A Walk In The Bog
We did a walk late June before the drought did its marking.
There are still places to be found without the dried yellow dusty sign from the strange weather we are experiencing.
I met an old man today. He told me that the trees outside his estate were barely alive anymore.
But at the same time he couldn’t bear to think if large amounts of rain would replace the drought.
As I spoke with him, I think he checked if the bike was locked at least 5 times.
Perhaps he had not been drinking enough water?
Dragør – An Outstanding Skipper Town
Dragør is a great place for a stroll. The environment is unique with the old and extraordinary well-preserved town.
Furthermore the harbour is very Hyggelig with a great view to the Øresund Bridge.
Lots of things to explore!!
Dragør was founded in the 12th century, and grew quickly as a fishing port. In 1370, the Hanseatic League was granted some trade privileges in the town. Dragør continued to grow – as the home of one of the largest fishing fleets in the country and as a base for salting and processing fish. ¹
Dragør pilotage and towage services was founded in 1684, when six men received royal funding to pilot ships and especially warships through the Sound.
By the middle of the 1700s there were 24 pilots and in the 1870s there were more than 50.
In 1906 only seven pilots were left.²
Today Dragør is on UNESCO’s Tentative List!
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On A Hot Summer Day
Messing about in boats is a meaningful occupation on a hot summer day 🙂
All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.
Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it.
Russell Baker
Getting ready for the big pike
A wonderful forest with lakes and dolmens and there might be a few pikes too 🙂
Denmark celebrates Midsummer Night every year on 23rd of June.
People gather around bonfires to sing and celebrate Midsummer.
Though something was different this year.
The drought conditions lead to a burn ban and the conditions haven’t change, on the contrary.
There are no signs of rain for the time being.
But that day on 23rd of June we went to Roskilde to celebrate Midsummer and it was a thrill to see the Sea Stallion from Glendalough in its right element, the fjord. You can read about the full arrangement for the ship at the Viking Ship Museum site.
We visited the old part of the town and had a great walk at Sct. Jørgensbjerg. The locals calls it The Mountain.
The view is magnificent!
Find Danish Emergency Management Agency
The Danish Authorities
A walk in the shade
Winter came late this year and with a few days of Spring, Summer came with a sustained heat never experienced before.
Walking in the shade along a lake is wonderful.
We went for a great walk along Furesøen in late May with a cooling breeze from the lake.
A few days later we did a walk along the lake one morning.
Greetings of good morning came from everywhere.
A very pleasant walk among happy people.
Sunshine does remarkable things for people’s mood 🙂
The Spirit of Poetry
There is a quiet spirit in these woods,
That dwells where’er the gentle south-wind blows;
Where, underneath the white-thorn, in the glade,
The wild flowers bloom, or, kissing the soft air,
The leaves above their sunny palms outspread.
With what a tender and impassioned voice
It fills the nice and delicate ear of thought,
When the fast ushering star of morning comes
O’er-riding the gray hills with golden scarf;
Or when the cowled and dusky-sandalled Eve,
In mourning weeds, from out the western gate,
Departs with silent pace! That spirit moves
In the green valley, where the silver brook,
From its full laver, pours the white cascade;
And, babbling low amid the tangled woods,
Slips down through moss-grown stones with endless laughter.
And frequent, on the everlasting hills,
Its feet go forth, when it doth wrap itself
In all the dark embroidery of the storm,
And shouts the stern, strong wind. And here, amid
The silent majesty of these deep woods,
lts presence shall uplift thy thoughts from earth,
As to the sunshine and the pure, bright air
Their tops the green trees lift. Hence gifted bards
Have ever loved the calm and quiet shades.
For them there was an eloquent voice in all
The sylvan pomp of woods, the golden sun,
The flowers, the leaves, the river on its way…
The old Thorn
There is a Thorn,—it looks so old,
In truth, you’d find it hard to say
How it could ever have been young,
It looks so old and gray.
Not higher than a two years child
It stands erect, this aged Thorn;
No leaves it has, no prickly points;
It is a mass of knotted joints,
A wretched thing forlorn.
It stands erect, and like a stone
With lichens is it overgrown.
William Wordsworth, The Thorn
The idyllic mass grave
People are passing by without paying any attention to the hawthorn grove in the forest at the gate of Taarbæk.
I often wonder if they are aware of the story.
Beneath the hawthorns is a mass grave. A grave for the victims of a cholera epidemic in Copenhagen back in 1853.
The many dead were driven on carts along the coast of Øresund to be buried inside the forest at Taarbæk.
There wasn’t enough burial ground left in Copenhagen for all the poor people who died of the epidemic.
I was speechless when I by a coincidence learned about the tragedy and the grave a few years back.
Old superstitions said that people got infected by plague if they sat on a grave and that is why the hawthorns were planted to avoid the epidemic from spreading.
The story also got my imagination working overtime, when I met a strange woman on a little path between the hawthorn a few years ago:
‘I went there on a late afternoon. It had just rained, it was cloudy and there was a sombre atmosphere about the place. Maybe I needed a rest, or maybe it was my meet with the woman who influenced me.
She was suddenly in front of me. Where did she come from? She was white-haired and pale. Eyes were dark and odd tinned at the same time. She looked right through me, and I made way, otherwise she had walked into me on the narrow path.
Some hours earlier, I had read several stories of peasants who constantly prohibit felling the hawthorn. Felling a hawthorn means disaster on animals and humans, and the old superstition is alive and well.
I wondered how far photography was included in the many legends and myths that exist around the trees. I took the chance and found several motifs, after which I gladly left the burial site. I was unusually tired when I got home, and I attributed it to the long day I had.
At night I woke up with severe pain in the stomach.: The Death and The Hawthorn
The place is very idyllic and a mass grave isn’t the first thing that pops up in your mind when looking at the small hawthorn grove.
A few kilometres away is a beautiful hawthorn plain at Springforbi.
It turns out that the two species of common hawthorns and single-seeded hawthorn cross spontaneously.
Hawthorns grow by insect pollination, so it can take place over long distances, also from Taarbæk. And the crossing is fertile: it continues to put seeds. The thorns that were planted on top of the cholera graves in the forest, was a single-seeded hawthorn and the one on the plain was a common hawthorn.
I read that many Hawthorns on the plain at Springforbi developed into a new subspecies and Christen Christiansen Raunkiær, Professor of Botany at the University of Copenhagen and Director of Botanical Gardens 1912-23 named it: Cratægus Eremitagensis.
On the first Saturday in June people visit the unique Hawthorn plain at Springforbi.
Some are dressed in white just like the hawthorns and all are celebrating the arrival of the summer.
But I often wonder if they know of the trees development 🙂
