DENMARK II

A DANISH EXPRESSION OF A KINDRED SPIRIT

Something like a year ago a friend told me about Arcadia, an old greek mythology. Appartently thousands of years ago a village lifed in harmonie with nature in every possible relation. For quite a time now I wondered how such a place must have been like, must have looked like or even must have felt like. I haven‘t been to much places where i have experienced such a wonderful and very kindred act as at that day in denmark.

It was on April 7th me and my friends met at the beach. The sun warmed our hearts and faces, only few clouds wandered in the sky. The breeze of the wind blew our hair wildly around. Unless you snuggled into a hollow surrounded by big stones and bushes. Unsuspecting, we sat calmly on the beach, enjoyed the sound of the waves and seagulls and rejoiced in our privilege of being able to sit by the sea without any of the worries that shook the whole world because of COVID.
After some time, three women came to the beach, all three had a towel in their hands, laid it in the sand and stood on the seashore for a while. They spoke Danish, so none of us understood what they were talking about. Almost silently and uninhibitedly, all three of them took off their clothes at the same time, ran into the rather icy cold water, swam
happily screaming, moved away from us into the sea.
As if it were some kind of ritual, little by little they came, during the whole afternoon, women and men, alone or in small groups. They did almost the same as the first three women. Nude and natural. Some with a little more shouting. Others with less tolerance for the cold water. Some dipped their head under water. Others lay down on the towel for a few minutes without drying off after they came out of the water. But whether man or woman, young or old, in all of them I could see what a great liberation and devotion to mother nature this act was.
Not only phisically for themselfes also as an act to mentally release pain and joy. In our culture I find that being naked is often taboo or serves more a marketing purpose, an ideal, an order.
The images shown are usually those considered to be generally perfect bodies, and are anyway a falsification of the truth and what a body and nudity actually means, physically and mentally. I do not think that the communication through media is any different in denmark then in any other country.

But!

That day, there on the beach and every other day after, I experienced the kindred spirit of being naked. And not only did this strengthen my awareness of the beauty of every single body, because as we all know anyway, every body is different and beautiful in its own way. I am attentively searching for reasons why this natural act has been banned from today‘s culture
and a general feeling of insecurity and discomfort manifests when a body is naked and natural, real and live, visible and paradoxically invisible at the same moment because our culture may have lost the connection to nature.

Natalie Krieg, SS20