A young Dane in underwear stands against a lamppost, bound with gaffer tape. He is wearing a safety mask. Then he braces himself. A crash follows, the surroundings turn into a brown cloud. When the smoke clears, the boy is covered in brown powder. He coughs. His friend takes a homemade cinnamon thrower off his shoulder. The friends around cheer.
The Danish reality – usually tightly raked – sometimes seems like an absurdist Scandinavian film.
The ‘getting cinnamon’ described above appears to be a rural custom from Jutland. Anyone who turns twenty-five and is single deserves cinnamon. A little, or a lot. “The tradition was first recorded in the 1960s, but is growing in popularity, also in the cities,” says historian Caroline Nyvang. “Rural youth who go to study or work in the city bring the habits from home with them to the city. Today’s young people attach importance to traditions – they are in opposition to the boomers, who had no interest in traditions.”
Cinnamon throwing is a spin-off of a pepper tradition. In Denmark, an unmarried person in their thirties turns one pebersvend or called pepper companion. The word dates back to the fifteenth century, when traveling spice traders did not marry before the age of thirty, due to a lack of a permanent residence. In the nineteenth century it became customary to confront unmarried people in their thirties with pepper throwing, and with a huge pepper can in front of their door. You still see them, often made from two oil barrels. “A form of social nudging”, says Nyvang. “Because of course you were meant to be married at that age. No one knows exactly why the tradition expanded to include cinnamon. Pepper is also added, although cinnamon clearly predominates.”
If you ask millennials you will hear about showers filled with cinnamon, cinnamon dumped in the bed of unsuspecting sleepers, raw eggs so that the cinnamon sticks well, or worse, hot water that opens your pores and makes you sweat cinnamon for days. “We also did it once in a disco,” says one of them. “After the first throw it became so dusty that we could no longer find the birthday boy. We had nine kilos.”
Cinnamon causes nuisance on the street when it rains. The municipality occasionally receives complaints that it is slippery, or that the cinnamon ruins Danes’ shoes. Usually the municipality simply lets the cinnamon be washed away by the rain.
There is another reason that cinnamon is increasingly appearing on the streets: commerce. The founders of the site Kanelogpeber.dk saw a gap in the market in 2012, after they had to visit the cinnamon shelves in a radius of ten kilometers to obtain a decent quantity. Websites recommend 500 g of cinnamon per thrower, but: ‘does your friend not deserve more?’
A package of ten kilos costs between 100 and 150 euros online. If you want to do it right, put 10 to 30 kilos in the leaf blower, vacuum cleaner or fire extinguisher and use it as a cinnamon cannon. “Don’t forget to tie up the birthday boy/girl so he can’t escape.” By the way, cinnamon is not as friendly as it smells. It contains natural toxins that act in large quantities on the immune system and can even be fatal. Cinnamon is said to eat away at the paint on old buildings and is also very flammable. Some Danes think that cinnamon throwing will soon be banned. Until then, the Danes have a tradition with fire hazards that are bad for people, animals and the environment, and cause a nuisance – although a cinnamon cannon does not explode as loudly as fireworks.