According to the B & Havn authority, bathers in areas where swimming is not allowed in the Port of Copenhagen could soon be fined.
The news may be superfluous considering today’s weather – the first non-summer day in the capital for some time – but it seems that many Copenhageners just do not know the rules.
Swimming is only allowed in certain areas, but although many harbor baths and bathing areas have been installed over the last two decades, there are approx. 200,000 ‘illegal swimming’ every year, estimates By & Havn.
Hotspots for illegal swimming include Marmorbyen, Krøyers plass, Ophelia Beach, Islands Brygge and Havneholmen.
By & Havn intends to change the legislation to make it much easier for the police to impose fines, to review all signs around the harbor in an attempt to make it clearer where swimming is prohibited, and to introduce an app next summer that highlights all zones where bathing is allowed.
A swimmer could be killed
Many of the bathers choose areas where they could easily be hit by a vessel. Movia, the company that operates the harbor buses, reported 100 near-accidents with bathers last year.
“It’s a captain’s worst nightmare to cut a swimmer down,” Camilla Struckmann, communications director at Movia, told TV2.
Danske Studenters Roklub rodeklub, which is based in Svanemøllehavnen, claims that it is a constant “gigantic problem” for its members, as a swimmer could easily be killed by a blow to the head of an oar.
“You can not see swimmers’ heads sticking out of the water and therefore do not know if you are about to hit them,” its chair, Kasper Haagensen, told TV2.
“Until now, it has only been recommendations [by the authorities] that clearly does not work. If people now become aware that they are risking a fine by jumping in outside the permitted zones, they may be refraining from violating the law. ”
Increasing toplessness
In related news, toplessness is becoming more popular around bathing areas, though it seems to be the opinion of one, rather too attentive academic!
Niels Ulrik Sørensen from the Center for Youth Research at Aalborg University told Berlingske that he decided to write an article about the case after noticing the trend on the beach and in his Facebook feed.
“This summer we have seen an enormous focus on nature and a search for the natural, which we have not seen for many years. At the same time, there has long been a greater societal tendency to criticize the ideal of being perfect and appearing flawless, ”Sørensen tells the newspaper.
Sørensen attributes the toplessness to the growing feminism movement, where women claim the right to look the way they do.
In recent years, an increasing number of naked breasts have been seen by activism organized by the Ukrainian-French group FEMEN, the movements GoTopless and #FreeTheNipple and that SlutWalk marches – of which at least one in 2018 has been staged in Copenhagen.
While bare breasts tend to be associated with the period between the mid-1960s and early 1980s in many western countries, in Denmark they were a perfectly common sight until for approx. 20 years ago.
Source: The Nordic Page
