Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0016/00168.txt

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$Unique_ID{bob00168}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Denmark
Assistance to Developing Countries}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Henning Dehn Nielsen}
$Affiliation{Ministry of Foreign Affairs}
$Subject{danish
denmark
world
years
international
copenhagen
large
ballet
first
research}
$Date{1990}
$Log{}
Title:       Denmark
Book:        Facts about Denmark
Author:      Henning Dehn Nielsen
Affiliation: Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Date:        1990

Assistance to Developing Countries

     It is a widespread opinion in Denmark that the world's richer nations
must assist the poorer and less developed countries and that Denmark should
make its sizeable contribution to cooperation with developing countries.

     Danish development assistance has its origins in modest official grants
to the assistance programmes begun by private organizations after the Second
World War and contributions to the United Nations programme for technical
assistance to the Third World.

     The Danish Parliament in 1962 passed its first act on international
cooperation for economic development, but it was not until 1971 that a new
act included objectives for official development cooperation.

     A separate department of the Foreign Ministry, Danida, (Danish
International Development Agency), administers the aid.

     Denmark is one of four Western nations fulfilling the United Nations
target to contribute 0.7 per cent of the country's gross national product
(GNP) in the form of official aid to developing countries - the three others
being Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands. Denmark's contribution in 1986 was
0.83 per cent of GNP, and Parliament has agreed that Danish aid will steadily
increase by 0.03% of GNP in the coming years, reaching the equivalent of 1 per
cent of GNP in 1992.

     Danish development assistance is bilateral as well as multilateral, and
in 1986 the total assistance amounted to DKK 5.35 billion.

     Bilateral aid, which is carried out through direct cooperation between
the government of the recipient country and that of Denmark, is allocated
primarily to those countries which the UN has ranked as the least developed.
The four largest recipients for several years are Tanzania, Kenya, India and
Bangladesh. Zimbabwe and Mozambique also rank high on the list.

     Danish multilateral assistance is carried out principally through UN
organizations, the EC development programme and the World Bank Group.

     Approx. 450 trained Danish experts and 350 volunteers, recruited by the
Danish Association for International Cooperation (Mellemfolkeligt Samvirke),
work in those countries receiving aid, and several hundred persons from these
countries are invited to Denmark for training and studies each year.

Nobody Must be Left in the Lurch

     If you come to Denmark, you will hear many complain about the high taxes,
but at the same time you will encounter a broad consensus among Danes that
this is the price one has to pay to live in a society where social welfare
has the highest priority of perhaps any other country - Sweden and Denmark are
a little at odds over which of the two takes first place.

     To fall sick or become old or to lose one's job always exacts a human
toll, but in an economic sense such a misfortune in Denmark is not all that
great as a rule.

     No less than one-third of the State's total expenditure - in 1988, the
figure comprised DKK 64 billion out of DKK 185 billion - goes to social
services, and over and above this the local health services are financed with
an additional DKK 25 billion from the county authorities. In other words,
around 18,000 DKK - roughly equivalent to UK 1,600 pounds or US$2,400 - each
year is invested in the social and medical wellbeing of every Dane.

     On falling ill, anyone can go to a doctor for no fee. In fact, the public
health system entitles everyone of the five million Danes to his own doctor
among the 3,000 or so general practitioners in town and country. The doctor
can, if he deems it necessary, refer the patient to a qualified specialist for
treatment, or he can, if the case is serious and perhaps requires surgery,
have the patient admitted to a hospital. Here there is expert medical and
surgical aid available as well as qualified nursing staff to assist in the
best possible way - at no expense to the patient. A hospital bed may well cost
between DKK 3,000 and 4,000 per day, but the costs are borne by the public
authorities.

     Older citizens - all those past 67 years of age - receive a pension from
the State, enough to pay for life's basic necessities, while a similar scheme
applies to those persons under 67, who on grounds of physical handicap,
disability or bad health, are not able to seek full employment.

     It is a common fact that not only making ends meet, but also keeping in
good health, can prove more and more difficult as the years go by, and for
some it can prove a considerable hardship to manage the daily chores. In
these cases, the general policy of the public authorities is to try to help
the aged to remain in their homes for as long as possible by lending them
practical assistance in many diverse ways. If this no longer is possible, a
place in an old people's home is advised. Here each person is entitled to his
own room and can furnish and decorate it as he sees fit.

