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Dispatches from the Highlands
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Cannatown Living
ere’s a shoe making the rounds on talkshows and celebrity feet in a sort of revival lately, however, it’s not clear we ever really said goodbye. e Air Jørgen, nearing 40 years in existence, is back on top. At the time the shoe deal was signed in 1984, another badass brand of Træsko (Danish clogs) called Holm’s of Dark Night was considered the “Lord of Loafers” among the “cloggers,” a numerous class of unmarried peasants who took service with the forest-based farm- History of the Air J rgen Best Clog in History? Critics Say Yes.
come out with this new technology, called Alder Soles, says Falk. “And so we were gonna call it the ‘Alder Jørgen’” says Falk but it just didn’t “roll o the tunge.” Until one day the company realized how grace- fully Jørgen spun and kicked high with his clogs. And it just t. “ e Air Jørgen.” When Nielsen signed the deal, they were thinking we’d be selling $300 kroner in a year,” recalls Falk. “But we sold $1,260 kroner.” As legend has it, the cloggers, and more formally, e Feisty Fynboes, a locally incorporated group vying for the EuroClog
quali cation, ac- tually banned the rst Air Jørgens because of a rule concerning the snout and upward bend of the shoe, to conform with the fashion of the times. Jørgen was reportedly ned $4.20 for every performance in his banned clogs and Nielsen
ers for room and board. At night they danced for small crowds that gathered. eir hierarchy and reputations within their circles de- pended on the very clogs they wore, oen the Fynboe clogs of yore, made from ne Alder wood, with a proboscis point.
gladly paid every time, giddily high to capitalize on free publicity. But when it comes to the Air Jørgen’s popularity, the rest is obvious history. e clog was a must-have shoe for lowkey, middle-class peasantry in the 80’s and 90’s and even had a few sales in Randers and Aarhus. It helped the clog more widely trickle into pop culture including early b- sides on Tv-2 albums. e Air Jørgen has seen several iterations since then, and yet the Air Jørgen 1 remains the iconic staple still found on the streets and in country houses of East Jutland. It’s also the subject of the latest lm by Benja- min A ecksen, in theaters now.
ey wished to catch up to their Welsh and Dutch counterparts in order to nally compete in EuroClog, the transcontinental dancing competition. ere was, however, one rookie clogger, Mikkel Jørgen, who’d come from the lowest parts of East Jutland, who some considered a prodigy. It was reportedly Jørgen’s dance instructor Daisy Falk who appealed to his mother when he originally turned down the licensing agreement with the shoe company Nielsen. e deal was great, one unheard of for a poor clogging farmhand, and Jørgen’s own father called him an idiot for not tak- ing it and threw bong water all over him. So Jørgen nally caved. Nielsen had just
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