‘But when I tell them about heroes, then they listen’

This paper explores the rise of the soldier hero in Denmark. From the analysis of prime ministers’ New Year Addresses between 1940 and 2015, it is evident that the heroification of Danish soldiers has been linked to the elevation of professionalism, self-motivation, individual responsibility, and global outlook as civic virtues since the 1990s. Utilising the concept of a survival unit developed by Norbert Elias, it argues that this elevation is a result of the gradual emergence of ‘competition state’ and ‘security state’ strategies for protecting the Danish welfare state in the wake of growing international interdependency. On this basis, the paper seeks to contribute to the literature on the social construction of heroes within a theoretical perspective that takes the dynamic relations between states into account, and to explain why specific notions of a hero develop.