     As in most other countries, Denmark has its own regrettably large share
of those out of work and wishing to find a job - at the end of 1988 around
nine per cent of the total workforce. Thanks to a national insurance scheme,
to which both employees and - to a large degree - the state contribute, the
unemployed receive paid-out benefits, which are somewhat below what they would
otherwise earn. By offering training and retraining schemes, the State
attempts to assist the unemployed and particularly the young among them to
find a job.

     While on the topic of the labour market, it also can be mentioned that
the working week recently was reduced to 38 hours and that everyone is
entitled to five weeks' paid holidays each year. A female employee can in
connection with giving birth receive up to 24 weeks' maternity leave with
partial compensation. She can if desired allocate part of this leave to the
father.

     The main thread running through social legislation is that no-one needing
assistance should be left in the lurch, and in the Ministry of Social Affairs
fresh initiatives are constantly being made to help achieve this aim.

A People Constantly Learning

     If you come to Denmark from an English-speaking country, you will have
few difficulties in making yourself understood, particularly among the younger
people. This is because English is included in the school curriculum from the
fifth grade (i.e. from the age of 11), and of course everybody wants to
demonstrate his gift for languages towards strangers.

     Compulsory schooling in the Danish primary school system, known as the
Folkeskole, has a nine-year duration, and many opt for an additional 10th
year. The word "Folkeskole" in English can be translated into "People's
School", and this description is not entirely misleading, because as many as
over 91 per cent of all Danish children belong to this form of primary school.

     The fixed aim of Folkeskole teaching is to assure the child a harmonious
development and make it a responsible member of a democratic society. This is
formulated in the Education Act of 1975 as follows:

     The aim of the Folkeskole, in cooperation with parents, is to give pupils
the opportunity to acquire knowledge, skills, methods of working and forms of
expression which will contribute to the all-round development of the
individual child.

     In all aspects of its work the Folkeskole shall seek to create such
opportunities for experience and accomplishment as will enable the pupil to
increase his desire to learn, expand his imagination and practise his ability
to make an independent evaluation and form an opinion.

     The Folkeskole shall prepare pupils for sharing in the activities and
decisions of a democratic society and for sharing responsibilities for solving
the problems that face society. Education offered by and the everyday running
of the Folkeskole shall therefore be based on freedom of thought and
democracy.

     Folkeskole pupils come from all walks of life and from homes with widely
diverging ideological and religious attitudes, but some parents can for
various reasons choose to have their children taught at private schools, and
in these cases the State covers 85 per cent of the running expenses.

     At the Folkeskole, no examinations take place when transferring from one
class to the next, but at the end of the ninth or 10th class pupils can
choose voluntarily to take an exam and receive a final grade on paper.

     After the basic schooling, some two-thirds of pupils apply for practical
training in, for example, the trades or commerce, where specialist schools of
many types are at their disposal, and the remaining one-third go on from basic
schooling to secondary schools, where they can choose to follow a linguistic
or a mathematical course. Secondary school teaching finishes after three years
with student examinations, which opens the way for entry to university or
other places of higher education.

     There are in Denmark five universities, of which the oldest - Copenhagen
University - dates from 1479 and the newest from 1974, as well as a long row
of institutions of higher education for engineering, pharmacy, dentistry,
architecture, veterinary science, and others. All this further education is
free, but admittance is often subject to a certain limitation.

     Even if primary and secondary schooling function quite effectively, many
feel obliged to supplement their knowledge after leaving school, and these
have the possibility of taking part in extracurricular courses, which are
organised throughout the country and which generally take place in the evening
hours. Several hundred thousand adults quite voluntarily sit on school benches
in the same places otherwise occupied during the day by children and the
young. If one adds to this the fact that many in their spare time take part in
specialised courses of diverse kinds, then it is perhaps not off the mark to
call the Danes - as someone has done - a people constantly learning.

     A distinctly Danish phenomenon is to be found in the "People's High
School", or "Folkehojskole", where pupils live at the school, and where the
aim of the stay is not first and foremost the acquisition of precise
knowledge, but to a higher degree the development of personality through
dialogue between pupils and teachers and through an immersion in literature
and history, all without exams of any kind. From this perspective, "school for
life" is a generally used description for the Folkehojskole. It was the
theologian, historian and poet, N.F.S. Grundtvig, who during the middle of the
past century laid the foundations for this form of school. There are today
more than 100 of this type of school in Denmark, as well as a few in the other
Nordic countries.

Danish Contribution to Science

     Our use today of telephone, radio, TV and sundry telecommunications in
all their diversity owes its origins to a discovery made by a Danish scientist
in 1820.

