For four hundred odd years, the fourth Earl of Bothwell, James Hepburn, has lain buried in a tomb in the Danish village of Fårvejle. Hepburn was once the husband of Mary, Queen of Scots and according to the legend; he actually murdered her previous husband in 1566 in order to gain her hand.
When he was accused of treason he fled Scotland for Scandinavia where he apparently hoped to raise an army in order to put Mary back on the throne she’d been forced to abdicate (after having married Hepburn) but upon arriving in Bergen, in Norway, he was arrested by the Danish Kings men (Norway fell under the Danish crown in those days). After an unsuccessful attempt at escape in Norway he was imprisoned in Dragsholm Castle (once a notorious prison, now a fancy restaurant) in Denmark where poor conditions are said to have driven him mad and where he eventually died in 1578.
And now the Scots want him back. Members of the Bothwell Clan have hired a San Francisco lawyer to have the Earl’s remains returned to a proper burial in Scotland where he would be honoured as a true Scottish patriot.
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Christiania is a region within the greater urban sprawl of Copenhagen. Originally a military area, it was taken over by hippies and other like-minded people back in the sixties and became a sort of ‘free state’ within Denmark. The idea then was to create a sort of communal area where the socialist fraternity of the 1960’s mentality could be given its free expression. Many people defied the rest of society and moved to Christiania and its development is something of a well-documented social curiosity. The area has always been in the news for one reason or another, but the most common cause for media attention has been the ongoing problem of drugs which, for most of the ‘free state’s’ history were and are sold openly in the streets. The Danish police have long considered Christiania a trouble spot and have raided it many times often arresting people for selling drugs in the streets and taking them back to the police station for questioning. Recently this practice was deemed ‘illegal’. A few days ago Villy Søvndal of the Socialistisk folkeparti made a big fuss about this decision and at a meeting in the ‘Peace Ark restaurant, told the people of Christiania that he would arrange for politicians to periodically visit the ‘free state’ in order to make sure the police behaved themselves…
Yesterday a nineteen-year-old man was attacked in the ‘Peace Ark’ when he tried to sell 5 grams of hash at a price below the average. A crowd of some fifteen to twenty men from the free state, presumably all drug dealers, chased the man and his friends and upon catching them, beat them. The nineteen year old was beaten to death with a baseball bat.
Christiania online
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Four Islamic terrorists who were arrested in Denmark last year have had their trial dates extended once again, which means they have now sat eight months in prison without trial. According to DR, Judge Katrine B.B. Eriksen is said to be losing patience, but has extended the trial by four weeks in order to allow the prosecution time to prepare their case. According to the state prosecutor, Henrik Holten-Rasmussen, the investigation is now ended but none of the four suspects have allowed themselves to be interviewed by the police. The mastermind of the intended terrorist attack is still in prison in Sarajevo (where the attack against the US embassy was to have taken place) and the Danish have asked their colleagues in Bosnia to help with the trial in Denmark.
In the mean time, it was discovered that one of the suspects had had a phone smuggled in to his cell and had been coordinating pressure on a witness in order to conceal his Islamic fervour.
4 comments:
I have heard about that area or "free state" Christiania before, i think in a NG article, I forget.
My husband who followed the Grateful Dead for over ten years has some pretty funny and very appropriate sayings for groups like these...one being "mandatory freedom" and another being "anarchy through bureaucracy"
Whats NG?
Mandatory freedom indeed. The Christaniter (as they are called) strike me as being a lot of smug, self satisfied, ranting socialists who have no notion of actually taking any form of personal responsibility for the crimes which are carried out in their 'free state'. They tolerate drug dealers but complain about the police.
Any fellow feeling I ever might have had for their situation has long since evaporated. I regard them as a successful attempt to renounce any participation in the greater social contract by people who have misused leniency to establish a niche where by they can make vast amounts of money, through low, if not none existant rents, commerce, tourism and dealing in illegal substances without having to put any of their gains back into the society which they snub.
I would be lying if I didn't admit that I envy them their 'space' for it is a nice place to visit (and I once enjoyed a fantastic bean salad there) but on the whole I cannot find it in my heart to regard them as anything but softly spoken traitors.
NG= National Geographic.
Another claim my husband makes on groups like this is everything is fine until money starts being made. So in other words such concepts rarely last very long.
Isn't it located in a very valuable area, in regards to property?
Yes. But you could say that of all Denmark.
I think your husband is correct. Money is the root of evil and no amount of ideology can prevent the corrosive influence of greed.
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