Replacing the Institution

[Zoot Zoot]

Frederik sat in the ornate chair behind a desk, in an office of the Amalienborg Palace and he sighed. Not at his duties or the constant meetings with advisers, members of the Kings Parliament, Generals and even organizations begging his patronage. It was this Palace, its grandeur, its location, its history, just everything about this Palace reeked of the indulgence of Denmark's past Kings. It had to go.

 

Reaching for the phone at his desk, he called the commander of the Life Guards.

 

"Colonel, deploy a company of men to the Palace and evacuate the surrounding buildings please." he said down the phone.

"Sire, why might I ask?" the commander replied, somewhat confused.

"Well, I am calling the Engineers after we are done, and I am going to demolish the Palace." he said calmly.

"Your Majesty, why would you want to do that?" the commander responded with shock.

"I am returning Denmark to its roots, and Palaces like this are no longer required."

"As you wish my King, I shall deploy the men at once."

 

The phone clicked into silence and a similar phone call took place with the commander of the Royal Engineers.

 

Two months later...

 

The palace still stood, but now it had been emptied and all its arts and such moved to secure locations for preservation, the surrounding buildings had been bought by the King and demolished, their owners compensated for their troubles before they were rehoused in the Capital. The rubble cleared and an army cordon kept the area secure from those civilians eager to get close and see what the eccentric King had planned for the soon to be wide open ground.

 

A button click and silence for a few seconds, followed by a series of quick, small explosions echoed across the flat ground and all four quarters of the Palace fell to the ground and they were no more.

 

To replace the Amalienborg Palace was a more traditional design, a return to more medieval structures, but with modern touches. In its place would be a rebuilt Viking ring fortress, only made out of modern materials such as steel and concrete to support it, the superficial stuff would be built to appear like an authentic stone outer wall.

 

The center of the ring fort would be the big event however. In the place of the former palace square, a "hold" was to be constructed with the same methods as the outer wall, but the superficial decoration would be reminiscent of a grand viking Longhouse, capable of holding two thousand guests in the main room for banquets and drinking, foreign guests and other official celebrations. The Kings quarters at the rear would be split into two, his bedroom high on the second floor, something only accessible from his state office which would be accessed only through a doorway behind the wall which ran parallel to the top table, with access to the walkway behind the wall granted by two entrances to the left and the right at the edges of the room behind the top table.

 

It would all be fitted with state of the art security systems, the Kings own personal bodyguard which was comprised of fifty men ranked sergeant or above from the Life Guards regiment. It would be the toast of Denmark and it would, he hoped, inspire the Danes to grow hardy once again. It was all part of a great ideal to return Denmark to its roots minus the rape and pillaging. He doubted the other European states would find those activities civilized, and come to think of it, neither did he.

[Zoot Zoot]

As the transformation in Copenhagen was taking place to rebuild the Kings residence, more and more people began to cast off the chains of Christianity and revert to the old Norse Gods. After the oppression of the German Empire, the ideals and beliefs they held no longer needed to be hidden and they could go back to the old ways as practiced before the end of Martens rule over Germany before the dark age.

 

Legislation was passed in Parliament which re-introduced Norse to the national curriculum as a religious study, the language, history and culture, not to mention officially making it the national religion, forcing Christianity to take a back seat to the ever growing majority of practicing Norse pagans. Other religions still existed of course and were not persecuted, but it was estimated that within ten years, all the former major religions would be pushed to the fringes of Danish society in terms of numbers and would be officially classed as minority groups.

 

The King had been busy as well with matters of the state, including officially changing the name of the country from simply Denmark to Nordboerne Kongedømme, which translated into "The Norse Kingdom".

 

Frederik had begun his people on a long road to recover their identity at last.

[Zoot Zoot]

In line with the changes taking place across the country, movies were being produced at a spectacular fashion as well as authors being commissioned to write books to promote the new Norse culture that was taking hold over the Kingdom. With most of the older generations being fluent in Norse from when Martens ran Germany, it took less than a year for nearly the entire population to become fluent, making High Norse as it became to be known, the most spoken language in the country, followed by Danish and then German.

 

Frederik himself tasked the royal painters to being creating works of art depicting Norse epics across the country on massive boards for everyone to see.

 

With Norse also now the state religion, the King appointed a leader of the movement.

 

The Grand Goði or "Grand Priest", would be the head of the Forn Siðr Movement. FSM missionaries and Goði's would travel the land to establish branches all over the country as well as conduct academic and archeological research into the locations of the Sacred Groves of the Norse Gods so that they would be restored and ceremonies could once again take place within them.