     Although presumably someone sooner or later was bound to stumble onto
electro-magnetism, in fact it proved to be a professor at the University of
Copenhagen, Hans Christian Orsted, who was first to establish the connection
between electric current and magnetism, when one day in his laboratory he came
to place a compass near an electric cable and suddenly saw the compass needle
vibrate.

     Other Danish scientists making breakthroughs in bygone days and worthy of
mention are:

     Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), who made unprecedented astronomical observations
from his observatory on the island of Hven in the Sound, winning particular
fame for his discovery of a new star in the constellation Cassiopeia;

     Niels Steensen, or latinised Nicolaus Steno (1638-86), who was among the
founders of the sciences of anatomy and geology;

     Ole Romer (1644-1710), professor at the University of Copenhagen, who
was the first to measure the speed of light;

     Niels R. Finsen (1860-1904), who introduced the world to the use of
phototherapy for treatment of skin diseases and who received the Nobel Prize
for Medicine in 1903;

     Valdemar Poulsen (1869-1942), who prepared the groundwork for the tape
recorder by discovering in 1898 the telegraphone, and demonstrated in 1907 the
first workable form of broadcasting.

     The most renowned name in modern Danish science is that of professor
Niels Bohr (1885-1962), who was one of the founders of modern nuclear physics
and who formed theories on the construction and transformation of atomic
nuclei, which have been of profound significance for the use of nuclear
energy. The University Institute of Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen,
commonly known as the Niels Bohr Institute, was for decades a forum for
scientists from throughout the world, and in commemorative celebrations
marking the centenary of Niels Bohr's birth, participants included leading
nuclear physicists from both the United States and the Soviet Union. The
Institute's activities have been carried on by Niels Bohr's son, professor
Aage Bohr. Both father and son are Nobel physics laureates, the son sharing
the prize with one of the Institute's leading members, American-born professor
B.R. Mottelson.

     Danish scientists of today also try to live up to this rich heritage. A
great emphasis is placed on technological research, with the state and private
industry proceeding to establish cooperation in this field in order to ensure
that Denmark can rank high among other countries.

     Medical research has occupied a high place for many years. Intensive
cancer research is undertaken at the Fibiger Laboratory, named after the
Danish doctor and pathologist, Johannes Fibiger, who was the first to induce
cancer experimentally. At the Rigshospital, the Danish state's teaching and
research hospital, its multifaceted medical research extends to work on ways
to inhibit the effects of AIDS on persons smitten with the disease. Research
into enzymes and gene-splicing is carried out by the two big medical firms,
Novo and Nordisk Gentofte, both internationally renowned.

     To further research in both the technological and medical fields (as well
as in other forms), requests have been made to established an academic
research centre for the teaching and training of researchers. At Arhus in
Jutland, an innovation centre linked to the local university has been set up,
along the lines of equivalent centres at U.S. and British universities, with
the purpose of conducting advanced technological and biochemical research in
laboratories equipped with all the best facilities.

     On an international level, Denmark participates in numerous scientific
research activities, including those under the auspices of the European Centre
for Nuclear Research (CERN), the European Space Agency (ESA), the European
Astronomics Research organisation (ESO), and the EUREKA scheme for European
cooperation in high-technology.

Danish Architecture and Design

     Endowing objects with a beautiful and functional form, whether it be a
large construction project or simple articles for everyday use, is an art form
in which Danish architects and designers have created a fine tradition.

     First among Danish architects today stands Jorn Utzon whose imaginative
Sydney Opera House has attracted attention the world over, and who together
with his son Jan Utzon was also responsible for the creation of a Parliament
building in Kuwait. Another Danish architect, Henning Larsen, has won fame in
the same part of the world by building for the Saudi Arabian government a
large and elegant foreign ministry in the capital Riyadh. The latest
captivating project from a Danish architect is Johan Otto von Spreckelsen's
design for the new and contemporary triumphal arch on the east-west axis of
Paris.

     Large assignments as these have not gone the way of Danish architects in
their homeland of late - there has been neither the space nor the money. But
in the recent past, buildings of diverse architectural concept and interest
were carried out, a sizeable number of which owe their existence to the
architect, Professor Arne Jacobsen (1902-71). These include among others the
large SAS hotel in the centre of Copenhagen, a new headquarters for the Danish
central bank and town halls in several towns. Among Arne Jacobsen's works was
also the new St. Catherine's College in Oxford, England.

