Mjølnerparken

Facts

Hijab and hammer

By Jakob Ingemann Parby, Cand.mag. i historie og etnologi fra Københavns Universitet, 2004. (6 stories)

Mjølnerparken is the name of a large social housing estate in the Ydre Nørrebro district of Copenhagen. It is named after a hammer called Mjølner", which belonged to Thor, God of Thunder, in Norse mythology. The housing estate was built in 1984-87 on the site of the former Skandinavia paper factory between the streets of Nørrebrogade and Tagensvej. Most of the 559 units in Mjølnerparken are three-room flats, but the estate also contains co-housing for the elderly in two-room or even four-room flats, and 32 youth accommodation units. The estate has around 2,500 residents, of whom more than 90 percent are of non-Danish ethnic origin. "

Partly a public place

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Women's club lifts the veil

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Story written by Jakob Ingemann Parby

Time / Periode 1984 2009

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" In 1999, a group of women formed a club in a basement unit of the Mjølnerparken housing estate. The women use the club as a 'getaway', where they can remove their Muslim veil, share experiences and concerns and talk about working life in Denmark. "We're like an extended family", says the initiator, Samar Subhie, originally from Lebanon. Once a month the women hold a club party, to which everyone contributes a dish to the communal meal. After the meal, they remove their veils, sing and dance. The women are often amused by the fact that they don't always recognise each other without the veil. Some of them always wear it; others remove it when there are no men present; and a third group never wears it. "