Originally Posted by
Oxon Flyer
FWIW, the hotel self-describes as :
“Housed in an old transformer station in the heart of Copenhagen, the Socialist is a design hotel with the most striking of visual expressions. From the outside, its bronze industrial façade appears closed and anonymous. But within lies an interior of exquisite materiality, and a place of vibrant social interaction - where the city’s creative community, in-the-know locals and ever-curious visitors come to work, play and stay.”
… which suggests the word “socialist” is being used in a modern Scandi context that’s not related to the traditional, first-world definition.
The word in a “modern Scandi” context still means exactly what the traditional first-world definition for it has meant 20-60 years ago in this region and in various parts of the English-speaking world as well. The people involved in the hotel naming aren’t oblivious to the word’s loaded meaning — loaded both here in Scandinavia when it comes to the two most common Scandinavian languages for hotel users in Denmark — and elsewhere. Denmark tends to be culturally more provocative than the other Scandinavian countries. The hotel sign is a sign of that too. Note that they chose to use the English word “the” in the name when naming the hotel.
“The” is not a Danish word, although I can’t speak to old Norse when the language was much more akin to old English — but then what is that, over 1200 years ago?