The Hamlet of Hornslet...

So we had arrived on the sandy soil of Denmark. Almost as soon as we were off the ferry, we darted into the quaint little streets of Frederikshavn to search for some fish to cook for dinner.


We drove straight to the harbor--much to my delight--and the fish docks where a few local merchants had set up a retail shop. The fish was so fresh--coming stright in off of little fish boats like this that puttered in and out of the harbor--that the flounders laid out on the bed of crushed ice were still gasping and lethargically waving their pectoral fins in dying gestures of distress.

At one end of the protected basin the larger fishboats, painted the traditional light blue, lay alongside the wharf unloading.

Just a short distance from the water stood one of the aged churches built on the eve of the Renaissance. As I was about to learn, these venerated old structures with their stepped facades are one of the architectural icons of Denmark.

Back on the road again we drove south toward the city of Århus, steaking across miles and miles of beautifully green fields, contrasting with the greys and browns of Sweden, a nation still held in the grips of the dying Nordic winter.

Everywhere, the horizon was lined with the iconic windgenerator, turning lazily in the ever-present breeze that blows across Denmark either from the North Sea or the Baltic.

As the sun sank lower and the shadows lengthened, the pleasant green fields took on a warmer hue and I nodded off in the back seat...again.

I awoke as dusk fell and we streamed past the first of many Danish castles. Most of them are not fortresses, but rather private resorts for the wealthy landowners comprising expansive gardens, enormous barns and stables, and occasionally a lilly-covered moat just for show.

In time we wentered the rolling hills of the Århus region, created over 10,000 years ago when the receding glaciers deposited mounds of sand and gravel upon the landscape. In every little gully and washout left by the melting ice, we passed another classic little Danish hamlet snugly tucked down out of the wind.


Then alas we arrived in the little hamlet of Hornslet and turned onto the long, tree-lined driveway to the house where Ole and Annette live. Oh! the delight of discovering that this beautiful landscape--such a wonderful respite from the city--was to be my home for the next 10 days!

At the end of the driveway we came up to their cute little farm house nested between the trees on the edge of the forest. It was as charming a place as I have ever seen....




Ole and Annette took me around the property, showing me how their home was once three farm buildings sitting together and Annette (an architect by profession) had slowly adapted them and united them with new roofs, hallways, or greenhouses.


In the middle of the three conjoined houses there was a little courtyard full of dense shrubs, a small pond, and a great tree draped with birdfeeders.


The kitchen table looked directly out onto this courtyard, guaranteeing mealtime entertainment from the lovely but often quarrelsome birds.

Annette's kitchen, with its low ceiling and rough-hewn beams, the oven-shaped windows, and the airy skylights over the counter was an extremely pleasant place to sit and relax, listening to the rain drumming on the roof.

The crowning touch to the pleasant atmosphere in there was the little chest-high fireplace set into the wall that crackled and glowed all day and night, filling the kitchen with wonderful smells and a most pervasive warmth.

Around the corner in the next building was the livingroom, another great place built of traditional materials but enhanced by sliding glass partitions and towering windows and skylights as well as a veritable canpoy of leafy indoor trees.

THese trees hung down from the rafters all over, giving the room a most refreshing feel--and a daily shower of dead leaves to pick up.

Above the living room there was a great balcony and reading lounge...

And an airy little TV room that could have been a tree-house.

Just beyond the 'U' of connected houses lay the barn where bales of hay, a collection of rope-making equipment, and a few interesting piles of broken machinery and lawnmowers sat waiting to be useful again.

At one end stood the heating room for the farm house. All the water and radiator heat was provided by this big oven into which we threw a bale of hay every two or three hours. I had never seen a hay-heated home before, but it worked remarkably well and gave the air outside a most wonderous scent.

Ah, it was so wonderful just standing in the yard and gazing out across the fields, smelling the hay smoke, and listening to the birds excitedly chirping about this rumor of spring.

And when night fell and the deer came out to graze, it was a most splendid feeling to just watch the millions of stars coming out over the little farm house with is warmly glowing windows.

Up in the guest room, I awoke early to the morning sun pouring in. It so very much reminded me of staying in the attic room of Jeremy Glover's farm in Wisconsin. It was simply wonderful...

As I came down the little ladder to the ground floor I heard the unmistakable cackle of a pheasant--and it was close! As soon as I looked out the window, there he was; a nice plump rooster sitting on an old well head oustide the barn.

He stood and watched, I stood and watched. He flapped his wings and cackled, I snapped a photo.

After a classic Danish breakfast of brown bread with boiled egg, cucumber, tomato, or sliced onions, Ole and Annette and I set ou in the car to explore the town and the neighboring countryside. The little roads around the town and tracing all over the hills and through the woods were most delightful and no sooner did we get ou tthere than I was asking if Ole had a bicycle I could borrow. "Of course!" he said. After all, Ole was a bicycling addict and had once spent three months living off his bicycle, riding from place to place until he had toured all of Denmark.

As we drove around we passed several of the neighboring villages, also tucked down in th egullies out of sight where the land couldn't be used for farming and where it was protected from the ever-present wind.

