Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2023
I received an email from a friend in Copenhagen today telling about plans to travel to Jylland, the western part of Denmark known in English as Jutland (since it juts upward from a land border with Germany). It made me think about my travels to Jylland, so I wrote up my memories of two trips there with the first one being in 1984. Here is what I wrote to him:
Have you ever been to Agger in West Jylland? It's is a small fishing village. Arne and I had a close friend (now deceased and who we called "Old Grethe" to designate her from "Nurse Grethe") who lived there with her husband Knud Eel who was an artist. Old Grethe and I rented a car for a week on one of my trips to Denmark, because she was feeling nostalgic. It was during the summer. We spent a day in Agger (very small village on the coast) walking around and were invited to the home of an old friend who recognized her and who had some of Knud's artwork on the walls within his home. We spent the rest of the week at their summer house at Slettestrad in northern Jylland. It's another interesting place--a fishing village where the boats are pulled up onto the beach at night and then taken back into the water the next day for fishing. We planned the trip to coincide with the midsummer event called Sankthansaften. At the time, it was celebrated there the same as it has been for centuries. The whole community came together for a bonfire on the beach, formed a circle around the fire, and danced and sang the midsummer songs. During that week, we made a side trip to Skagen for a day and went out to dinner one night at the old hotel Svinkloev Badehotel just west of Slettestrand. On our way back to Copenhagen, we stopped at the home (a remodeled old rural school house) of her daughter and son-in-law near Struer (where the son worked for B&O) and went to the large agriculture fair in Herning.
Old Grethe gave me a set of 5 woodblock prints of life in Agger made by Knud and when Arne died I took a watercolor painting by him to remember our life in his apartment. (The Danish consul who housed me in Calgary after Arne died had told me to take anything belonging to me and to take a few souvenirs of my life with Arne but for me to be careful not to make it look like anything was missing. Arne had artwork that was not hanging, so I put one of those in place of the watercolor that I took. I also took a two vases that were always in my view when we would watch TV and two glass nesting bowls--one large one given to Arne by WHO when he retired and one smaller matching one given to him by my sister when she visited--and just shifted things around to look like nothing was missing. I think that is all I have as a physical reminder of my life with Arne other than my photo collection. Knud Eel was never a famous painter, I don't think, but he and Old Grethe were friends with many painters at the time, and I understand that the Statens Museum has at least one piece of his art in their collection and maybe more, and as seen in the link copied to his name above, lots of his works are pictured on the Internet. There is also a web page about the sale of his paintings which shows they are not highly prized: https://www.invaluable.com/artist/eel-knud-a9jewezuwl/sold-at-auction-prices/ But I like the works I have as a way to remember Old Grethe, our friendship with her, and the trip that she and I made to Jylland.
The only other time I was in Jylland was on my first trip to Denmark (when I met Arne). I had planned a trip through Scandinavia. I spent 5 days in Copenhagen with Arne (having met him because friends from Germany who knew him had called and arranged for us to meet). It's amazing, but I truly think that Arne and I fell in love that quickly--during those 5 days. I was determined to continue my planned trip, though (and determined not to be an inconvenience by staying longer with Arne since I was unsure of our relationship situation at the time). I took the train to Odense and wandered around the city and saw the home of Hans Christian Andersen. Then I took a train to Arhus where I checked into what I remember as being named the Grand Hotel which I cannot find on the Internet, but it was a nice hotel near the Town Hall, so maybe it is what is now named Scandic The Mayor Hotel and saw nothing because it was raining very hard.
It was still raining the next day, so I left to take the ferry from northern Jylland to Larvik in Norway. I spent a few days in Oslo seeing the main sites. Then I went to Bergen and spent a few days there. The weather was beautiful and I really enjoyed exploring, but I was feeling very lonely. Leaving Bergen as planned, I went to Ulvik at the back of a narrow fjord with blossoming apple trees going up both mountainsides from the water. There, I stayed in the wonderful old Brakanes Hotel with a balcony view down the fjord with its apple blossoms. It was so remote, however, and I was so lonely. I knew no one else in Scandinavia but Arne, and I was missing him. So I went to a public phone to call to see if I could return to Copenhagen for the rest of my trip rather than going to Sweden. I couldn't figure out how to use the phone box--one of those where you would line up the coins and they would drop automatically when needed to keep the call going. But a nice man who spoke English showed me which coins would work and lined them up for me. Of course, Arne told me to return.
To get back to Copenhagen was still an adventure. I had to spend the next day has planned--taking the small train (one that doesn't seem to exist today and was only a 1-car train then [1984]) to Myrdal in the mountains (covering the famous Flaam Railway section) and spend the cold day wandering around there before catching an overnight train from there to Oslo where I could continue onward the next day through Sweden to Copenhagen. Arne met me at the station and I spent the final 8-10 days with him before returning home. After that, there were LOTS of trips between Texas and Denmark by both Arne and me!!
