“Welcome, brother! Hash, skunk?” a young man called out to me. Just one of many dealers manning the wooden stalls lining the cobblestone Pusher Street in the Danish hippy enclave of Freetown Christiania. It was a chilly December evening, Christmas lights were shining, and many of the dealers were huddled around bonfires. They’d part with a gram of hash for 50-120 krone (£6-14), or 50-100 krone for a pre-roll. War was raging in Gaza, and Pusher Street was covered in Palestinian flags next to the stalls spray-painted with PURPLE GORILLA KUSH. I picked up a pre-rolled hash zoot from one of the merchants – perhaps not the most ethical way to support the local economy, but let’s get into that later.
For decades, Christiania was the Nordic equivalent of a favela: a squat settlement, and a no-go zone for the police, who’d only enter if there had been a serious crime like a shooting. Otherwise, if there was trouble, the Hells Angels would “handle it” – big burly men with bigger, burlier dogs.
Green Light Zone – Photo: Niko Vorobyov
There were rules on Pusher Street, also known as the Green Light District. A sign on the wall read NO TO HARD DRUGS. Strictly no phones or cameras were allowed, unless you’d like to meet the doggies. There was no running, either: if you ran, everyone would think it was from the cops, and panic would spread like wildfire.
This was in the winter of 2023. But now, this part of the countercultural commune in the heart of Copenhagen is all but gone. “It’s not what it used to be, they’ve cleaned it up; dead area,” lamented Mert, a Turkish tourist who dropped by in March this year.
Christiania was born in 1971 when, amid a housing shortage in Copenhagen, squatters tore through the barricades of the abandoned Bådsmandsstræde military base on the island of Amager. The ‘colony’ thrived, becoming home to around a thousand residents who each contributed to running the local post service, rubbish collection and children’s nurseries. Its symbol became a red flag with three yellow dots, symbolising Christiania’s core values: freedom, unity and creativity.
Denmark’s left-wing government at the time decided to leave Christiania alone as a social experiment, and the commune became a magnet for everyone who couldn’t fit into mainstream society: hippies, artists, anarchists, and idealists. A parliamentary vote in 1989 formally recognised Christiania’s existence semi-independently of Danish government rule. That meant cannabis was, if not exactly legal (police still raided from time to time), then strongly tolerated.
But it wasn’t long before unsavoury characters began moving in. In the 1970s, the residents mounted a 40-day ‘junk blockade’, evicting heroin pushers and addicts (the addicts were only allowed to return pending proof of their sobriety). But that didn’t stop a biker gang named Bullshit muscling in on the hash trade. The Bullshitters went to war with another set of Harley-riding, leather jacket-wearing heavies, the Danish chapter of the Hells Angels, in the 1980s, a war which ended with the Angels wiping out Bullshit’s entire leadership in a blaze of gunfire. Gang wars would haunt Christiania, a blight on the neighbourhood of otherwise peaceful hippies.
“Christiania was squatted in the ’70s, and the hippies would use cannabis and started to sell it a little bit… and then it slowly escalated from there,” explained Kim Moeller, a Danish criminologist who’s researched Pusher Street extensively.
“In the ’80s, it was a very, very small phenomenon. But in the ’90s, there was a rapid increase in cannabis use; it became much more popular with youth associated with hip-hop culture, and then the market grew dramatically. And so, in the late ’90s, there would be 30 sellers [on Pusher Street] on a daily basis.”
According to Moeller, the police informally tolerated the happenings at Christiania.
“There was a recommendation for police not to enforce the ban on cannabis possession, which was then extended to not enforcing the ban on cannabis retail sales,” explained Moeller.
“This was not in the law – this was in a document from the Ministry of Justice to the police: do not spend your time and resources enforcing cannabis possession and retail sale as long as it is not organised. You are supposed to pretend you don’t see it. Ignore it, which in practice meant to ignore it in the Christiania area.”
Still, every couple of years, the government would pound their fists and swear to shut it down. On 16 March 2004, hundreds of officers in riot gear marched into Christiania and bulldozed the Pusher Street market, rounding up dozens of dealers.
“When the cannabis market was shut down, a lot of people affiliated with the Hells Angels were also arrested, and the key marketplace was shut down for almost a year,” said Moeller.
“Cannabis sales would spread to other areas throughout Copenhagen, where other troublesome youth gangs would start selling, and eventually they got interested in the market in Christiania. After the police moved away after this period of a year, they would go and attack the cannabis sellers and make random shootings in public areas in Christiania, trying to get access to the market that was previously controlled by the Hells Angels. And this would go on for 15 years, back-and-forth between these new gangs and the Hells Angels.”
This tracks with what we know about drug markets: that arresting major players is counterproductive to public safety, increasing violent crime as rival factions battle it out to fill the void.