We passed over the tracks which reminded me so sharply of my wanderings in Wisconsin and Illinois. I wonder where these ones lead....

And we ran into some of those classic farming community sights like fields of rolling furrows and...

...huge tractors asserting their equal rights to the roads.

When we returned to the farmhouse in the early afternoon, the first wave of children and grandchildren had already arrived and it was time to preapre for the first of several big family gatherings. Not really knowing how to properly set a Danish table, I pitched in and tried to help out. At least the toddlers made it easy for me; I knew where to put the high-chairs, the miniature spoons, and the pile of napkins.

We were joined for that first big dinner by Ole's children, Mads and Ida and Ida's little boy, Noah. Then Annette's daughter Katrin came with her husband Holger and their two little children, Matilda and Alexander. It was quite a crowd in no time at all.

We settled in for a very fine dinner with the usual family banter (or so I assumed from body language as I could not understand a word of Danish) and naturally, the rather amusing stream of culinary demands and critiques accompanied by the dropping of little spoons and the occasional spitting up--all from a particular end of the table.

However, despite these occasional protests against the vegetable group or ardent demands for "farfar" (grandpa), the children were remarkably well-behaved, a trend I have seen across Scandinavia.

Then Annette brought out the fudge cake and although the little ones were destined to become a total mess, let me tell you, it was absolutely worth it.

Here, Mads and his nephew Noah 'The Blur' express their appreciation for the cake in their own unique ways. Meanwhile, Alexander--the littlest of all--looks on with perplexed amusement.

Feeling pity for his younger dining colleague who cannot understand the excitement, Noah attempts to explain to Alexander the many decorative virutes of fudge. Unfortunately the tablecloth seems to offer more entertainment than the otehrwise enlightening lecture.

Fully fuelled with sugar, Noah and Matilda take to exploring the house at speeds most short-legged dachsunds can only dream of. Thus it was a near tragedy when Mom gave the departure warning and the little coats were brought out. Tears...

Meanwhile, however, Alexander was rather enjoying himself. He had been welcomed into the adult conversation still going on around the wreckage of the table and he had also noticed a bowl with a fair bit of whipcream in it. This night was not over by any means!

Passage to Denmark...

On to Göteborg!

Göteborg is the big city of Sweden's western coast and as I discovered during my brief visit (I was in the city not more than 20 minutes), it is a bustling modern harbor exchanging cargoes on a scale I have never seen before--including New York Harbor (which is almost a ghost town since containerization took over).

Ole, Annette, and I drove here to catch one of these ugly space-age high-speed car ferries across the Danish Straits to Denmark. Unfortunately, our near-perfect timing did not allow us to poke about the city or visit the maritime museum (I will return!) and so we went straight through town to the dock and drove aboard.

Here's a map I ripped off the internet showing a bunch of international ferry routes. Our little route is not marked, but it runs from Göteborg ("Gothenborg" by their spelling) straight across the channel to a place called Frederikshavn (not shown). Note that ships are still the way to travel around here. Denmark has over 70 domestic ferry routes in operation all year.

So we parked in the spacious car deck and then went topside to see what there was to see.


As soon as I came out on deck I was greeted by a wonderful sight; a big ro-ro (roll-on, roll-off automobile carrier) was just easing in toward one of the city's big shipyards.

The not-so-little tug tethered to the behemoth pulled and frothed as it tried to haul the big ship (amusingly named "Madame Butterfly") toward the drydock.

Ole explained to me that Wallenius Wilhelmsen is the main carrier for Volvo exports.
Note all the green ventilators on deck to vent the exhaust fumes when the cars are being driven on and off the ship.

A second tug alongside gives a big push on the ship's starboard quarter to aim her into the floating drydock. Note the Swedish courtesy flag flying from the ship's signal mast.

Rushing around to the other side, the second tug stands by to give another nudge as the pair finishes working the ship up to the dock.

Amidst all this excitement I was fianlly beginning to look around and see what a big and bustling port Göteborg really is. This is just one shipyard we are looking at, and although Ole laments how many have closed in recent years, the harbor still retains a very active shipyard industry. Here an enormous trans-channel car ferry sits in a drydock for maintenance and repairs.

As our ferry pulled out from the pier and we began to make our way down the channel, we got a good look into the drydocks. The ferry's drydock is just being flooded again, slowly settling into the harbor to let the ship float free. Meanwhile, a tanker sits in a smaller dock high and dry. Note that the anchors and the many tons of chain have been lowered onto the drydock to reduce the pressure of the tanker's weight on the hull plating.

Picking up speed, the ferry gurgles and whines along (it has jet-turbine engines, hence the whine) and we pass under the high bridge that divides the residential side of Göteborg from its industrial, commercial side.

Along one bank stands the Swedish Navy's old powder house where the fleet's gunpowder was prepared and stored in bygone eras.

Across the channel stands the impressive remains of one of Göteborg's biggest shipyards, the Eriksberg crane. I am not sure how to communicate to you how big this thing is. It is absolutely huge! For example, those things underneath it are big cruising sailboats--there's a whole marina under there!!! Look at the apartment complexes on the right! This thing is mind-bogglingly enormous....

