Den Gamle By - Den Gamle By When I first came across the website of the Old Town Museum in Aarhus, Denmark, it was like an answer to my prayers. It covers three periods that I was interested to know more about my family history. 1864 - covering the time leading up to my grandmother's aunt's emigration from Denmark to America. 1927 - the year before my grandmother was born in Viborg, Denmark. 1974 - a few years before was when my mother last visited Denmark, and the country as it was four years after I was born, a country I have never visited, but which my grandparents visited every year until the early 1980s.
As a History graduate, with a focus on European history from 1500 to 2000, modern Scandinavian history is a new field for me. However, the one constant theme which seems to run through time from medieval Scandinavia to present day is equality between the socio-economic groups. My History professor - who is married to a Swedish woman - understands this point too, ie how the nobility needed the assistance from the lower orders of society to help them win their war. The representatives of the lowers orders agreed to help the nobility on one condition - that the lower orders had political representation in the parliament, which the nobility agreed to, and made sure that the lower orders were respected in society and not just treated like a mob to be suppressed and controlled.
Equality can be seen through the material goods owned by Danes. It wasn't important that everyone had the same wages, but that everyone had the minimum amount of material goods in order to live a decent life without fear of hunger or wearing rags. No one wore really expensive clothes and a manual worker would not look out of place standing next to a lawyer at a social function.
As a History graduate, with a focus on European history from 1500 to 2000, modern Scandinavian history is a new field for me. However, the one constant theme which seems to run through time from medieval Scandinavia to present day is equality between the socio-economic groups. My History professor - who is married to a Swedish woman - understands this point too, ie how the nobility needed the assistance from the lower orders of society to help them win their war. The representatives of the lowers orders agreed to help the nobility on one condition - that the lower orders had political representation in the parliament, which the nobility agreed to, and made sure that the lower orders were respected in society and not just treated like a mob to be suppressed and controlled.
Equality can be seen through the material goods owned by Danes. It wasn't important that everyone had the same wages, but that everyone had the minimum amount of material goods in order to live a decent life without fear of hunger or wearing rags. No one wore really expensive clothes and a manual worker would not look out of place standing next to a lawyer at a social function.
