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Helle Thorning-Schmidt burned troll for gender equality
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June 24th, 2014
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This article is more than 9 years old.
Both men and women should be burned at the stake
If the Danish midsummer ritual of burning witches seems a little too gender-biased for you, the prime minister has got your back.
In her annual Sankt Hans Aften speech at Marienborg on Monday, Helle Thorning Schmidt, Denmark’s first and so far only female prime minister, decided to make a call for gender equality by burning both a male troll and female witch on the bonfire.
"The thing is that I have had second thoughts about always sending off a witch. Why does it have to be a woman? We therefore have both a troll and a witch this year. That should settle the account," Thorning-Schmidt said in her speech.
Speech celebrating unity
In her speech, she also praised the unity she claimed has helped Denmark out of the financial crisis.
In the end, she lit the bonfire with a torch and sent the rag dolls off to Bloksbjerg in Germany, where legend says the witches will end up.
The former prime minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, began the tradition of making a Sankt Hans Aften speech at Marienborg outside Copenhagen in 2010.
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