BBC Radio 3: „True Norse“

„They are the hap­pi­est, most suc­cess­ful soci­eties in the world. Their schools the envy of every politi­cian; their ele­gant flat-pack fur­ni­ture invad­ing every British home. For some in Britain, they are our near­est neigh­bours. Yet the cul­ture of the Nordic coun­tries is curi­ous­ly opaque to many Brits, papered over by a gen­er­alised sense of Ikea fur­ni­ture and snowy forests.
So what’s real­ly going on up there? Eleanor Rosamund Bar­r­a­clough takes us behind the ele­gant, min­i­mal façade, on a jour­ney to the heart of Norse cul­ture.
In Copen­hagen she vis­its the Lit­tle Mer­maid – a mod­est tourist attrac­tion – and dis­cov­ers that behind it lies guilt about the Danes‘ war-mon­ger­ing past. In these high­ly sec­u­lar coun­tries she finds the Luther­an church liv­ing on in Scan­di­na­vian design. And with Lars Myt­ting – wood fanat­ic – she takes ten­ta­tive steps into the Taiga, the vast for­est which starts in Nor­way and encir­cles much of the world; a per­fect place to explore the Nordic ideas of nature and soli­tude.
In Oslo, Asle Toje from the the Nor­we­gian Nobel Insti­tute explains the pow­er strug­gles which have riv­en the Nordic coun­tries for cen­turies. These live on today: the smell of whale-blub­ber drifts over the Copen­hagen docks as Eleanor dis­cuss­es Green­landic inde­pen­dence from Den­mark with one of its great­est pro­po­nents — for­mer Green­land PM Ale­qa Ham­mond. Immi­gra­tion, the big news sto­ry in Swe­den and Den­mark, is dis­cussed with provoca­tive jour­nal­ist Mikael Jalv­ing from Jyl­lands-Posten – the paper which print­ed the Prophet Muham­mad car­toons.
And she talks to the man who, five years ago, was asked to re-brand Fin­land. Appar­ent­ly being ‚a bit like Swe­den‘ is not enough.“
(BBC, Eleanor Rosamund Bar­r­a­clough, Melvin Rickar­by

Sie kön­nen die Sendung, die zuerst 2015 im Rah­men der „Radio 3’s North­ern Lights sea­son“ lief, über die Seite der BBC nach­hören oder als Audio­datei herun­ter­laden.