It began like any other Danish New Year’s Eve. Martin Ebmark, a hotelier from the central town of Billund, was, “like everyone”, sitting watching the queen’s annual address on the television with his family.
He and his wife raised a toast to the queen, resplendent in a Cadbury-purple frock, “when she started talking about ‘the right time’. My wife turned to me and said, ‘she’s not doing what I think she’s doing! Is she?’ Then, she did it.”
When Queen Margrethe of Denmark announced she would step down as monarch after 52 years, leaving the throne to her son, Crown Prince Frederik, jaws hit the floor countrywide.
“It was a real shock,” said Ebmark. “She’s been there since 1972. Since I was born. She’s taken care of us for so long, it was … emotional.” Morten Pelch, who works in PR in the Jutland city of Vejle, went even further: “I cried. And then I watched it back and cried again. We Danes have the 1992 Uefa European Football Championship and now we have yesterday: we’ll always remember where we were. She’s the mother of our country, she tells us when we should be doing better. And she’s been there since I was little. So today, all of Denmark is crying.”
The Danish monarchy is a more modest affair than most: there will be no formal coronation for King Frederik X when his mother abdicates on 14 January. Instead, he will be pronounced king during an extraordinary cabinet meeting, after which the prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, who on Sunday hailed Margrethe as the “epitome of Denmark”, will present the new monarch from a balcony.
“Instead of regalia, it [the monarchy] is a driving force for business and diplomacy,” said Pelch. “The Danish media has never been as ‘tabloid’ as the UK’s and the average Danish person hasn’t had much call to question the monarchy. So Margrethe has always just been celebrated.”
She is not your average monarch, either. Daisy, as she is affectionately nicknamed, is a 6ft-tall former chain smoker who is also an illustrator, a set designer, a costume designer, a writer and a linguist. She finally quit smoking a year ago for health reasons. “This was as much of a shock as abdicating,” noted Ebmark.
In a message on Instagram the royal house wrote: “In some countries it is the custom, or at least something that occurs, that the head of state makes room for the next generation by stepping down – abdicating,” pointing to precedent in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Spain.
“But the last time a Danish monarch abdicated was in 1146,” said Kimie Sandborg Randorf, a sustainability coordinator from Viborg. “So it’s still a huge deal.”
In her speech, the 83-year-old queen said that back surgery she underwent in February 2023 had raised “thoughts about the future”.
Danish newspapers are now overflowing with words of praise for her service over the past 52 years, with the broadsheet Weekendavisen describing her New Year’s Eve speech as “personal and perfectly balanced” with ‘no drama, no unnecessary pathos … an abdication that can only take place in Denmark”.
It is understood that no one – apart from the prime minister and one or two others – knew anything about the queen’s plan in advance.
“I think Denmark is ready – and many love Frederik,’ said Johanne Lucie Ertok, a social worker from Vejle. Pelch agreed: “Fred has shown himself to be in touch with normal people and pays attention to music and sports.”
Danish culture is notoriously informal and in a small country of just 5.8 million people, many Danes have encountered a royal at some point in their lives – in restaurants, public parks or on the streets of Copenhagen where royals ride bikes and send their children to state schools and public kindergartens.
“It’s perfectly normal to see a prince while you’re eating an open sandwich and just say ‘hi Fred!’,” said Ebmark.
Another recounted how she once emerged from a downward dog in a yoga class in a public park to see the future king strolling by. “There’s a lot of respect and enthusiasm for the new king. There’s a lot of ‘yes, this makes sense and thank you for all that she’s done’,” said Ebmark. “I sense that she has done enough, that it is better than her staying around for another 25 years when Fred will be 75.”
But Danes cannot say “Fred“ without saying “Mary”. Australia’s Mary Donaldson became Denmark’s Crown Princess Mary in 2004 and was swiftly embraced by the Danish public. “She learned Danish so well that Danish people see her as one of their own,’ said Pelch: ‘She even gets our humour.”
Today, Fred and Mary come as a package. “That’s new for us,” said Maria Gunderlund, a farmer from Jutland. “The queen has just been the queen for years. We haven’t had a king in most people’s living memory [Queen Margrethe’s late husband, Prince Henrik of Denmark, was officially a royal consort]. Now we’ll get a king and queen. An Australian queen at that.”
“They have a lot of support,” said Ebmark, “but today, it is more about the shock and a little bit of sadness. We will miss our queen.”