     One of the largest Danish architectural works of this century is the
Grundtvig Church in Copenhagen, which was commenced in 1921 and completed in
1940. A cathedral in concept and structure, it nevertheless drew its
inspiration from the old Danish country churches. The architect was P.V.
Jensen-Klint, and after his death halfway through the church's construction,
the work was finished by his son, the architect Kaare Klint.

     If one otherwise should ask Copenhageners today, who they regard as being
the capital's most prominent architect and builder, the answer in many cases
will be the enterprising King Christian IV (1588-1648). That is not altogether
surprising, because the city in such a high degree is characterised by the
often very original buildings he had commissioned, including the famous
Round Tower with an astronomic observatory, the Stock Exchange with its spire
of dragons' tails, and the graceful Rosenborg Palace.

     If one looks out beyond the capital and into the Danish countryside, one
will find dating from the period between 1500 and 1700 magnificent castles
such as Kronborg and Frederiksborg and a very large number of manor houses,
commissioned by rich noblemen and often surrounded by moats and sumptuous
parks. Many of them are jewels of Danish architecture, though most of the
architects are dead and forgotten.

     Many of the big names in contemporary Danish architecture are not only
known for their buildings, but also have worked as designers in fields, such
as furniture, for example. This applies to the earlier mentioned Kaare Klint
and Arne Jacobsen, succeeded as furniture designers by names such as Borge
Mogensen, Hans J. Wegener, Finn Juhl, Verner Panton and others, all of whom
have made their contribution to ensuring that the export of Danish furniture
excels, both in terms of diversity and of quality. A designer in a class of
his own is poet and multi-talented artist Piet Hein, whose super ellipse - a
cross between a rectangle and an ellipse - has won international interest and
which has been used both in furniture design and in the creation of town
squares and sports arenas, such as the Olympic Stadium in Mexico, for example.

     But when Danish design has won fame in the world, this is reflected first
and foremost in the distinction of its products in porcelain and silver. It
began with porcelain more than 200 years ago. The Royal Porcelain Manufactory
was founded in 1775, and barely a dozen years later work began on the finest
dinner service the world has ever seen, the Flora Danica service, consisting
of 1,800 pieces illustrated with the world of Danish plant and flower life.
Intended as a gift from the Danish crown prince, later King Frederick VI, to
the Russian empress, Catherine II, she died before the service was completed
after 15 years of work, and instead it was presented to the Danish royal
house. The factory today can still deliver the famous dinner service to those
customers, whose cheque-books are in order. Both the Royal Porcelain
Manufactory and the equally renowned Bing & Grondahl Porcelain Factory,
founded in 1853, produce a rich assortment of both serving porcelain and
decorative objects, and each has its own staff of artists working on its
behalf.

     Danish silversmiths had practised their handicraft for several hundreds
of years, but it was first with Georg Jensen's Silversmiths that Danish silver
design really became known to the world. It began with a small workshop in
Copenhagen, but Georg Jensen fused in his personality the deft touch of the
talented artist and the sure craftsman, and because he moreover understood how
to gather around him a circle of artists with a sense of silver's
embellishment, the business grew rapidly and won international recognition
with its own sales departments in London, Paris, New York, and other cities.

     In order to strengthen their world market position, the Royal Porcelain
Manufactory and Georg Jensen's Silversmiths were merged in 1986 under the
common name of Royal Copenhagen, and Holmegaard Glass, which has developed a
distinguished line in glasswear design, and Bing & Grondahl also have entered
into this cooperation.

Andersen and Blixen on Top of Literature

     It is generally difficult for the poets of a small country to make a name
for themselves in the world at large, but there are shining examples that it
can happen, one of these being Denmark's great fairytale writer Hans Christian
Andersen.

     His fairytales and stories have been translated into more than 100
languages, so wherever you may find yourself in the world, there is a good
chance that either your parents or you yourself have read about the ugly
duckling, the princess lying on the pea, the little mermaid, or any of the
other figures to spring from Andersen's fantasy.

     Hans Christian Andersen was born into a poor family in Odense in 1805.
At the age of only 14 he travelled to Copenhagen, filled with dreams of
becoming an actor or ballet-dancer. But the stage only filled him with
disappointment, and some years later he began to write. Just 30 years old, he
published an unassuming manuscript entitled "Fairytales for Children" and
thereby unknown to himself laid the basis for his fame. In all 24 booklets
with fairytales followed, the last just three years before Andersen's death in
1875. Regardless of the titles of these works, the tales lend themselves
equally to adults and children, and it is in itself a fairytale that they
evidently are understood by people throughout the world.