The demographics of Denmark were changing, many of the dealers were now Balkan and Middle Eastern, who were perceived by some segments of society as being more trigger-happy than the bikers. Indeed, ethnic tensions fanned the flames of turf wars between the old guard and the newcomers, with the Hells Angels fully embracing xenophobic rhetoric, Bill the Butcher style, in defending their share of the hash business.
While Christiania’s quirky architecture, street art, music scene and pot sales attracted hundreds of thousands of tourists annually, a seedy underbelly simmered beneath the surface, occasionally erupting in spectacular displays of violence. In April 2009, a 22-year-old man’s jaw was blown off after a hand grenade landed next to him and his friends in Christiania.
Meanwhile, the government was trying to get rid of the hippies by forcing them to pay for the land they’d been squatting since ’71. Property ownership – that central tenet of capitalism – had once been anathema to the Christianites. Nevertheless, the hippies rallied and launched a successful crowdfunding campaign, pooling money from the community and in 2012, officially bought the land from the government.
In the summer of 2016, two plainclothes policemen tried to apprehend a young Bosnian dealer in Christiania. He opened fire, wounding them, and died in a shootout a few hours later. It turned out he belonged to a radical movement sympathetic to ISIS, which claimed responsibility for the shooting. Afterwards, local residents tore the drug market down. It’s not the weed they took issue with, but the gangland takeover of their community. Many local inhabitants believe that only legalising cannabis and treating it as a legitimate commodity would keep away gun-toting mobsters. But given how slowly the cannabis debate is progressing in Denmark, some locals have urged tokers to stop patronising Pusher Street.
Of course, the stalls were soon back again, but by now Christiania’s reputation was thoroughly transformed from a hippy utopia to something rather more sinister.
“From around 2020, it seemed like the situation was getting worse and worse,” said Moeller.
“The Hells Angels had to relinquish their monopoly on having sellers out there… so there were several different gangs’ representatives selling in this Pusher Street area, standing side-by-side. And of course, that’s not going to work in the long run. They’re going to have disagreements… So at some point, it was like OK, something drastic has to happen. And something drastic did happen.”
The last straw came in August 2023, when a mass shooting at a bar in Christiania left one biker dead and four innocent bystanders wounded. The Hells Angels were now warring with Loyal to Familia, an alliance of street gangs with immigrant roots. In a twist of irony, the anti-establishment Christianites found themselves begging their old nemesis, the state, for protection. A heavy police presence moved in, and in April 2024, a crowd gathered to symbolically pull out the cobblestones of Pusher Street under the watch of Copenhagen mayor Sophie Hæstorp Andersen and Danish justice minister Peter Hummelgaar. Hauling the stones away on wheelbarrows, many took them home as trophies, while the area has been earmarked for redevelopment.
“I find it fascinating that after 30 years of very visible problems around Pusher Street and a very unique national model for the retail sale of cannabis, it suddenly just stopped,” Moeller pondered.
“That’s a bit of a mystery to me, what happened. The role of the people in Christiania in this is not very well understood. How did they cooperate with police? Nobody knows what that entailed in practice. But for the first time ever, it actually worked. The police withdrew their massive presence, and the dealers did not return. I went there last week, and it looked like there wasn’t any organised dealing.”
Was this the end of an era?
“Yes, officially. However – dealers are lurking in and around Christiania. A recent news report said it’s easy to buy weed again. Since April 2024, it has just not been done out in the open anymore,” said Magnus Smitsdorf, owner and guide at Politically Incorrect Tours, a company showing visitors around Copenhagen.
Christiania’s dope business was and is not confined to Pusher Street, of course. This reporter felt a hazy aroma as soon as he walked into a bar, where a jar of green buds was openly on display.
An area where dealers in hoodies mumble “yo bro you want anything?” as you walk past is kind of old-school, anyway. These days, the kids are all buying their gear on Telegram or Snapchat.
“An important point to make here in relation to the wider issue of cannabis criminalisation and demand is that people that smoke weed everyday account for 75-80% of all the cannabis that is used,” Moeller remarked.
“These people will know how to get cannabis without going to Christiania or some street-level seller. They will have a connect somewhere. So I’m sure the same amount of cannabis is being sold in Copenhagen as five years ago, but it’s a lot less visible at the street level now.”
“Pusher Street’s closure has had an impact on Christiania,” Magnus added. “They say the shops are making about 50% less revenue, as the dealers no longer buy anything from the shops. Now – ironically, in my opinion – Christiania is targeting tourists, as they stand out a lot more in the hippie town and are seen as a burden by the community. But that’s Christiania in a nutshell. They hate capitalism, the state, and tourists, while being 99% reliant on those three things.”
