https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8686-0738
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ABSTRACT
This article investigates how Danish news media and popular culture represent war veterans and how the dominant form of representation can be linked to a general process of militarization in a Danish context. Focusing on the narratives and representations of Danish veterans allow for a study of how the veteran emerges as culturally significant figure in a Nordic welfare state without a well-established tradition for international military engagement. By reading across a set of newspaper articles and two popular TV series, Ride upon the storm and Warrior, a dominant pathologizing discourse focusing on the veteran-victim is identified and discussed.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 All quotes from Danish sources have been translated by the author.
2 Parts of this article build on the author’s dissertational work, see Nielsen, Citation2020a (chapter 4).
3 Since deployed soldiers were not electronically registered before 1992 the exact number of Danish veterans is unknown. The Veteran Centre, however, estimates it to be around 60,000. In the period 1992–2022 39,245 individuals were deployed by the Danish armed forces (Veteran Centre, Citation2022).
4 The four search strings, in Danish, were: (1) dansk* *veteran* OG *soldat*, (2) dansk* krigsveteran*, (3) tidlig* udsendt* *soldat* OG dansk*, (4) dansk* hjemvendt* *soldat*. Notice that none of them are biased towards a specific set of ideas and representations of the veteran as, e.g., hero or victim. I have, however, chosen to add 68 articles to the initial search outcome for the year 2010. These 68 articles were all part of the influential article series Hjem fra krigen (Eng. Home form the war) which the newspaper Jyllands-Posten ran in 2010. The series won the most prestigious journalistic award in Denmark and had a large impact in making the public aware of the Danish veterans’ issues. It was, however, also primarily focused on uncovering issues and, as such, it can be criticized for creating a bias towards problem-oriented frames and representations in the corpus. Reading through the entire set of articles, however, it becomes clear that the series draws on the same dominant idea of the wounded veteran as the rest of the newspaper articles. For an overview of the full article corpus see Nielsen, Citation2020a.
5 Articles shorter than 125 words were not included in the corpus. Articles with the same heading have only been shown once in the search. Most articles from different sources replicating almost identical content, i.e., Ritzau news, have only been included once in the corpus. The articles are distributed in the following way according to source: Berlingske = 59 articles; Information = 34 articles; Jyllands-Posten = 169 articles; Politiken = 64 articles; Ekstra Bladet = 29 articles; BT = 41 articles; Kristeligt dagblad = 24 articles.
6 Danish forces were, for example, assigned to the Taleban stronghold in the Helmand province in 2006. Until 2006 4 Danes lost their lives during deployment, but after the transition to Helmand this number increased drastically and 44 Danish soldiers in total lost their lives due to combat, accidents, or illness in Afghanistan (Danish Ministry of Defence Personnel Agency, Citation2022).
7 In total, 9.3% of uniformed personnel in the Danish Defence and the Danish Emergency Management Agency are women (Danish Ministry of Defence Personnel Agency, Citation2022). This percentage, however, is not reflected in the Danish media coverage where the veteran figure is consistently portrayed as male. Throughout the analysis I will predominantly use male pronouns to describe the veteran discourse. This is chosen due to the interest in the media and cultural use of the veteran as a male figure. I do, however, at the same time acknowledge the feminist critique of portraying war as exclusively pertaining to and influencing male lives (Enloe, Citation2000, Citation2010) and, more specifically, I do not wish to undermine or belittle the work being done in these years by Danish female soldiers and veterans in making the public aware of the experiences and problems for female soldiers of, for example, abuse and harassment in the Danish armed forces. The veteran association for female veterans, Kvindelige veteraner, has been leading in the endeavor to better the work environment for women in the armed forces.
8 Denmark was remarkably late in initiating official veteran initiatives and efforts. As mentioned, the first veteran policy was passed in 2010 – 9 years into the war in Afghanistan and 18 years after deploying the first soldiers to the UN missions in former Yugoslavia. Especially the Balkan-veterans have been vocal in their critique of the lacking help upon return from war.
9 The Veteran Centre references a survey where it is concluded that 3.99% of the soldiers deployed between 1992 and 2018 are diagnosed with PTSD. However, a longitudinal study of soldiers deployed to Afghanistan in 2009 shows that 6.5 years after returning home 13.7% displayed high levels of PTSD symptoms. The Veteran Centre further contends that as a rule of thumb 1 in 10 veterans can be expected to experience symptoms of severe depression or PTSD after deployment (Veteran Centre, Citation2022).
10 The percentage of articles mentioning the syllable ‘psyk-’ per year is: 2007 = 55.17% (16); 2010 = 62.99% (143); 2014 = 50.63% (40); 2016 = 61.18% (52). In comparison, the syllable ‘fys-’ is distributed in the following way: 2007 = 13.79% (4); 2010 = 32.60% (74); 2014 = 24.05% (19); 2016 = 29.41% (25).
11 This does not mean that there have been no critical voices in the Danish debate. Especially in the wake of the Taleban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021 former soldiers have publicly criticized the Danish engagement and (lacking) strategy in Afghanistan (see for example filmmaker Nagieb Khaja and veteran Martin Tamm Andersen’s documentary Min fjendes fjende. Bedraget i Helmand (Eng. Winning Hearts and Minds, DR, 2023)). These recent critiques are, however, singular and not generally coupled with the mainstream media’s focus on the suffering Danish veteran.
12 Nielsen, Citation2020c draws out related points about the role of violence and distant victims.
13 Both TV series have been released to the international market.
14 Danish military chaplains are not officially allowed to participate in combat, however, Ride upon the storm can as a fictional series of course transgress such limitations.
15 Peter’s ghost appears at the end of episode 6 (45:43-46:25); throughout the series CC is also haunted by flashbacks to the fatal patrol where Peter is killed.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Ann-Katrine Schmidt Nielsen
Ann-Katrine Schmidt Nielsen is a postdoctoral researcher at Aarhus University. She earned her PhD degree from Aarhus University, School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus, Denmark with a dissertation on Danish veteran representations in news media and contemporary art. From 2022 to 2023 she conducted the research project Stories of War and Refuge. Imagining Futures in Afghan Exile Art at the University of Oslo, Norway. Her research interests are the cultural mediation of conflicts, veteran narratives, and hauntology. Among her publications are ‘Home, away, home: Remoteness and intimacy in contemporary Danish veteran literature’ in ed. R. Adelman & D. Kieran, Remote warfare: New cultures of violence, University of Minnesota Press, 2020, pp. 201–225 and ‘Vibrant archives: Archiving Afghan exile art and activism on Instagram’ in ed. A. Rigney & D. Salerno, Archiving activism in the digital age, (forthcoming).