”Ja, jeg kan li’ det land, jeg bor i – trods alle mangler”

Abstract

”Despite its deficiencies, I like the country I live in”: The Advent of ”Denmark-Songs” and the Breakaway from National Songs as a Discursive Phenomenon This article identifies and explores a trend in Danish popular music as well as communal singing which arose during the early 1970’s as an antidote to the long-established national songs and songs about the nation. The trend revealed a rather new way of thematizing national identification matters in which a critical attitude towards the country was explicit, although the songs always reflected a deep devotion as well. In this way, the songs in question established a counter-narrative to the national songs which was apparent from the early 1970’s to the mid-1980’s, but was resumed again in the early 2000’s. By analyzing three distinct ”Denmark songs” by, respectively, No Name (”Fødelandssang”, 1972), Trille (”Danmark”, 1979) and Gnags (”Danmark”, 1986), the article points to three different ways in which such critical yet loving attitudes could be implemented. It is argued that this counter-narrative, which focused on elements of discontinuity, was a function of a self-conscious and critical folk and rock movement during the 1970’s and 1980’s in which the distancing involved was a result of the breakdown of the ”great” narratives of Denmark as a unified nation, fueled by the heated debate prior to the country’s incorporation into the EU in 1973.