The Economist today describes the cartoon saga as, "For Denmark...the biggest crisis since the Nazi occupation during the second world war."
Meanwhile, a row has broken out in Norway over comments made by prime minister Jens Stoltenberg on Monday. He put part of the blame for the sacking of the Norwegian embassy in Damascus last week on the small Christian publication Magasinet, which published the notorious cartoons of Mohammed in January. This prompted a furious defence of free expression from ten of the country's cultural elite. "Those who burned down the embassy...are responsible [for doing so], and no one else," thundered author Roy Jacobsen (VG 7/2).
And the papers here are reporting today that Sweden may be dragged into the crisis. An Israeli newspaper and the (apparently widely watched) TV station run by the Lebanese party-cum-militia Hezbollah have broadcast that Swedish publications are also showing the cartoons. This seems to be a reference to the cartoons' appearance on a website run by the Sweden Democrats, the small far-right party (it won 1.4% in the 2002 parliamentary election).
Extraordinarily, the firm that hosts the Sweden Democrats' website removed the pictures yesterday evening. As its executives explained on the radio this morning, they acted after being approached yesterday by both the Swedish Foreign Ministry and the security service.
Comments yesterday by foreign minister Laila Freivalds - who a week ago said on the radio that, of course, she supported freedom of expression, but "there are limits" (which she declined to define) - anticipated this action. "We have freedom of expression in our country, and each of us has to take responsibility within the framework of freedom of expression," Freivalds commented (quoted on Svenska Dagbladet's website today). "I apologise that we in Sweden have individuals who are so inconsiderate as to deliberately insult other people's religion." She added (quoted on Dagens Nyheter's site): "It is dreadful that a small group of Swedish extremists should expose Swedes to such palpable danger."
That is one way of looking at it. An alternative view might be that it is dreadful that a Swedish minister could bow so cravenly to implicit threats of violence and actively condone such a significant restriction on freedom of expression in her country. I imagine that she will have already have been struck off a few Danish ministers' Christmas-card lists.
No doubt there will a range of views on this among members of the Scandinavian Politics list.
Best,
Nick Aylott.
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Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) | Department of Political Science, Umeå University | SE-901 87, Sweden | www.pol.umu.se
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