Abstract
This paper ethnographically interrogates the rising ‘warriorization’ of Danish soldiers, sailors and airmen across civil and military spheres. What is going on? Why has the notion of ‘warrior’ throughout the past decade or so been increasingly applied in one sense or another to (fellow) members of the Danish Armed Forces? Epitomizing the emerging warriorization, Afghanistan and Iraq veterans have become publicly known as Denmark’s new ‘warrior generation’. However, as I argue in this paper, the warrior is a cultural figure with variations, and generational belonging is just one among the figure’s many meanings. The paper explores warriorization from the ground up among Danish combat troops and from the top-down within wider contexts of warriorization in the Danish society and beyond. Weaving my ethnographic fieldwork material into the wider processes of warriorization within the Danish Defence at large, veterans’ organizations, public culture on Denmark’s recent military engagements, and military studies on the Danish Armed Forces, this paper forms an ethnographic montage. Illuminating what there, so to speak, is in a name, I reflect on my own contribution to the ongoing warriorization and ask: should I, and other scholars as well, stop calling military personnel warriors?