Just to the right of it is the little shipyard (now also gone) where the East Indiaman Götheborg was built.

Götheborg is a replica of an East Indiaman (long-range trading vessel) that tragicly sank right outside the harbor after a voyage all the way to China and back in the 1770s. Resurrected in the form of this new ship launched two years ago, the new East Indiaman Götheborg is now enroute to China. The most recent report was that she has now made landfall in Australia. In a few months she will dock in Shanghai.

A little further down the channel we found the heart of Götheborg harbor. Dozens of ships of every size and description were there loading and unloading cargoes of infinite variety. Here a small containership loads containers aboard while a much bigger, medium-sized vessel astern unloads.

Here's a summary photo; from front to back, containers, cars, and oil tanks. Just a few representatives of the many cargoes flowing through this major port city.

At the oil depot (which was huge!) tankers lined the shores and the piers taking on and discharging oil. They came in every size; some small enough to head up the Göte Canal into central Sweden, other bigger ships just arriving from Dutch refineries overseas.

Here a couple of mid-sized tankers are riding high in the bows as the oil surges ashore to the big storage tanks on the hill.

Meanwhile, some coastal tankers, turned around and ready to sail, top off their tanks before taking their precious cargoes south around southern Sweden and onward to the Baltic ports of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Russia, Finaland, and Sweden.

Götheborg also displayed the newest designs in commercial shipping including this multi-purpose vessel that was half Ro-ro and half container freighter...interesting...

...or these pecualiar looking vessels that are reportedly long-range ferries.

Yet, these modern designs are still hemmed in by history, having to sail past the old fort that has stood as the sentinal of Göteborg for centuries.

We had not even squeezed out of the channel before more ships came through. This big tanker (but still not of the scale of the fabled supertankers) came churning down the channel, skirting the rocks...

A tug stood by to lend a hand if one should be needed to assist in steering the unwieldy vessel.

Then we passed the final lighthouse in the little archipelago of islands dotting the entrance to Göteborg harbor--and indeed, the entire Swedish coast.

Meanwhile I spotted a little orange boat barrelling along astern of us and closing the distance fast...

As she got closer I could see she was a pilot boat, charging out to sea to deliver or retrieve a harbor pilot put aboard transient ships to guide them safely in or out of the harbor.

She was certainly in a hurry, spewing huge fans of white water out in front of her every time she struck a wave.

For a minute I thought she was coming to us to remove a pilot from our ship, but then she charged past, intent on catching another vessel.

Off our starboard beam was a tanker making its way out of the harbor. She was heavily loaded and slow so she hung to the side of the channel to let the fast and light ferry cruise by.

When the pilot boat reached her, it slowed down and hung along its flank like a little dog, waiting for the moment to receive its treat and run home.

What a picture of the energy industry (and maybe the future); an oil tanker and wind generators. A shift in the offing.

Soon we left the tanker, the pilot boat, the lighthouses and indeed, Sweden, behind and headed out onto the open water.

As the jet-engines revved up and we gathered speed, maxing out at around 45 knots, we left Sweden astern...

...and made our passage to Denmark.

We were not alone out here. Since 1500 this channel between Denmark and Sweden has been the busiest shipping lane in the world (surpassed in recent years by the Straits of Melacca and the Panama Canal). Off our port beam...and then our port quarter, and then finally astern of us; we were trailed by another car ferry trudging across the shipping lanes to Denmark. The crossing was difficult, like crossing a busy street in New York. At any given moment there were a minimum of 8 huge ships in sight going in or out of the Baltic at a steady clip of 20 knots or more. The ferry, considerably more maneuverable than these heavily loaded transports, was constantly dodging ships.

As we neared the Danish coast we were spotted by a Danish Navy patrol that heaved around and followed us for a bit...

But soon lost interest in the faster ferry and trotted off to look at a freighter hugging the Danish coast.

Yes, we were in Danish waters now. After just 2 hours at 45 knots, we were coming into port. Those who had been enjoying the benefits of international travel and spent the crossing gambling and buying duty-free alcohol had to call it 'quits' and start ambling back to their cars down below.

As we approached the harbor we were welcomed by what is probably the single most recognized symbol of Denmark these days, the windmills. Denmark uses more wind energy than any other nation in the world and is constantly improving the efficiency of these machines which are almost exclusively a product of Denamrk.

Then, alas we sailed past the light on the breakwater and entered the port of Fredrikshavn.

The engines whining down, we glided across the harbor (noting how far astern the traditional ferry was) and swung toward the dock.

This little man-made harbor was also a busy spot, cluttered with off-duty icebreakers, Danish naval training vessels and this peculiar ferry designed to transport trains.

Then, while I was admiring the Orskov Shipyard and the fascinating 'hole-in-the-water' visual effect of looking down into an emptied graving dock, the PA system came on and although I could not speak Danish, I knew we were being asked to return to our cars.

Thus we were in Denmark...