Union leader says cancelling religious holiday dating from 1600s is threat to Danish welfare modelThe Danish government’s plan to abolish a public holiday to help fund the defence budget amid the war in Ukraine is putting Denmark’s cherished welfare model at risk, the country’s biggest trade union confederation has warned.“It’s a big threat to the Danish model,” said Lizette Risgaard, the head of the FH confederation, which has 1.3 million members in a country of 5.9 million inhabitants. “Politicians should stay out of labour market issues. If they go through with this they will be imposing their will and violate our agreements,” she told AFP on Wednesday. Continue reading…

Top establishments such as Noma are closing. They were fun for a while but we’ve had our fillIn 2007, for a book on the world’s luxury restaurant economy, I undertook what I called the high-end Super Size Me. In the 2004 documentary, Morgan Spurlock ate McDonald’s every day for a month to see how it would affect his body. The high-end version involved me eating in a Parisian Michelin three-star restaurant every day for a week. Back then, talking about this stunt felt like a boast; now, it feels like a confession.I won’t pretend it was all terrible. There was an extraordinary pea dish at Restaurant Guy Savoy, which elevated the humble legume to god-tier status; at the tiny L’Astrance, there was the most spectacular chilled tomato soup. But for all these bright spots there were also disasters: langoustines on sticks wrapped in brackish sea-water foam at Ledoyen, an appalling artichoke creme brulee at Le Grand Véfour that was split. But what really stayed with me from my grotesque endurance feat was the unreality of this kind of high-end restaurant: it’s grim, preening, massively unenjoyable artifice. And if a meal out isn’t enjoyable, what’s the point of it? My love affair with the finest of fine dining began to crumble.Jay Rayner is the Observer’s restaurant critic Continue reading…

Closure of ‘world’s best restaurant’ raises questions over future of such rarefied – and expensive – fine dining establishmentsIf what tickles your tastebuds for supper is duck brain served in the skull, edible pine cones, sweetbreads in reindeer moss and dried plum and pheasant heart followed by a berry-leather and black-garlic beetle, you’d better get a move on.Noma, the fine-dining restaurant in Copenhagen on whose winter “game and forest” menu (it also does vegetable and seafood seasons) those delicacies feature, is closing at the end of next year, and the waiting list for tables is very long. Continue reading…

Constantine was forced into exile in 1967 after clashing with military rulers, who later abolished monarchyGreece’s former King Constantine II, whose nine-year reign coincided with one of the most turbulent periods in the country’s political history, has died at a private hospital in Athens, his doctors announced late on Tuesday. He was 82.Constantine, a cousin of British monarch King Charles III, died “of a stroke”. He was admitted to an Athens hospital last week with breathing problems, Greek media reported. Continue reading…

Copenhagen eatery, regularly ranked as one of world’s best, will become a test kitchen, billed as a food laboratoryThe Copenhagen restaurant Noma, one of the world’s top eateries, with three Michelin stars, will close at the end of 2024 to reinvent itself as a food laboratory.“To continue being Noma, we must change … Winter 2024 will be the last season of Noma as we know it,” the restaurant’s representatives wrote in a post on Instagram. Continue reading…

Finance workers’ union says number of bank heists has fallen off as use of cash has decreased in recent yearsDenmark has recorded its first year without bank robberies, as the use of cash has dwindled in recent years, the country’s finance workers’ union said.The increasingly cashless society had led banks to reduce their cash services, the union said on Monday, leaving little potential loot for robbers. Continue reading…

At least eight countries experience record high temperatures of ‘almost unheard of’ heat, say meteorologistsWeather records have been falling across Europe at a disconcerting rate in the last few days, say meteorologists.The warmest January day ever was recorded in at least eight European countries including Poland, Denmark, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Belarus, Lithuania and Latvia, according to data collated by Maximiliano Herrera, a climatologist who tracks extreme temperatures. Continue reading…

Based on a British variety sketch, comedy is traditionally shown at new year across swathes of mainland EuropeA British music hall sketch that has sunk into obscurity in its country of origin but is an indispensable New Year’s Eve ritual in swathes of continental Europe will be given a new lease of life, after the German production powerhouse UFA announced this week it would start filming a six-part prequel next year.Originally scripted by the variety playwright Lauri Wylie and first performed in English music halls in the 1920s, Dinner for One was recorded as a black-and-white film for German television in the early 60s, it has been a staple of New Year’s Eve television schedules in countries also including Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland and Sweden for at least 50 years. Continue reading…

My grandmother Kirstin Channer, who has died aged 92, spent her life working for reconciliation and forgiveness around the world.Kirstin was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, to Hilmar Rasmussen, an interior decorator, and Christine (nee Hansen), and joined her elder brother Frede in the Danish resistance against the occupying Nazis when she was 12 years old. Frede entrusted Kirstin with delivering secret papers, and she managed to avoid being searched as she looked too young. Continue reading…

An immensely powerful, humanising documentary about one Afghan’s escape from 1980s Kabul, made all the more thrilling and suspenseful through its animation50 best films of 2022 in the UKMore on the best culture of 2022It’s a genuine thrill to encounter a film as exciting and immediate as Flee. The true story at its centre is a harrowing and suspenseful refugee narrative of loss and resilience, and director Jonas Poher Rasmussen could have brought it to the screen in many ways, almost all of them conventionally easier than the one he finally chose. Rasmussen’s friend, known in the film as Amin, is an Afghan refugee who agrees to share how he made his way from war-torn Kabul in the 80s to now, living a settled, open life in Denmark as a gay man, one he’d never thought was possible.In animating the interviews with Amin and the various events being recalled, Rasmussen finds an unusually immersive way to pull us in even closer, one that’s both emotionally involving and artfully realised. Amin’s childhood, as with many others like him, was interrupted in the late 80s as conflict forced him and his family to escape their home, finding their way to Moscow. Continue reading…

