History of the Air Jørgen

There’s a shoe making the rounds on talkshows and celebrity feet in a sort of revival lately, however, it’s not clear we ever really said goodbye. The Air Jørgen, nearing 40 years in existence, is back on top. At the time the shoe deal was signed in 1984, another badass brand of Træsko (Danish clogs) called Holm’s of Dark Night was considered the “Lord of Loafers” among the “cloggers,” a numerous class of unmarried peasants who took service with the forest-based farmers for room and board. At night they danced for small crowds that gathered. Their hierarchy and reputations within their circles depended on the very clogs they wore, often the Fynboe clogs of yore, made from fine Alder wood, with a proboscis point. They wished to catch up to their Welsh and Dutch counterparts in order to finally compete in EuroClog, the transcontinental dancing competition.

There was, however, one rookie clogger, Mikkel Jørgen, who’d come from the lowest parts of East Jutland, who some considered a prodigy. It was reportedly Jørgen’s dance instructor Daisy Falk who appealed to his mother when he originally turned down the licensing agreement with the shoe company Nielsen. The deal was great, one unheard of for a poor clogging farmhand, and Jørgen’s own father called him an idiot for not taking it and threw bong water all over him.

So Jørgen finally caved. Nielsen had just come out with this new technology, called Alder Soles, says Falk. “And so we were gonna call it the ‘Alder Jørgen’” says Falk but it just didn’t “roll off the tunge.” Until one day the company realized how gracefully Jørgen spun and kicked high with his clogs. And it just fit. “The Air Jørgen.”

When Nielsen signed the deal, they were thinking we’d be selling $300 kroner in a year,” recalls Falk. “But we sold $1,260 kroner.”

As legend has it, the cloggers, and more formally, The Feisty Fynboes, a locally incorporated group vying for the EuroClog qualification, actually banned the first Air Jørgens because of a rule concerning the snout and upward bend of the shoe, to conform with the fashion of the times. Jørgen was reportedly fined $4.20 for every performance in his banned clogs and Nielsen gladly paid every time, giddily high to capitalize on free publicity.

But when it comes to the Air Jørgen’s popularity, the rest is obvious history. The clog was a must-have shoe for lowkey, middle-class peasantry in the 80’s and 90’s and even had a few sales in Randers and Aarhus. It helped the clog more widely trickle into pop culture including early b-sides on Tv-2 albums. 

The Air Jørgen has seen several iterations since then, and yet the Air Jørgen 1 remains the iconic staple still found on the streets and in country houses of East Jutland. It’s also the subject of the latest film by Benjamin Aflecksen, in theaters now.