Samdok - Nordiska museet

connecting collecting: pedersen
Celebrating in the public, private and virtual
space. Contemporary study of the Danes and
the Crown Prince’s Wedding in 2004
Lykke L Pedersen
The National Museum of Denmark
Over two thousand people participated in a
project where ten cultural institutions collected
and recorded contemporary popular expressions
surrounding the celebration of the wedding of the
Danish Crown Prince in the public, private and
virtual space. Our focus was on what ordinary
people were doing that very day and on what the
celebration meant to them.
On 14 May 2004 the Danish Crown Prince Frederik
married Ms Mary Donaldson, a citizen of Australia.
This historic event turned Danish society upside down
for several weeks and possibly months. During that period
national and international media were continually
producing new stories of the wedding as a romantic and
national event showing how a commoner from Australia
was transformed into a modern princess by marrying a
prince of one of the world’s oldest monarchies. Media
interest was overwhelming; it seemed as if everybody
was celebrating. On the very day of the wedding 180 million
people watched the event on television. Broadcast
coverage lasted from dusk to dawn and was the largest
ever television transmission in Denmark. Three hundred
and seventy-six million people were watching during the
wedding week. In the streets of Copenhagen hundreds
of thousand of people gathered. The nation more or less
went crazy during the wedding celebration. Some even
called it ‘wedding hysteria’. Denmark was turned upsidedown
for weeks. What was going on?
Documenting one day worldwide
A number of cultural institutions, with the National
Museum at their head, conducted an investigation of the
many different ways in which the Danes related to the
event. Eight museums, two archives and two university
departments decided to coordinate a research project
documenting this day in the public, private and virtual
space. The fieldwork was not at all focused on what the
royal family was doing, but rather on how this rite de passage
in the royal family was interpreted by ordinary people
at various locations in the Danish kingdom, from Arctic
Greenland and the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic
to the southern parts of Denmark; and even including
Danes abroad, as far away as Tasmania and Brazil.
The starting point was a joint investigation carried
out by a group of researchers, combined with laymen at
many different locations. The fieldwork took place during
a very short space of time – actually only one day
– at many places all over the world, connected by electronic
media, television broadcast and the Internet. I
shall present a very few aspects of the whole project. The
point is also to emphasize how the Internet is important
not only in contemporary society in general, but also to
show that it has great potential as a democratic modern
collecting tool for use by museums.
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