Hopscotch

banned
in
denmark
dorothy mills
december 14 1998

Originally published
October 23
in Commonweal,
a biweekly review
of public affairs
and the arts

A series of rulings by the European Union against Danish products has culminated in a ban on a cherished Danish children’s toy: the hopscotch markers that kids throw into squares drawn on the sidewalk while playing the traditional jumping game.

"Hopscotch"
Temple Lee Parker, acrylic on linen

Those markers, which are made of heavy glass incised with beautiful designs, have been used by three generations of Danes. Especially since the Danish glass companies began using symbols from Hans Christian Andersen stories on the markers, the Danes think of them as a cherished cultural heritage. But because they are made of glass, an EU agency decided they must be dangerous to play with. So, despite the fact that the hopscotch markers do not break, their manufacture was banned.

Before the hopscotch ruling went into effect, EU agricultural regulations had for several years annoyed Danish producers. Although the EU pronounced in the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 that it would respect member countries’ "national identities," it nevertheless ruled against three popular Danish food products, banning the sale of Danish feta abroad, ruling against the export of Danish liver paté (said to be inedible by anyone except Danes), and regulating the curve in Danish cucumbers.

Yes, the curve in cucumbers. The "maximum height of the arc" is carefully measured. If they are too curved, they are relegated to Class 2 and thus command lower prices than Class 1 vegetables.

When a Danish sports historian, Dr. Jørn Møller, heard about the ban on children’s hopscotch markers, he knew he had stumbled into something similar to the cucumber dispute. So he started a tongue-in-cheek association called the Popular Movement for the Preservation of Hopscotch Markers of Glass, soliciting support from the media and the public throughout Scandinavia, and, through the Internet, from sports historians around the world.

In the resulting controversy, even Danish Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen got into the act. In a nationwide broadcase he slammed the EU’s "unpopular bureaucracy, secretiveness, and nonsensical regulations." Declaring the hopscotch marker "one of the favorite toys of my childhood," he pronounced the ban "too much." The politicians assembled for his meeting laughed and applauded.

During the controversy, Møller and a colleague, a researcher named Erik Kaas Nielsen, received hundreds of letters of support and even money from citizens outraged by the ban. Møller estimates that 60 percent of the country lined up on his side. Toy shop owners who wanted to continue selling the markers posted lists of protesters in their stores. A few of Møller’s supporters told him frankly that their opposition to the ban on hopscotch markers offered them an opportunity to sabotage the EU, and a Danish action group that strongly opposes the EU considered making the ban a theme of its next convention.

Danish bureaucrats, when challenged on their acquiescence to the EU ban, first declared they were helpless to interfere, but within a few months they reversed themselves, giving as an excuse that they had misinterpreted the EU ruling after all. The hopscotch markers could be manufactured, and children using them would not be breaking the law.

Newspapers exulted, "Hopscotch Stone Legal Again" and "Long Live the Hopscotch Stone; Play Victory: The Danish Hopscotch Stone Is Saved." The whole adventure with the stones fed the Danish perception that, as Møller puts it, "those silly bureaucrats in Brussels have nothing better to do than to invent absurd regulations."

From Richardson Primary School
Richardson, Canberra, Australia

Perhaps the trend forecaster John Naisbitt is correct with his gloomy prediction that the Maastricht Treaty is doomed to fail because its supporters cannot grasp that "although people want to come together to trade much more freely, they want to be independent politically and culturally. There will be no real union of Europe. [The EU] is [union] in name only." For the Danes, hopscotch markers apparently exemplify the cultural independence Europeans desire.

Meanwhile, it’s untrue – a classic Euromyth – that a standard-sized Eurocondom is about to hit the market, one that would fail to recognize national differences (if any) in the size of organs. The EU tried only to establish voluntary safety standards for these products.