Danish‘WestWing’

• Published date: 21 June 2022
• Publication title: Signal

NOW we know why Donald Trump wanted to buy Greenland. In the Netflix premiere of the Danish political drama Borgen — returning for a fourth series after nearly a decade away — oil has been found on the world’s biggest island. Fingers crossed, Denmark’s ambassador to the Arctic tells a foreign ministry briefing the field will be as big and lucrative as Ekofisk. You remember Ekofisk: the oilfield funded by Norway to secure the economic future of its citizens for generations while Britain — sad face — did nothing so sensible with its North Sea revenues

Just a second, you might well interject. Could you fill us in on Greenland’s political status? Of course. Greenland was a Danish colony from 1814 until 1953, when it became part of Denmark. Home rule was established in 1979 and it voted for further self-governing powers in 2008. That said, not a few of Greenland’s 56,000-strong population yearn to become independent and use any oil to fund that project. Aren’t you glad you asked?

Borgen may be a near-homonym for boring — and even I know that the episode that dealt with political machinations over who should become Denmark’s next EU commissioner is an hour I would have better spent bathing in ass’s milk with cucumber slices over my eyes — but the opening episode of the new series whistles along.

It cuts fast and furious between cabinet crises, ratings issues at the TV1 news channel and the personal and political issues of our heroine, Birgitte Nyborg, while re-acquainting us with my pale, male — if not yet stale — role models, Soren Malling’s grumpy news editor, Torben Friis, and Lars Mikkelsen’s bad boy economics sage, Soren Ravn.

Back to the plot. A government bean counter calculates that if Greenland’s oilfield yields 100million barrels over a 30-year period, that would produce an income stream of $US285billion. That money would pay for a lot of teachers, the finance minister, Helle Holst, tells a cabinet meeting. But hold on: Denmark can’t be party to drilling for oil, counters our heroine, who is the foreign minister and thus Copenhagen’s answer to Liz Truss. Despite all the other stuff going on in her life — hot flushes, a son dedicated to pig liberation, the pregnancy of her ex’s new partner — she is the most clear-sighted cabinet member. Copenhagen, she points out, signed the Paris Agreement and vowed to go carbon neutral by 2050.

True, says pragmatic Helle, but that gives Denmark 28 years to exploit the new oil source without breaking that...