A few weeks ago, I sat on the edge of a colorful canal that juts straight into the capital of one of the world’s happiest countries. I listened intently to my host mom seated beside me, as she explained some of the perks and grievances of working a government job in Denmark.
“A tense time was when they announced which government ministries were moving out of Copenhagen and into Jutland,” She recounted, “Luckily I got to stay. I would have been fine with it, but some city dwellers would rather quit their jobs than move with the ministry out there.”
This was news to me. Denmark is a tiny country, made up of a western peninsula called Jutland and many islands to the east, of which the main two are Fyn and Zealand. It takes about 3 to 4 hours to drive from Copenhagen in eastern Zealand to the western coast of Jutland. To me, a few hours drive is not a drastic relocation, but the Danes have a different perspective.
As I have absorbed the cultural rhetoric from locals, I have learned this distance is measured in more than kilometers and time. To Copenhageners, driving to Jutland is driving to a different world. Parts of the peninsula are referred to as “the Darkest Jutland”—a backwards place full of “hickish” factory workers and farmers. On the other hand, to Jutlanders, Copenhagen is a pretentious and overpriced city where a huge fraction of the population lives and, consequently, where the decisions that are going to affect life out west are made. I can now understand the reluctance to relocate.
A cultural clash in what I believed to be a homogenous and happy country came as a bit of a shock. My rose-colored tourist sunglass lenses lost their tint as I looked at an all-too-familiar urban-rural divide in Denmark.
Much like the big city vs. small town tales in the United States, the animosity between populations in Denmark centers on a frustration regarding lack of understanding for different ways of life. But what the city-dwellers perceived to be a playful rivalry can manifest itself into feelings of abandonment, anger, and fear in the rural population that feels its country is leaving it behind without any acknowledgment. As we’ve seen in several other countries, letting these sentiments brew can have serious consequences.
Ever heard of Dexit? Though pro-EU-exit sentiments in Denmark have dropped more and more since the U.K.’s referendum, the Danish People’s Party continues to capitalize on the perceived threat of globalization in rural populations so as to rally Danish citizens to request an EU-exit vote. In theory, open trade like that in the European Union could push manufacturing and farming to other countries, as well as provide fewer barriers to residents of poor nations seeking jobs in Denmark. To some Jutlanders, this is seen as a threat to their Danish small-town identity and to their economic way of life.
When I visited western Denmark with a class, I found out that many manufacturing companies are actually desperate for workers—immigrants or not. And I discovered that though Denmark is becoming more of a service-based economy, manufactured goods and meat continue to be the country’s top exports. Exiting the EU is arguably a terrible idea for all Danes, but sometimes rural voices are not heard in the big city until something drastic happens.
The Danish solution is to try to bridge the urban-rural divide. They hope to give the people of western Denmark more of a voice in the government by literally bringing the government to them. A handful of government agencies are being moved out of Copenhagen, including the Danish Immigration Service, the Danish Nature Agency, and the Danish Maritime Authority. Some of the agencies will move to western Zealand, while others are making the long move to the Jutland peninsula. Only time will tell if this will be a successful initiative, or if the relocations will be seen as an empty gesture.
I’m not sure what should be done for the United States or for other European countries to mitigate rising protectionism in rural populations—and I recognize bridging the rural-urban divide is probably not the single golden solution. Maybe I’m still wearing my rose-colored glasses, but I appreciate that Denmark is at least starting to take action on this rising issue.
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