As Christiania moves into its next chapter, and as cannabis gradually gains legal acceptance across Europe and beyond, the question remains whether any of that original spirit will return. Or will the cobblestones of Pusher Street, now sitting as trophies on mantelpieces across Copenhagen, remain symbols of the end of a bold social experiment.
Continue reading...
For decades, Christiania was the Nordic equivalent of a favela: a squat settlement, and a no-go zone for the police, who’d only enter if there had been a serious crime like a shooting. Otherwise, if there was trouble, the Hells Angels would “handle it” – big burly men with bigger, burlier dogs.
Green Light Zone – Photo: Niko Vorobyov
There were rules on Pusher Street, also known as the Green Light District. A sign on the wall read NO TO HARD DRUGS. Strictly no phones or cameras were allowed, unless you’d like to meet the doggies. There was no running, either: if you ran, everyone would think it was from the cops, and panic would spread like wildfire.
This was in the winter of 2023. But now, this part of the countercultural commune in the heart of Copenhagen is all but gone. “It’s not what it used to be, they’ve cleaned it up; dead area,” lamented Mert, a Turkish tourist who dropped by in March this year.
Freetown Christiania
Christiania was born in 1971 when, amid a housing shortage in Copenhagen, squatters tore through the barricades of the abandoned Bådsmandsstræde military base on the island of Amager. The ‘colony’ thrived, becoming home to around a thousand residents who each contributed to running the local post service, rubbish collection and children’s nurseries. Its symbol became a red flag with three yellow dots, symbolising Christiania’s core values: freedom, unity and creativity.
Denmark’s left-wing government at the time decided to leave Christiania alone as a social experiment, and the commune became a magnet for everyone who couldn’t fit into mainstream society: hippies, artists, anarchists, and idealists. A parliamentary vote in 1989 formally recognised Christiania’s existence semi-independently of Danish government rule. That meant cannabis was, if not exactly legal (police still raided from time to time), then strongly tolerated.
But it wasn’t long before unsavoury characters began moving in. In the 1970s, the residents mounted a 40-day ‘junk blockade’, evicting heroin pushers and addicts (the addicts were only allowed to return pending proof of their sobriety). But that didn’t stop a biker gang named Bullshit muscling in on the hash trade. The Bullshitters went to war with another set of Harley-riding, leather jacket-wearing heavies, the Danish chapter of the Hells Angels, in the 1980s, a war which ended with the Angels wiping out Bullshit’s entire leadership in a blaze of gunfire. Gang wars would haunt Christiania, a blight on the neighbourhood of otherwise peaceful hippies.
“Christiania was squatted in the ’70s, and the hippies would use cannabis and started to sell it a little bit… and then it slowly escalated from there,” explained Kim Moeller, a Danish criminologist who’s researched Pusher Street extensively.
“In the ’80s, it was a very, very small phenomenon. But in the ’90s, there was a rapid increase in cannabis use; it became much more popular with youth associated with hip-hop culture, and then the market grew dramatically. And so, in the late ’90s, there would be 30 sellers [on Pusher Street] on a daily basis.”
According to Moeller, the police informally tolerated the happenings at Christiania.
“There was a recommendation for police not to enforce the ban on cannabis possession, which was then extended to not enforcing the ban on cannabis retail sales,” explained Moeller.
“This was not in the law – this was in a document from the Ministry of Justice to the police: do not spend your time and resources enforcing cannabis possession and retail sale as long as it is not organised. You are supposed to pretend you don’t see it. Ignore it, which in practice meant to ignore it in the Christiania area.”
Still, every couple of years, the government would pound their fists and swear to shut it down. On 16 March 2004, hundreds of officers in riot gear marched into Christiania and bulldozed the Pusher Street market, rounding up dozens of dealers.
“When the cannabis market was shut down, a lot of people affiliated with the Hells Angels were also arrested, and the key marketplace was shut down for almost a year,” said Moeller.
“Cannabis sales would spread to other areas throughout Copenhagen, where other troublesome youth gangs would start selling, and eventually they got interested in the market in Christiania. After the police moved away after this period of a year, they would go and attack the cannabis sellers and make random shootings in public areas in Christiania, trying to get access to the market that was previously controlled by the Hells Angels. And this would go on for 15 years, back-and-forth between these new gangs and the Hells Angels.”
This tracks with what we know about drug markets: that arresting major players is counterproductive to public safety, increasing violent crime as rival factions battle it out to fill the void.
The demographics of Denmark were changing, many of the dealers were now Balkan and Middle Eastern, who were perceived by some segments of society as being more trigger-happy than the bikers. Indeed, ethnic tensions fanned the flames of turf wars between the old guard and the newcomers, with the Hells Angels fully embracing xenophobic rhetoric, Bill the Butcher style, in defending their share of the hash business.
