ABSTRACT
The introduction of full parliamentary democracy in Denmark in 1901 ended the country’s long recurrent political crises by fully investing power in the legislature. Denmark met the threat of cheap grain from Eastern Europe and America by shifting production to high quality meat and dairy products for export to nearby industrial markets, particularly England. The transformation of agriculture and its associated industries produced rural and urban proletariats. The central figure in the changing perception of the heath in the early years of the 20th century was Jeppe Aakjaer. Dalgas had seen the heath cause as a means of supporting the native society in its efforts to improve the standard of living. The elegy not only provided Aakjaer with an indirect means of criticizing reclamation that destroyed the signs of a former paradise, it also provided an argument for preserving the heath as a landscape memorial.
