Happy (Scary) New Year...

After returning from my holiday I started looking for info about New Year's Eve Danish style and found very few event listings online. According to many of my Danish friends, New Year's Eve (NYE) is spent in the home of friends or family. People gather around 6pm for the Danish Queen's annual address with a glass of champagne, followed by a holiday meal. Around midnight people go out in the streets and either light their own fireworks or observe the amateur shows of their neighbors.

In my neighborhood the build up to NYE began several days before, with periodic flashes of light and firecracker noises. On NYE I could see fireworks lighting up the sky from sunset in nearly any direction. In Denmark anyone can buy fireworks, and not just small sparklers, but full on huge rockets. This seems inconsistant with the rest of what I have experienced as rather orderly Danish culture - this place is full of surprises.

A group of us headed to Radhusplasen (City Hall Plaza) around 11pm to arrive for the party in the streets prior to midnight. I doubt many of my Danish friends were there, and now I know why. After we arrived we quickly found that Radhusplasen seemed more like a smokey war zone than a celebration. The noise of the fireworks exploding was deafening and the lack of regulation of who and how they were lit was quite scary. One firework went off less than 2 meters from my friend as we were walking on the sidewalk near the plaza. A close call that could certainly have destroyed our evening out.

Against the flow of party revelers we headed toward the opposite end of the fancy shopping street to Nyhavn (New Harbor) where there was another big plaza. As we neared the area the sound and light of fireworks increased but this time at least all of the fireworks were shooting vertically high into the air! 2007 turned into 2008 in Nyhavn for my friends and I as we were treated to a 20 min (professional) fireworks show followed on by many amateurs. We shared a bottle of champagne and tried (though failed) to take photos to capture the first moments of the new year. As we again crossed the plaza to head back toward the city center we were careful to sidestep burning coals left over from the festivities.

A Swiss friend of mine commented to me once that the youth house movement in Copenhagen is one of the last examples of anarchism in Europe, I would add the New Years Eve anarchic fireworks launchers in Denmark as another example...