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I traveled to Denmark from Sweden on the Aurora, a 110-m ferry owned by Sweden's Scandlines that plies the route between Helsingborg in Sweden and Helsingør in Denmark. The trip is short — only about 20 minutes — and picturesque. As the ferry arrives at the Danish side a great castle topped by green domes suddenly emerges from the fog-shrouded port. It's the castle of Kronborg, which Shakespeare used as a model for Elsinore, the fabled home of Hamlet.
Another reason for traveling by ferry is to get a taste of a quickly vanishing lifestyle: the Swedish seafarer's. It's an irony that Helsingborg is one of the world's busiest passenger ports, yet the number of Swedish sailors is rapidly diminishing. More than 1,000 members of the sailors' union were laid off last year when the E.U. banned duty-free sales aboard the ships and at airports. The ferries are also under economic threat from the Øresund Bridge, a $4-billion project that opened in July linking Copenhagen with Malmö in Sweden.
Enter the European Commission, which issued a directive that allows each European nation autonomy to grant special benefits to shipowners. Denmark responded by allowing certain vessels to avoid paying the taxes and social contributions shipowners used to pay for sailors. Swedish shipowners are up in arms, saying they want the same tax-free treatment from Stockholm as the Danish vessels or they'll pull up stakes and move across the Øresund to Denmark. "It would be crazy if Helsingborg, one of the largest harbors in the world, didn't have one single Swedish ship or one single Swedish sailor," says Kent Härstedt, a Swedish parliamentarian who represents the Helsingborg district. One irony of the current situation is that Danes voted against joining the euro in September because they were afraid it would force Denmark to lower taxes and cut back on the welfare state. But here's an example of Denmark unilaterally cutting back shipowners' taxes and having the same feared effect on Sweden.
From Helsingør I decided to visit Jutland, Denmark's agricultural heartland, where there is growing disquiet about another trend made possible by the E.U.: Dutch farmers are buying up Danish farms, which is making it harder and harder for young Danes to buy a place of their own. The landscape of Jutland boasts manicured pastures as far as the eye can see, interrupted only by the towering shapes of giant, electricity-generating windmills.
Arjen and Cora Baan are both 23 and bought their farm in Gørding in southern Denmark only last January. "In the Netherlands it's just too expensive for young people to buy a farm anymore," Arjen says. "Dutch farms cost four times what they do in Denmark." Considering that the price of milk is the same throughout the E.U., it's no wonder that Dutch farmers are moving to Denmark in large numbers.
Hans de Vries, who came to Denmark as a farmer 14 years ago, now works as a real estate agent showing off Danish farms to Dutch visitors. He says that more than 600 Dutch farmers have moved to Denmark in the last few years, and now control 15% of all Danish dairy farms. Another interesting statistic: 60% of all farms sold on the open market are purchased by Dutch farmers. "The land is similar to Holland and the culture is similar too," De Vries says. "The Dutch people easily integrate with the Danish."
Not without some ill feelings, though. I had a delicious lunch of dumpling soup and roast beef one day at the Grindsted Agriculture College, where the topic of Dutch farmers was on everyone's minds. "Because of the Dutch, prices are definitely going up, making it more difficult for Danish farmers to buy a place," says Lars Petersen, a student at the school. Another problem is yet again a tax disparity that is distorting what should be a free market. In this case, Dutch young people don't pay taxes on inherited real estate like farms, while Danes do. Thus young Dutch farmers often have bigger nest eggs with which to bid on a farm. "It's a very big problem for young students," says Keld Mikkelsen, principal of the college. "In a decade, 50% of milk production will be controlled by Dutch farmers."
E.U. citizens like Viglione in Helsinki and the Dutch farmers in Denmark have the freedom to move around the Union. But what about those who want to move into the E.U. from outside? It's a hot topic these days in Denmark, where anti-immigrant feeling is growing, as demonstrated by the popularity of far-right political parties like the Danish People's Party.
To find out what's behind the anti-immigrant feeling, I drove to Ulsted in northern Jutland. A small town of only 1,000 residents, Ulsted was traumatized this summer when an asylum seeker from Rwanda who was living at a refugee center in the town raped an elderly woman. I spoke with Bent Sørensen, mayor of the Hals commune where Ulsted is located. Sørensen said that previous groups of refugee families from Bosnia and Kurdistan had caused no problems. But he said trouble began after young single men, mainly from Africa, were settled in a former home for the elderly. "It's not Danish when we have to lock the door when we go out," he said. "When you are used to no crime at all, it's a big difference."
At a town meeting called after the rape the residents said they no longer wanted refugees in Ulsted. "There were big problems with the people in the town because of one man, but I think people are getting friendlier again," says Nasser Haji, a 25-year-old refugee from Somalia.
According to Peter Schleicher, head of the Danish Red Cross office for refugees in the country's northern region, isolation may be a cause of the problems, not the cure. "It's not logical to keep young men in remote areas with nothing to do," he says. "Small towns are very vulnerable societies. I'd rather keep refugees on the outskirts of large cities." That way asylum seekers would be able to do a little work, go to discos and integrate into society better, he says. "I love it here in Denmark," says Haji, who is not really different from the other immigrants I interviewed in the Nordic countries. He just wants a place where he belongs, where he can make a living and raise a family. He wants to be part of an experiment called Europe.
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True North
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