Christiania – 99% invisible

In the year 1623, Christian IV, King of Denmark and Norway, built a long series of moats and ramparts across central Copenhagen, on the eastern edge of the city’s harbor, to protect the city from a Swedish invasion. In the early 19th century, the Danish government added artillery barracks. And in the twentieth century they filled in the surrounding swamps to make way for a modern military base, while the rest of Copenhagen grew around it. That is until 1971, explains Far from home reporter Scott GurianWhen the Danish Ministry of Defense closed the base for good, Copenhagen’s countercultural youth wasted no time in invading the now vacant fortress and squatting several buildings.

But contrary to what you might expect, the abandoned base was not a cramped, depressing, concrete jungle. It was 85 hectares in size and contained extensive green spaces, hills and areas of forest. There was even a lake, with empty stables and ammunition depots scattered in charming arrangements across the landscape. The squatters couldn’t believe their luck, and as word spread about the empty wilderness within the fort’s walls, the site quickly became a haven for unwanted, abused and dispossessed people.

The squatters quickly called the base in the middle of the city ‘a politically autonomous anarchist zone’. Or, in plainer English, a commune. Following the surrounding neighborhood ‘Christian’s Harbor’ they named it ‘Christiania’.

Like many other communes, Christiania’s founders wanted the new world they created within its walls to be as free as possible from all the rules, customs, and hierarchies of the old world. They drafted a mission statement, which cited the commune’s purpose as “to create a self-governing society in which each individual holds themselves responsible for the well-being of the entire community.”

As Christiania’s population grew to around 1,000 people, residents began adapting existing structures, building fantastic houses from recycled objects and filling them with amazing art. They turned a former stable into a church and transformed a military horse riding arena into a concert hall. There were also small businesses, including a factory that made custom bicycles, and a ladies’ forge – and it all happened within the walls, completely surrounded by Copenhagen’s old city.

Christiania was not completely closed off from the outside world. The residents engaged in trade and came and went to the rest of the city. But within its walls, the community collected its own trash and recycling, ran its own preschool and even had its own newspaper and marching band.

Apart from a small joint maintenance contribution, the residents paid no rent. No one owned their house, and when they moved, there was nothing to sell. There were no building or zoning regulations. There were also no laws. The only rules were: no private ownership of land or homes, no weapons or violence, and no vehicles.

Otherwise, the people of Christiania were free to do pretty much as they pleased. Play rock music in the streets, use drugs, sell drugs, wear their hair long or shave it off, love members of the same sex or a different race. In other words, all the things that were still dangerous or impossible in the world outside its gates.

The individual freedom Christiania offered attracted people from all over the world, but there were other benefits too – such as the consensus system the community used to settle disputes and make collective decisions, which called on all present at a meeting to work out their differences and come to a unanimous understanding before making a decision.

As for what Danish authorities thought of the thousand or so people squatting on 85 hectares of state-owned property in the middle of the country’s capital: On several occasions in the decade after its founding, Copenhagen police tried to remove the squatters, but were met with determined resistance in the form of barricades. Fearing that Christiania would once again become one of Europe’s squatter battlefields, the Danish government changed course and decided to tolerate the commune.

Meanwhile, outside the gates, the initial perception that this was just a group of lazy, pot-smoking hippies changed, especially after favorable coverage on Danish television showed what daily life was actually like in the commune. Hundreds of thousands of tourists flock to the anarchist park in the center of the Danish capital every year. The music venues began hosting concerts featuring everyone from Bob Dylan to Metallica. Christiania slowly became a reality and by the mid-1980s an iconic part of Copenhagen. Today it is one of the longest-standing and most celebrated communes in the world, and a magnet for those looking for alternative ways of living – both side by side and in a major European city.

But starting in the mid-2000s, a series of problems forced the residents of Christiania to reconsider some of their most cherished freedoms and become increasingly dependent on help from the rest of Danish society. And many feared the changes would make their countercultural haven more like the rest of Denmark.

The drug market in Christiania was known as Pusher Street and is considered by many to be where the council’s problems began. Drug sales on Pusher Street were (as of the late 1970s) limited to cannabis only, and in its best years it was seen as a kind of friendly farmer’s market for weed and hash. But it was also the only place in Copenhagen where the government turns a blind eye to drug use, making it an attractive market for international criminal gangs, who sold cannabis imported from Afghanistan and Morocco to local dealers. As a result, several gangs had an intermittent presence on Pusher Street beginning in the 1980s.

Then, around 2004, a new conservative government came to power, which increased penalties for cannabis trafficking. The Copenhagen police have also violated the (still unofficial) sovereignty of the municipality by occasionally raiding Pusher Street and making arrests – not exactly a new practice, but one that now has much more serious consequences for dealers. The effect was to drive most local dealers away from Pusher Street. It also drove up prices, and the gangs moved in to fill the lucrative vacuum. The gangs then began fighting each other for control of Pusher Street, making it a notorious hotspot for gang violence over the past decade, including assaults, stabbings, masked gunmen opening fire in public and a series of shootings.

Many residents of Christiania have always believed that the best way to solve the problem would be to legalize cannabis in Denmark. Legalization would take away the power of the gangs. But so far that is something Denmark’s federal government is unwilling to do. So residents recently decided they had no choice but to change one of the fundamental things that made Christiania different in the first place. In the absence of legalization – and having lost all control of Pusher Street – they decided to do so anyway prohibit sale of medicines in the community.

Of course, if there was a ban, the dealers who worked for the gangs would have simply refused to leave, knowing that the unarmed residents would be powerless to enforce the new law. That’s why residents also decided to reverse another long-standing tradition. They issued a public statement saying they could not close Pusher Street on their own – essentially inviting the police to come in and enforce the closure for them – which they did in April 2024. The irony of this was not lost on anyone: To throw out the gangs, the anarchists of Christiania had to ask the state for help.

But some Christiania residents who opposed the decision argued that the consensus system had effectively been hijacked by an aggressive minority of people who wanted Pusher Street closed, and that the outcome did not reflect the true will of the community. Meanwhile, those who had advocated drug prohibition insisted they were in the vast majority. Be that as it may, it was clear that the consensus system had not fully achieved consensus, and that this system too might succumb to the various stresses placed on the commune.

And recently, the residents of Christiania made another deal with the government, allowing the commune to become even more integrated with the city. Denmark is facing an affordable housing crisis, and Christiania’s undeveloped green spaces – so close to the city center – could be part of a solution. But the situation has reignited residents’ fears of being evicted from their homes, which they still technically do not own. A few years ago, Christiania and the Danish government came to an agreement. The state will allow the community to fully own its land by purchasing it for well below market value. But in return, Christiania will have to build government-subsidized low-income apartments for 300 new people.

The new deal has sparked a new round of debate among residents. Some think the volume of the new buildings will ruin the landscape that made Christiania iconic in the first place. They also point out that the commune has long had a policy of deciding who gets housing within its walls – thus ensuring that the community remains a haven for cultural outsiders. They fear that the 300 new residents – who will likely be chosen based on more traditional, economic needs-based standards – will not fit into the existing culture, and will ultimately turn Christiania into yet another typical Copenhagen neighborhood.

But other residents want to use the low-income housing as an opportunity to revive Christiania’s commitment to the downtrodden and adrift. They believe there are ways to work with the government to both create new buildings that respect the municipality’s green space and to ensure that the new residents will help the municipality remain a hub for Denmark’s counterculture.

They fear that if Christiania is not willing to cooperate with the outside world, it will slowly become extinct – or worse, become a kind of hippie museum, its once radical institutions calcified into outdated traditions. They believe that, like any community – radical or not – the only real constant is change.