UK prime minister joins Nordic and Baltic leaders at summit on countering Russian aggressionRussia-Ukraine war – latest news updatesRishi Sunak will meet UK troops in Estonia and Nordic and Baltic leaders at a summit on countering Russian aggression, where he will say leaders must sustain or exceed their lethal aid support to Ukraine and their political backing.Monday’s meeting will come after the UK prime minister was reported to have unnerved some in Whitehall by asking for a “Goldman Sachs dashboard” on the progress of the war and how UK military supplies are used, according to the BBC. Continue reading…

A Danish study shows that children of migrants do better than ‘natives’ when socioeconomic background is appliedHow should we refer to the children of immigrants? The traditional answer is “second-generation immigrants”, yet “first-generation locals” is far more accurate, as a new research paper co-authored by Alan Manning, one of the UK’s top economists, points out.It has more to offer than linguistic improvements. In the US, first-generation locals generally do better than the children of locals. But that’s prompted a puzzle, because in European countries that is often not the case, with the children of migrants having below average educational and labour market outcomes. This has prompted worries from the left about discrimination and from the right about a lack of integration.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk Continue reading…

New coalition’s proposal to remove Great Prayer Day from calendar met with criticism by church and business ownersDenmark’s new government, the country’s first left-right coalition since the 1970s, has got off to an unpopular start with the announcement that one of its earliest policy proposals is to scrap a bank holiday.The Social Democrat prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, appointed right-leaning political rivals as key ministers in her new reform-oriented government on Thursday, after close-run parliamentary elections last month. Continue reading…

Will Hill says he was not told of 31 December 2021 deadline for residency application and his wedding plans are now in doubtA British man is being deported from Denmark because he did not know he had to apply to stay in the country after Brexit.Will Hill, 37, was ordered to leave by Sunday. His application to stay, made three weeks late, had been rejected, as was an appeal to the immigration authorities. Continue reading…

Swedish prosecutor says ‘complex’ investigation and analysis continue to see if suspects can be identifiedTraces of explosives have been found at the sites of September’s multiple leaks from the Nord Stream gas pipelines, confirming that the breaches were the result of sabotage, Sweden’s prosecution authority has said.“Analysis that has now been carried out shows traces of explosives on several of the objects that were recovered” from the scene in the Baltic Sea, Mats Ljungqvist, the prosecutor leading the investigation, said on Friday. Continue reading…

Qatari officials approached a Danish TV crew and demanded they stopped filming while they were broadcasting live on TV. The crew were in Doha covering buildup to the World Cup in a public area when authorities showed up. The reporter, Rasmus Tantholdt, showed his credentials and said: “You invited the whole world to come here. Why can’t we film?” The officials then threatened to break the camera when the camera operator did not stop. Tournament organisers have since apologised for the incident.Qatar World Cup organisers apologise after threats to a Danish television crewContinue reading…

Featuring six trolls made out of salvaged scrap wood, Thomas Dambo’s Giants of Mandurah are towering tributes to sustainability, adventure and imaginationGet our weekend culture and lifestyle email“I was a total headache for my parents growing up,” says Danish recycle artist Thomas Dambo, perched on the trunk of a eucalyptus tree in the bushland of Mandurah, an hour south of Perth. “I had so much energy and I loved building stuff, but I was so impatient. If I had an idea, I had to build it right now using whatever I could find around me.”When Dambo was just seven years old, he bought a mountain of cushions from the flea market to construct a games room in his parents’ basement. As a teenager, he built a “crazy” fortress in his back yard, connecting two treetop houses by a zip line and a series of underground tunnels. Continue reading…

More than 1,000 mink farms in Denmark were ordered to close over fears a Covid mutation was a risk to human health. Two years on, most will never reopenPhotographs by Agata Lenczewska-Madsen.The farm is quiet. Martin Merrild is sweeping leaves. Behind him is a row of 20 large sheds – all empty. Two years ago, his farm near Hjerm in West Jutland had been home to 15,000 mink, a small carnivorous mammal bred by farmers in individual cages before being skinned for its fur.Since he started mink farming almost 40 years ago, Merrild’s life had revolved around a yearly cycle. It would start with a smaller population of female and male mink. In early March, the females would be ready for breeding and Merrild and his staff would have just a few weeks to ensure they got a mate. From late April, mink the size of a thumb would be born.Martin Merrild has been farming mink since the 1980s, until an outbreak of Covid in 2020 saw his entire herd culled. He hasn’t reared a mink since Continue reading…

Phil Russell says he was four days overdue sending an application to stay he did not know he neededA British man living in Denmark is being deported from the country because he was four days late with an application to stay there post-Brexit.Danish MP Mads Fuglede is fighting to stop the deportation which he says is a breach of the spirit of the withdrawal agreement to protect EU citizens’ rights. However, following elections last week and with no new government in sight in Copenhagen, he is worried help may not come in time for Philip Russell. Continue reading…

The 82-year-old monarch rode in a carriage through Copenhagen and was joined by her family, despite recent public row with sonDenmark’s Queen Margrethe II rounded off celebrations marking her 50th year on the throne on Saturday, and was joined by her family despite a recent public row with her youngest son.The 82-year-old monarch took a carriage ride through Copenhagen and attended a ceremony at city hall. Continue reading…