Die Isolation Islands After the land was seized by the official first settler, the Norwegian Viking Ingólfr Arnarson, the Icelandic language, spoken by around 300,000 people, has hardly changed in a thousand years and is therefore still similar to Old Norse today, with the closest proximity to Faroese and Southwest Norwegian. You may not need to know this – but it may make you understand the most obsessive running gag in a new Icelandic series a little more easily.
That’s where you get excited „The Danish Woman“ Dane said over and over again about how, in her opinion, Icelanders speak so little Danish, even though they all should have learned it at school.
Another Dane demonstrates his chauvinism when he attests that Icelanders have a “colonial inferiority complex”. The Swedes, on the other hand, are said to be anxious, always want to agree on everything, and even all wear the same clothes. Between these nations, which always seem to show solidarity to the outside world, there seem to be a few internal Scandinavian sensitivities.
Six episodes, from January 29th in the Arte media library; from February 5th, 9:45 p.m., every Thursday on Arte
In any case, the lack of knowledge of Danish among Icelanders doesn’t suit the Danish woman. And if something doesn’t suit this recently immigrated third Jensen, it’s a circumstance that her new neighbors in the apartment block at 105 Reykjavik in particular should definitely take seriously. The first, but not the last, to pay for this with her life is the cat that violates Ditte’s holy of holies, the vegetable garden.
Killing little boys
Another cause close to her heart is the fight against fossil fuels. And “fight” has to be taken literally in this case. Ditte is a retired secret service and army veteran – she once shows her photo album to the neighbor boy who, in her view, is all too naughty: “There I am in Iraq. That’s where I learned how to hurt people… And this is an old photo from Bosnia. I was a sniper. That’s where I learned to kill… And that’s Afghanistan. My job there was to break little boys like you.”
What is learned is learned. Ditte really means well towards her fellow human beings, but in the end her educational methods always result in deep black pedagogy. If you don’t want to hear, you have to feel. “The Danish Woman” is playing, of course, like “101 Reykjavik” once did, a deep black comedy.
And the fact that it was so successful is of course also due to the fact that it has the Danish leading actress, who is very well known not only in Scandinavia Trine Dyrholm was written by director Benedikt Erlingsson and Ólafur Egill Egilsson.
She is not just an actress (“The Festival”, “The Inheritance”) – as a singer she has already made it to number one in the Danish charts. The series makes extensive use of this dual talent by having Dyrholm sing a number of songs himself, including Björk’s “Human Behavior,” always accompanied by a very idiosyncratic dance performance. Physically, Trine Dyrholm gives absolutely everything, especially in the sixth and last episode for now.
Actresses around 50 have repeatedly complained about their lack of visibility and even age discrimination in recent years. Two swallows don’t make a summer. “The Danish Woman” and the no less brilliant feminist “Breaking Bad” version „Queen of Fucking Everything“ from Finland (in the ZDF media library) may still give hope that something is changing. At least in Scandinavia.