No longer my tribe

I went to the Viking Museum the other day. Danes are in love with their Viking past in a sentimental way that I find off-putting. I think it’s a little silly for a modern, urban Danish person to put so much emotional energy into “we are a sea faring people!” Please. You work in an office. Tribalism of that sort brings out the cynic in me, no matter which group is doing it.

Denmark used to be a conquering, colonialist kingdom who were slave traders and now they’re just a generous welfare state with a wonderful quality of life and half the population of Ohio so maybe they can be forgiven some nostalgia - they made this transition with a lot of grace, really. The way the sea faring tradition plays out now is Denmark doesn’t regulate pleasure boaters at all, which I think is crazy, especially because Danes drink so much. If you take the (wonderful) public water taxi to downtown Copenhagen you witness the pilot of the ferry shouting “slow down!” over a PA system repeatedly to drunken teens going too fast, well, as fast as one can in a tiny boat with a little electric motor.

We went to revel in Vikingness with a group that included a Canadian couple and while I know Danes are pissed at Americans because JD and Usha Vance threatened to invade them and seize Greenland, I may have underestimated the anger of Our Neighbors to the North. The Canadian couple recognized that my husband and I are Americans and started this weirdly passive aggressive dialogue with this poor congenial Turkish person who was acting as their sounding board/prop. The dialogue was directed AT us but not WITH us - the Canadians were telling the Turk that they wished Canada were further from the US because Americans are violent and crazy, loudly, so we could hear.

I loathe this kind of chickenshit indirect attack in any conflict situation and this was no exception, so I was annoyed although I agree with the angry Canadians 100% on the substance of their complaint. What I wasn’t though, is offended on behalf of my country. This is a change for me - I was always actually quite patriotic, or more so than many on the Left side of the Democratic Party and that of course is also a kind of tribalism although not one based on ethnicity. I was always patriotic, but never a hack. I’m no longer willing to defend the behavior of my tribe.