Benny Andersen: 'Skabssvenskere'

Closet Swedes

Is there anything as Danish as a potato?
The potato originally comes from South America.

Is there anything as Danish as the Dannebrog itself?

It fell from the sky long ago in Estonia

and looks a bit like the Swiss flag.

Does anything sound more genuinely Danish

than the music to the ballad opera Hill of the Elves?

Composed by a German with diligent use

of Swedish folk melodies.

Watch out

this is where it gets difficult:

Is there anything more Danish than the Danes?

Descendants of the ‘Danes’

a clan in Sweden

invaded our country way back in the 4th century

while the original Danes

the ‘Herules’

the noble and brave

but numerically inferior ‘Herules’

were driven out by the cruel Swedish ‘Danes’

and had to drift around in the Europe of the time

for several hundred years until a few thousand

of these original Danes eventually managed

to get as far as Sweden and settle there

under the doubtful term ‘Swedes’.

Here’s the question for you once again

and think carefully before you answer:

Is there anything more Danish than the Danes?

The correct answer is

Yes!

The Swedes!

They are the authentic, true Danes

Like the Jews in the desert they are constantly

being drawn towards the Promised Land

that flows with beer and bacon

but for seventeen hundred years they have been occupied

By whom?

By the Swedes!

By us!

Not so strange that Scania

demands the return of Denmark

not so strange that many of us crypto-Swedes

find it hard to speak proper Danish

knock off the endings

swallow consonants

choke on the syntax

so the whole thing sounds like ‘bre’n’bu’erpuddin’

not so strange that we hardly understand each other

not so strange that the most frequent word is ‘Wha’?’

It’s not our language at all

We’re not us at all

We’re a heap of sodding Swedish immigrant workers

who have driven this country to wrack and ruin

we should bloody well clear off home to where we came from

home to Sweden

Your sun, your sky, your ‘verdant tracts’

where we could finally confess our true identity

show our hand

We are yellow

We are blue

Where we could finally beat ourselves at football

make us bite the dust in the Melody Grand Prix

Oh, how we have needed

and longed for this

to be able at last to sing Bellman’s songs

in the original

our rightful language

or språk as the real name is

at last we’ll get a monopoly on

being the only people in the world

who can faultlessly pronounce

Sjutusensjuhundrasjutisju

without losing our dentures

at last we’ll be liberated from our

lethal national inferiority complex

and be allowed to unfold our talents

and soar skywards

as the North’s freest swans

at last we can avoid having eternally

to listen to that stupid ‘don’t fancy yourself’ attitude

that some nutty Norwegian author

has foisted on us

Ourselves at last

free at last

Du gamla du fria

home at last where we belong

at last with a chance

of making a Hardy out of a Laurel

and toasting each other handsomely

when we have introduced humane conditions

as regards alcohol

the drinking songs already exist

now it’s just a matter of giving them substance

making them credible

Great times lie ahead

and

If we can make it here

we’ll make it ev’rywhere

And finally there is after all

a lot more room in Sweden.