artists had not be formed, raised, and trained on Greenland well before his 1800s voyage.
This idyllic, Danish-centered perspective of what Greenland was, hidden under the guise of a “Greenland painter” creates nothing but false narratives about the land and the people who call it home.
How much different would that portrait look if a native Greenlander painted it? How much more detailed and focused would the finished image be?
Denmark claiming him as a “Greenland painter” erases and restricts every real Greenlandic painter from telling their true narrative, perspective, and experiences through art. It restricts the colonized from speaking out against the injustice their people have long faced.
Why is this frustrating?
As an individual in a country of 300 million plus people, it’s hard to feel like my voice and vote has a true impact on the trajectory of my nation. Voting and speaking feel like an endless loop of echos in an empty tunnel. Even gathering with a dozen of like-minded friends seems to still have no noticeable impact. To think that hundreds of years ago that same amount of people, if not fewer, gathered in a room to make these sort of buying decisions that had world-wide impacts is so unbelievably frustrating.
Once again seeing that aristocratic room in the West Indian Warehouse in Helle’s film, which we also toured with Dr. Holm last week, was another disheartening reminder of the power a couple of generationally wealthy white men had and the immeasurable impact they had on countless lives.
It's all connected. . .
When coupled with the film “We Carry it Within Us”, I, once again, cannot be anything but absolutely enraged with the concept of a small group of people making decisions, narratives, and life-changing proclamations for the entire rest of the world. “Common” citizens, like myself, can only do so much and make so large of an impact with this power differential present. We can try things, like spending our money differently and painting our native heritage through our own eyes, but their impacts and provocations are limited to the pool of other “commoners” who want to listen.
Why do our “small” voices not matter? Why are they not valued, cherished, and emphasized? Why are we constantly stuck in this loop of dominant voices engulfing everyone else nearby?
I know not the answers to many of the questions I’ve posed, but I do have an enthusiastic curiosity to know more. As I continue through the second half of this program, I’m looking forward to exploring this relationship between colonies, colonial powers, and consumers even further.
Until next week,
Stay curious.
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