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Denmark’s highest court reviews right to fly foreign flags

Denmark's Supreme Court will examine the case of a Danish family convicted for displaying the flag of the United States, judicial authorities said on Friday.

Published: 21 January 2023 16:48 CET
Denmark's highest court reviews right to fly foreign flags
In Denmark you need permission to fly the flag of a different country, unless it's Greenland, the Faroe Islands the Nordics, the EU or UN. Photo: Sebastiano Piazzi, Unsplash.

The case concerns the validity of a law dating back to 1915 that prohibits Danes from flying flags other than that of the Scandinavian country, an ordinance meant to preserve its neutrality during World War I.

One morning in June 2017, the Hedegård family was surprised to see the police at their door in a residential area of Kolding, a city in western Denmark.

After complaints from a neighbour, police demanded its removal or face a fine of 2,500 kroner (about 330 euros).

The family said they were not acting in bad faith but chose to fly the flag because they had a deep affection for American culture.

“We feel we are a part of American culture in Denmark,” Rikke Hedegård told local newspaper JydskeVestkysten.

“I could understand if it were a Nazi or Islamic State flag. But an American flag, I can’t understand at all,” Hedegård told the newspaper.

“I thought I had seen enough of it, and it was too much,” the neighbour who made the complaint said.

The family was ordered to stand trial for violating the 1915 ordinance, with prosecutors citing a similar case from 1934 concerning a Soviet flag that determined the rule was also valid in peacetime.

The Hedegårds were acquitted, with the argument that the flag ban was no longer legally binding.

However, that ruling was overturned by the high court last November, although no sentence was imposed given the length of the judicial procedures.

There are some exceptions to Danish flag rules – the Greenland and Faroe Islands flags, along with flags of the other Nordic countries, the EU and the UN may be flown, according to Ministry of Justice guidelines.

If permission is given to fly other countries’ flags, this is usually on condition that a Danish flag of at least equal size be hoisted alongside the foreign flag.

READ ALSO: Danish flag trend sparks outrage

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CULTURE

Rare Danish coin collection up for auction after 100 years

Like Sleeping Beauty cursed to sleep for 100 years, a Danish coin collection decreed to be kept off the market for a century will finally go under the hammer late this year.

Published: 17 May 2024 15:26 CEST
Rare Danish coin collection up for auction after 100 years

Denmark’s National Museum, exercising its right to first dibs, paid one million euros ($1.09 million) for seven of the collection’s around 20,000 coins.

“The quality is extraordinary. The collection has become a thing of legend. It’s like the princess had been sleeping for 100 years,” Helle Horsnæs, head of the National Museum’s coin and medallion collection, told AFP.

In 1922, Lars Emil Bruun, a Danish entrepreneur and coin expert, bought the collection from the aristocratic Bille-Brahe family, agreeing to respect the National Museum’s pre-emptive right to the collection.

He died the following year, adding in his will a condition to the sale of the collection.

“The story goes that Bruun, after having seen the devastation of the First World War, was very afraid that something would happen to the (museum’s) national collection,” Horsnaes said.

“And therefore he made a will, saying that his collection should be kept as a reserve for the national collection for 100 years after his death,” she added.

Kept hidden away in a secret location for 100 years, a board of trustees handed the collection over to his heirs on November 21, 2023.

It is estimated to be worth $72.5 million.

“People have been talking about it and talking about what will happen now when it is released,” Horsnæs said. “It has taken on a special history of its own.”

The seven pieces acquired by the museum date from the end of the 16th and early 17th centuries.

The rest will be sold by the Stack’s Bowers auction house in the autumn.

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