To Belong—or Not to Belong: The Year in Denmark

As elsewhere, the year 2020 has been exceptional in Denmark: the global pandemic has dominated everything. From both the media and my friends in other countries, I understand that we in Denmark are lucky. People's lives have been disrupted by the restrictions imposed to control the virus, but reliable sources of economic support and the tax-funded healthcare system in Denmark have prevented suffering, and local communities have pulled together to provide help for neighbors in need. But we had to let go of our embedded belief that the world is our playground, and instead open our eyes to the importance of close relations.

In the publishing sphere, it has not been business as usual either. Much of what was planned did not happen, including the publication of biographies. As the book market went online, due dates, especially for printed books, were delayed or postponed. But on a positive note, the crisis created spaces for new and broader-ranging biographical voices. Many institutions—state-approved museums, archives, university research groups—were given the resources to gather diaries from the public that tracked the course of the pandemic. Newspapers and local cultural institutions like schools and libraries also collected materials. Through these initiatives, a significant range of professional and everyday accounts and reflections, covering a few days or an extended period, were amassed. Even embroidered "records" were obtained, but so far only a few standard books chronicling life during the COVID pandemic have been written.

Popular culture achieved prominence in other ways too. The phenomena of communal singing appeared in several countries, including Denmark, which has an established tradition of people singing together to express unity in challenging times. The strong economy and financial support mechanisms only indirectly helped elderly, sick, or lonely people who were most likely to suffer social alienation or psychological strain. For them, the collective activity of singing surely offered relief and raised self-esteem. However, it also created problems, sparking intense public debate around inclusion and exclusion within the traditional activity, a matter that will also be addressed here.

In this essay, I discuss three biographical accounts, each offering a perspective on the experience of being socially excluded from Danish culture. The first, Anders Jericow's Brobyggerne, appeared in January 2020, before the spread of COVID-19 in Europe became evident. Effectively, this is a double biography, shaped by a journalist from conversations between two public voices in Denmark. In it, Özlem Cekic, a forty-four-year-old Muslim, and Bent Melchior, a ninety-year-old Jew, neither of whose views are typical of Denmark's predominant Christian culture, debate the question of identity. The second biographical account, Da Danskerne Blev Bange for Asiater, relates to the challenges faced as the pandemic spread, traversing national borders. This is a collection of testimonies from newspapers and magazine articles from people of Asian descent, reporting their experiences of "looking Asian" in a European country during the early days of the pandemic. Finally, in the third biographical account, an author who lived in the US questions whether communal singing is as inclusive as we might think.

The First Month

The journalist Anders Jerichow followed the debates between Melchior, a scholar and former chief rabbi of Denmark, and Cekic, an activist and former member of parliament for the Socialist People's Party. Despite differences in age, religion, and gender, the pair were firm friends and willing to take their debates into the public sphere. Jerichow's Brogyggerne identifies themes around being "different" in Danish society, raises issues relating to minority versus majority, and shares the friends' experiences of having their "Danishness" challenged.

Although Denmark has long supported migration inward and outward, its society is essentially homogeneous, and challenges to the dominant Danish culture are few. In brief, for centuries French and German administrators and scholars have been welcomed, as well as rural workers from Poland and the Netherlands, and persecuted religious groups, such as Huguenots and Jews. After WWII, migration to Denmark increased and diversified with the arrival of Hungarian dissidents from the communist regime in the mid-1950s and refugees from...