First of all, thank you, Frederik, for your words of welcome here this evening. You have stepped in now that the Prince Consort has been taken ill. We will miss him tonight, but it is a pleasure to see you share the responsibilities of the evening with both your parents. 

I wish to thank the Prime Minister for the kind and beautiful words. I have been looking forward to share this festive evening with you, with the Government and the Parliament and with many other representatives from Denmark, the Faeroe Islands and from Greenland. 

I am also delighted to see so many relatives and heads of state being present here tonight. 

75 years – what do they mean? When I turned 50 or 60, I did not think that far ahead, and even just 5 years ago, 75 still felt quite theoretical. 

But now we have come this far. This gives me the opportunity to look back, like most people do when celebrating a birthday. 

Not only is 1940 my birth year. It is also a year, which became fateful for Denmark because of 9th April. This has had an impact on my life and my outlook, ever since I began to comprehend what it entailed. Perhaps this puzzles the younger generations, to them I am an old person, and those years are in the distant past; but as time goes by, I have realized that everything that has happened since, to me and to Denmark, I must inevitably view in the light of those 5 years. 

It fell to me to succeed my father, and since my thirteenth year my fate has been firmly linked to Denmark. It is a duty. It has given my life direction and brought about more joys, than I can list or express. 

When I was a young and went to school, Denmark was still most of all an agricultural country. We were just recovering from the consequences of the Second World War and the Occupation, also economically. 

Today we see a somewhat different picture. What became of the small towns, which I remember so clearly from the cruises onboard the Royal Yacht Dannebrog during my childhood? What has happened to the many small farms, which lay scattered all around the country in the immediate outskirts of the towns? What happened to the numerous smaller merchants and craftsmen, who were common sights throughout the larger and smaller communities? 

Today we have for sure become an industrialized society with high-tech companies. The towns have grown, and the infrastructure has developed with highways and new bridges. In many respects the country is much closer tied together than during my childhood and youth, and “abroad” is not any longer a distant and foreign concept. We have become much more aware of the world around us and conscious of Denmark’s relation to other countries and of the influence from foreign cultures.  The mind boggles, if you think about everything that has changed during the last 75 years. 

But: Se dig ud en sommerdag – 

Hvor smiler fager den danske kyst –
Det bugter sig i bakkedal –
(Quotes from Danish hymns)

It is still our old Denmark. This is where we belong. This is the country, for which we are responsible, all of us living here. 

Could I please ask everybody to stand and join me in a toast as we pronounce: 

 

GUD BEVARE DANMARK
(God bless Denmark)

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