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THE BRIDGE

In the imagery of film, the subconscious is often symbolised by water while land denotes tangible reality. This is why one vignette after the other in almost every television series or film with any claim on telling some kind of searching psychological story begins with sequences depicting water and land. Sensibility contra sense, chaos contra control.

Sometimes the scene is filmed from above, the camera placed in a drone flying over beaches or following a river. Sometimes the camera is placed in the water, often just where the water’s surface meets the air, in a heavy-handed metaphor of death, life, and the thin line in between.

The bridge is above all that. It is static but represents motion. It stands on solid ground, yet is beyond land. At the same time, it’s connected to the water but still separated from it. With its arc, its reach, and its pillars, it conjoins two worlds that have previously been apart.

There’ll be no bridge. There’ll be no bridge. I feel there will be no bridge. Because when we have crushed it, we’ll blow it up and when we’ve blown it up we’ll have a go again!

Accompanied by a drummer beating his drum out of time, the anti-bridge-activists chanted their protest to the tones of ‘Bei mir bist du schön’. This was in the early 1990s and they were certain that the whole idea of a bridge between Sweden and Denmark was out of rhythm, a project for a future that had already passed into history. To build an enormous thing for transporting cars when trains were the graceful, efficient, and environmentally correct way to travel, was sheer madness. The concrete building site symbolised an immobile power structure. The government must come to its senses and prove that it didn’t consist of old fossils, the anti-bridge-activists demanded at huge demonstrations.

A man interviewed on the radio was concerned about this thing called integration between Copenhagen and Malmö. Should people commute? he asked. He didn’t approve of the idea. Instead jobs ought to be placed where people lived. ‘There is nothing positive in having people unnecessarily transported back and forth.’

In Malmö, the opponents clung to the construction site of the bridge’s foundations to stop the work progressing. In 1998, the leader of the Centre Party, Olof Johansson, left his post in protest. The bridge would be a danger to the environment, too expensive, and unnecessary, he argued. The plans to connect Sweden with Denmark created divisions in the Social Democratic Party, as well. Opponents argued that the bridge would prevent acidic water from reaching the Baltic Sea, and this would adversely affect the reproduction of the cod. The bridge would also interfere with the wandering sill and the dredging would damage the environment. The Social Democrat Anna Lindh was a harsh opponent but when she agreed to become Minister for the Environment, the whole project became her responsibility. On 1 July 2000 the bridge opened.

And now?

Well, the bridge didn’t turn out to be such a blessing as imagined. Certainly, around 70,000 people commute over the bridge every day, about half of them by car, the other half by train. However, integration between Denmark and Sweden is still slow, due to structural barriers, such as differing tax rules and high housing prices.

On the other hand, it didn’t turn out as badly as the activists had imagined. The surfaces of the concrete pillars under water now constitute the habitat for about 160 tonnes of blue mussels, which contribute to the purification of the water. Blue mussels are also a very important food for birds, especially eider ducks. The influx of water does not seem to have been affected. On the artificial island of Pepparholmen, nearly three hundred plant species have settled and up to thirteen bird species breed. Some unusual insect and spider species have been found and the rare green-speckled toad has established itself.

As far as the Danish-Swedish TV-series is concerned, it has been sold to 160 countries, according to Wikipedia. The bridge is a transgressing of borders, a change of mental state as well as a change of a geographical one. It is static, it is motion. It combines and expands. And nowadays quite a few of us tend to quote Saga Norén, saying: ‘I’m not unstable. I’m just different.’