While Christiania’s quirky architecture, street art, music scene and pot sales attracted hundreds of thousands of tourists annually, a seedy underbelly simmered beneath the surface, occasionally erupting in spectacular displays of violence. In April 2009, a 22-year-old man’s jaw was blown off after a hand grenade landed next to him and his friends in Christiania.
Meanwhile, the government was trying to get rid of the hippies by forcing them to pay for the land they’d been squatting since ’71. Property ownership – that central tenet of capitalism – had once been anathema to the Christianites. Nevertheless, the hippies rallied and launched a successful crowdfunding campaign, pooling money from the community and in 2012, officially bought the land from the government.
In the summer of 2016, two plainclothes policemen tried to apprehend a young Bosnian dealer in Christiania. He opened fire, wounding them, and died in a shootout a few hours later. It turned out he belonged to a radical movement sympathetic to ISIS, which claimed responsibility for the shooting. Afterwards, local residents tore the drug market down. It’s not the weed they took issue with, but the gangland takeover of their community. Many local inhabitants believe that only legalising cannabis and treating it as a legitimate commodity would keep away gun-toting mobsters. But given how slowly the cannabis debate is progressing in Denmark, some locals have urged tokers to stop patronising Pusher Street.
Of course, the stalls were soon back again, but by now Christiania’s reputation was thoroughly transformed from a hippy utopia to something rather more sinister.
“From around 2020, it seemed like the situation was getting worse and worse,” said Moeller.
“The Hells Angels had to relinquish their monopoly on having sellers out there… so there were several different gangs’ representatives selling in this Pusher Street area, standing side-by-side. And of course, that’s not going to work in the long run. They’re going to have disagreements… So at some point, it was like OK, something drastic has to happen. And something drastic did happen.”
The beginning of the end
The last straw came in August 2023, when a mass shooting at a bar in Christiania left one biker dead and four innocent bystanders wounded. The Hells Angels were now warring with Loyal to Familia, an alliance of street gangs with immigrant roots. In a twist of irony, the anti-establishment Christianites found themselves begging their old nemesis, the state, for protection. A heavy police presence moved in, and in April 2024, a crowd gathered to symbolically pull out the cobblestones of Pusher Street under the watch of Copenhagen mayor Sophie Hæstorp Andersen and Danish justice minister Peter Hummelgaar. Hauling the stones away on wheelbarrows, many took them home as trophies, while the area has been earmarked for redevelopment.
“I find it fascinating that after 30 years of very visible problems around Pusher Street and a very unique national model for the retail sale of cannabis, it suddenly just stopped,” Moeller pondered.
“That’s a bit of a mystery to me, what happened. The role of the people in Christiania in this is not very well understood. How did they cooperate with police? Nobody knows what that entailed in practice. But for the first time ever, it actually worked. The police withdrew their massive presence, and the dealers did not return. I went there last week, and it looked like there wasn’t any organised dealing.”
Was this the end of an era?
“Yes, officially. However – dealers are lurking in and around Christiania. A recent news report said it’s easy to buy weed again. Since April 2024, it has just not been done out in the open anymore,” said Magnus Smitsdorf, owner and guide at Politically Incorrect Tours, a company showing visitors around Copenhagen.
Christiania’s dope business was and is not confined to Pusher Street, of course. This reporter felt a hazy aroma as soon as he walked into a bar, where a jar of green buds was openly on display.
An area where dealers in hoodies mumble “yo bro you want anything?” as you walk past is kind of old-school, anyway. These days, the kids are all buying their gear on Telegram or Snapchat.
“An important point to make here in relation to the wider issue of cannabis criminalisation and demand is that people that smoke weed everyday account for 75-80% of all the cannabis that is used,” Moeller remarked.
“These people will know how to get cannabis without going to Christiania or some street-level seller. They will have a connect somewhere. So I’m sure the same amount of cannabis is being sold in Copenhagen as five years ago, but it’s a lot less visible at the street level now.”
“Pusher Street’s closure has had an impact on Christiania,” Magnus added. “They say the shops are making about 50% less revenue, as the dealers no longer buy anything from the shops. Now – ironically, in my opinion – Christiania is targeting tourists, as they stand out a lot more in the hippie town and are seen as a burden by the community. But that’s Christiania in a nutshell. They hate capitalism, the state, and tourists, while being 99% reliant on those three things.”
As Christiania moves into its next chapter, and as cannabis gradually gains legal acceptance across Europe and beyond, the question remains whether any of that original spirit will return. Or will the cobblestones of Pusher Street, now sitting as trophies on mantelpieces across Copenhagen, remain symbols of the end of a bold social experiment.
Continue reading...