     At the same time as Andersen was writing, a great authorship of a
completely different kind was unfolding. It was theologian and philosopher
Soren Kierkegaard (1813-55) who produced voluminous works about religious and
other spiritual problems and thereby left such a strong impression on
international philosophical thought that even today his production is the
object of research the world over.

     The close of the 19th century and the first part of this century were in
Denmark marked by a row of great novelists. The list of prominent authors of
this time includes J.P. Jacobsen, Herman Bang, Henrik Pontoppidan and Johannes
V. Jensen, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1944.

     Another great novelist of this period was Martin Andersen Nexo
(1869-1954), whose major proletarian novels "Pelle the Conqueror" and "Ditte,
Child of Man" won international fame and were printed in huge numbers
particularly in the Soviet Union.

     Among outstanding authors in our day are William Heinesen (b. 1900) from
the Faroe Islands, whose prose works deal mainly with Nordic themes, and the
poet Piet Hein (b. 1905) whose brief, pointed "grooks" have attained world
fame.

     Probably the most famous of Danish authors in this century is Karen
Blixen. Born 1885 into an aristocratic family of Rungsted north of Copenhagen,
she spent 20 years of her life in Africa, where she owned a farm in Kenya
until she returned to Denmark in 1932 after a ruined marriage and the dramatic
death of her lover in a plane crash. She had already begun to write in Kenya,
and a couple of years after returning to Denmark, her "Seven Gothic Tales" was
published by an American publishing house under the pseudonym of Isak Dinesen.
The work, with a thrilling sequence of events and complex intrigues in each of
the stories, captured extraordinary attention and was translated into many
languages. In 1937, the next of Karen Blixen's works to appear was "Out of
Africa", which is based on her experiences of the farm in Kenya, and which
now - around 50 years later - has given her new fame by forming the basis of
the internationally successful film of the same name starring Meryl Streep and
Robert Redford in the main roles.

     About 1,200 works of fiction, are published annually in Denmark, approx.
1,000 children's books and 7.000 text and reference books. These figures do
not include reprints. The largest book publisher is Gyldendal, founded in
1770. Books are sold in around 500 bookshops, but many Danes satisfy their
appetite for reading by borrowing books from the public libraries, which
number 250 with an annual total lending of some 90 million volumes:

Danish Ballet Dances the World Over

     The art of dance knowns no borders, and this applies equally to the Royal
Danish Ballet Company, which has a rich tradition for successful tours
throughout the world. Most often the ballet troupe has graced the United
States, appearing in a long row of towns right through the States, but it has
also danced in China and Japan and in summer 1989 in front of the Acropolis i
Athens.

     It was the immigrant French ballet master August Bournonville, who some
150 years ago laid the foundations for Danish ballet. He created a large
repertoire of fine Romantic ballets, and a dozen of these are still staged in
their original form, which is unique in the history of ballet and only
possible because these ballets have been included in the running repertoire
throughout the time since the days of Bournonville.

     The Royal Ballet numbers some 90 dancers, all of whom from the age of six
or seven are enrolled in the corps' own school to receive both general
schooling and dance tuition and, owing to their continued training, can
perform with equal assurance both classical and modern ballet, the latter of
which comprises a large part of today's repertoire.

     A completely new initiative under the auspices of the Royal Ballet has
come to be created in the form of a ballet's "Oscar" prize, named the Hans
Christian Andersen Ballet Award, which will go each year to the world's best
ballet performances. The handing over of the prize will be in connection with
a big international ballet festival in Copenhagen, the first of which took
place in May 1988. Andersen's name is associated with the prize because he
held a lifelong admiration for ballet.

     Danish ballet is at home in Copenhagen's Royal Theatre, which also forms
the national stage for opera and drama. The Theatre was founded in 1722 and
performed in its first years a large number of comedies by Ludvig Holberg
(1684-1754), often called the Moli@ere of the North. The repertoire nowadays
includes plays by Danish and international dramatists, in particular many of
British, French or American origin. Besides the Royal Theatre, there are in
Copenhagen some eight to 10 private theatres, and the biggest provincial towns
Arhus, Odense and Aalborg have their own permanent theatres, while smaller
places are visited by travelling troupes.

