No sense of place
I have been doing random sampling of Anne Galloway's blogroll. Since I admire her blog and writing, I was pretty sure that her blogroll would show equally impeccable taste. There I found a Danish roll - ummm, blog - a groupblog named No sense of place, yes, the same as the famous work on the social impact of electronic media by Joshua Meyrowitz.

But it wasn't the familiarity of the title that won me over to add this danish group blog to my blogroll, it was this post:

The national condition of Denmark has exploded in a nationalistic hysteria - again.
This time it's about soccer - again.

Because of some "important" match against Norway, papers are busy telling us that Norwegians are stupid, humour-less and so on. These statements are blurred by local irony as if they are not really serious. But the message is there: Danes are way smarter than Norwegians!

We Danes like to see our self as being much more civilized than Norway and it's a popular notion that they are bloody farmers up there. Oslo the capital of Norway has only been a real city for some 100 years so it's probably true that Copenhagen is slightly more metropolian than Oslo. Still these differences are so small that only inborn Scandinavians will be able to recognize them. A chineseman for instance would never be able to tell the difference.

But here in DK we are so much more advanced that we have the right to consider people from a neigbouring country stupid. A nationwide state of mind that legitimates such bullshit is pathetic and very very provincial.

Of course, Norwegians would never sink to such levels. And if we did, it's only because we were occupied by Danes for 400 years and learned what they consider civilized behaviour.

Oooops, my nose just grew long enough to tilt the lap-top screen.