     Theatre often finds itself in a financial squeeze, and the state and
local authorities used to provide grants to theatres, but in recent years a
scheme has been adopted whereby public subsidies are channelled partially into
theatregoers' organisations, which buy up theatrical performances and sell the
tickets at around half of the normal price. In this way it has become cheaper
to go to the theatre in Denmark than in most other countries, and the public's
attendance is large.

     When the talk is about theatre, and when these lines address themselves
overwhelmingly to foreign readers, then it is apt to mention that Denmark
almost every summer has an entirely unique stage bearing its own international
stamp. It is the castle of Kronborg itself, where Shakespeare set the scene of
his tragedy Hamlet, and where now successive international ensembles perform
the play of the moody prince of Denmark with the castle as an evocative
backdrop.

     The Danish film industry gained new recognition when two films were
awarded Oscars by America's Academy of Motion Pictures two years running. The
first, in 1988, was for the film version of Karen Blixen's short story
"Babette's Feast," directed by Gabriel Axel, while the second, in 1989, went
to "Pelle the Conqueror." This was based on the novel of the same name by
proletarian writer Martin Andersen Nexo and directed by Bille August. Both
awards were for "best foreign film." Bille August's Pelle also won the Golden
Palms at the Cannes Film Festival.

     In the realm of Danish music, the biggest and internationally most
well-known name is Carl Nielsen (1865-1931), a composer with an all-embracing
work of symphonies, operas and orchestral works. His symphonies have been
performed in many parts of the world and have had a leading place in Leonard
Bernstein's repertoire. The largest and foremost Danish orchestra is the Royal
Danish Orchestra, which works in conjunction with the Royal Theatre, and the
Radio Symphony Orchestra, both of international fame.

Artists in Sculpture and Painting

     There are not many places in the world, where a single artist has had an
entire museum placed at the disposal of his works. But this was the case with
Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844), when he returned to Copenhagen
in 1838 after having spent nearly 40 years in Rome and having attained fame as
one of the greatest contemporary artists in sculpture. In Rome, he had made
a sepulchral monument for Pope Pius VII in St. Peter's Cathedral and numerous
statues in the style of antiquity, while at the same time working on his
masterpiece of Christ and the 12 Apostles. After his death, this was erected
in the Copenhagen Cathedral, while his other works found a place in the
museum, where Thorvaldsen rests to this day surrounded by his works.

     Around Thorvaldsen's time there lived a group of Danish painters, who
under the description of the Golden Age Painters have left a strong mark on
the history of Danish art. Setting the tone among them was C.W. Eckersberg
(1783-1853), and others in the group were Christen K/obke (1810-48) and Julius
Exner (1825-1910). One of K/obke's paintings was at the beginning of 1987 hung
in London's National Gallery among the great names of painting, after the
gallery had acquired it at the auctioneers Sotheby's for 260,000 Pounds.

     Another and somewhat later group of Danish painters had their residence
at Skagen on the northernmost tip of Jutland, where the light is uniquely
becoming. The most successful member of this artists' colony was P.S. Kroyer
(1851-1909), who in his paintings, often with scenes from shore and sea, was
one of the most eminent in the art of capturing the effect of light. Paintings
by Kroyer and the other Skagen painters can be seen in large numbers at a
museum in Skagen, though many now pass hands for high prices at international
art auctions.

     The biggest name in Danish painting of this century is probably Asger
Jorn (1914-73), who won international acclaim for his abstract paintings of
fabled creatures in vivid colours. Before his death, he donated many works to
an art museum in his childhood town of Silkeborg in Jutland. A large
retrospective Asger Jorn exhibition took place in Munich in the spring of
1987.

     A living artist in sculpture, unique in his style, is Robert Jacobsen
(b. 1912), who does not work with hammer and chisel, but with metal cutters
and welding flame, when he creates his large iron sculptures, which with their
untraditional appearance never fail to capture great attention.

     Many art museums display Danish and foreign paintings and sculptures. The
largest collections are to be found at the State Museum for Art in Copenhagen,
but there are also renowned art museums outside the capital, with the largest
in Aalborg, Odense, Arhus, Esbjerg and Holstebro. The museum in Aalborg is
itself a work of art, designed by the world-famous Finnish architect Alvar
Aalto.

     The Louisiana Museum in North Zealand occupies a special position for
several reasons. It was created by a private art collector and maecenas, Knud
W. Jensen; it is situated in a beautiful setting overlooking the Sound, a few
kilometres south of Elsinore and Kronborg; and, apart from displaying its own
collections of modern Danish and international art, Louisiana hosts with great
success temporary exhibitions of the art-world's greatest names.