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From The Translator’S Desk, Michael Goldman Jan 2018

From The Translator’S Desk, Michael Goldman

The Bridge

On the Saturday morning of the fortieth anniversary conference of the Danish American heritage Society, translator Michael Goldman gave a talk in which he interspersed readings from his translations of five accomplished Danish authors with his personal recollections and anecdotes. The texts he read included the first major publication of Benny Andersen’s poetry in english translation; the first english translations of Cecil Bødker’s adult novels Stories about Tacit and The Water Farm; the first ever book publication in english of Knud Sørensen’s Farming Dreams, a selection of poetry about the decline of family farms in the latter half of the …


The Role Of Migrant Churches In Danish Integration, Julie K. Allen Jan 2018

The Role Of Migrant Churches In Danish Integration, Julie K. Allen

The Bridge

Christian religious belief has been a central factor in the creation and maintenance of Danish cultural identity for more than a thousand years, but it has also been an integral part of Danish interactions with the rest of the world. Although the Frankish monk Saint Ansgar (801–865)—the patron saint of Scandinavia—is often given credit for converting the pagan Danes in the ninth century, it was King harald Bluetooth’s baptism in 965 Ce that made religious identity and religious conformity a fundamental principle of membership in the Danish state. For the next nine centuries, the exercise of religious belief in Denmark …


To The Edge Of The World: Jens Munk And The Danish Search For The Northwest Passage, 1619-20, Otto Christensen Jan 2018

To The Edge Of The World: Jens Munk And The Danish Search For The Northwest Passage, 1619-20, Otto Christensen

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On May 9, 1619, a worshipful dedication service was held in Christian IV’s newly built church—holmen’s Kirke in Copenhagen. The service was arranged for a group of sixty-four sailors and their families to bless the crew and ships before they started on their expedition. Their goal was to find the route to China and India by sailing a northwestern route. The hope was to reach their destination by Christmastime. After the service, a procession took the participants down the canal to the two waiting ships. They were towed out of the harbor and set sail.


From Ærø To Iowa: Documenting The Journey Of Danish Immigrants To Audubon And Shelby Counties In Iowa, Cynthia Larsen Adams Jan 2018

From Ærø To Iowa: Documenting The Journey Of Danish Immigrants To Audubon And Shelby Counties In Iowa, Cynthia Larsen Adams

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The island of Ærø lies southwest of Copenhagen, in the Baltic Sea. Just south of the city of Odense, it is connected to the mainland by ferries. Between 1850 and 1920, nearly two thousand of Ærø’s residents decided to immigrate to the United States. When the first emigrants left Ærø the island had three major port towns—Marstal, Ærøskøbing, and Søby. Marstal was well known for its shipbuilding, which made it a local economic power base, while Ærøskøbing was the chief town and primary port for ferry traffic. Aside from sailors, ship’s captains, and shipbuilders, most of the island’s residents were …


The Jutland Heath As A Literary Place Of Inheritance: Hans Christian Andersen, St. St. Blicher, And Jeppe Aakjær, Johs. Nørregaard Frandsen Jan 2018

The Jutland Heath As A Literary Place Of Inheritance: Hans Christian Andersen, St. St. Blicher, And Jeppe Aakjær, Johs. Nørregaard Frandsen

The Bridge

The Jutland heath was, in a certain sense, created by Danish writers. It was writers such as Steen Steensen Blicher, Meir Goldschmidt, hans Christian Andersen, Jeppe Aakjær, and Johannes V. Jensen who, in their literary depictions, gave the heath a voice, image, and form that made it accessible as a place of experience for their own and future ages. In doing so, they created a place of inheritance—a dynamic, living place of experience that we can possess forever and refer to as part of our cultural inheritance. Today, the heather-clad heath of Jutland exists only in small clumps that have …


Grundtvig In America, Joy Ibsen Jan 2018

Grundtvig In America, Joy Ibsen

The Bridge

Who was Nicolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig? how can we describe this very complex person—as an educator, poet, politician, seer, bishop, theologian, philosopher, hymnwriter, or rebel? We can acknowledge the interesting facts beginning with the alignment of the dates of his life (1783–1872) with those of the Age of the Enlightenment, which might explain why he eventually came to deeply distrust rationalism as the definition of truth. he is known as the father of folk schools and even public education in Denmark. extremely prolific, he wrote or adapted fifteen hundred hymns. his multiplicity and depth as a hymnwriter, poet, and thinker, …


Preserving Nordic Heritage Churches: A New Project Highlights The Architecture, Decorative Arts, And Ethnic Traditions Of Sacred Places In The Upper Midwest, Laurie Kay Sommers Jan 2018

Preserving Nordic Heritage Churches: A New Project Highlights The Architecture, Decorative Arts, And Ethnic Traditions Of Sacred Places In The Upper Midwest, Laurie Kay Sommers

The Bridge

engaging Artists and Communities to Preserve Nordic heritage Churches is a new initiative of Partners for Sacred Places (PSP, www. sacredplaces.org). Founded in 1989, PSP is the only national, nonsectarian, nonprofit organization focused on building the capacity of congregations of historic sacred places to better serve their communities as anchor institutions, nurturing transformation and shaping vibrant, creative communities. The Nordic heritage churches project represents the first broad inventory of Nordic American churches and seeks to raise the profile of Nordic cultural heritage in North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (a geographic area determined by the …


Intervention And Reinvention: Rethinking Airport Amenities, Jens Vange Jan 2018

Intervention And Reinvention: Rethinking Airport Amenities, Jens Vange

The Bridge

Over the past eight years, I’ve had the rare opportunity to explore in excruciating detail one of the most mundane spaces that most of us have experienced: airport restrooms. My immigration experience influenced the outcome of this exploration. My father, erik Vange, immigrated to the US from Denmark during World War II and never moved back. My mom, Lissi, and my sister, Katrine, came over about ten years later. They settled in the Chicago area, and after a few years my parents decided to adopt a child from Denmark. Fortunately, that turned out to be me. I immigrated to the …


Danish Folk Life Influence In The Appalachian Region, Sune Frederiksen Jan 2018

Danish Folk Life Influence In The Appalachian Region, Sune Frederiksen

The Bridge

Physical education instructor Oscar Gunkler of Berea College was perhaps the first person from Kentucky to travel to Denmark to study the unique Danish folk school model. In 1924, he travelled to Ollerup Gymnastikhøjskole to better understand this educational phenomenon and find ways to implement it in the curriculum at Berea College, which was the first college in the south to integrate black and white students back in 1853. The slogan of Berea College, which was at one time very provocative, is “God has Made of One Blood All the Peoples of the earth.” The college was founded by the …


Contents Jan 2018

Contents

The Bridge

No abstract provided.


Full Issue Jan 2018

Full Issue

The Bridge

No abstract provided.


Editorial Statement Jan 2018

Editorial Statement

The Bridge

No abstract provided.


Language Usage In Non-Lutheran Danish Immigrant Religions, Robert Olsen Jan 2018

Language Usage In Non-Lutheran Danish Immigrant Religions, Robert Olsen

The Bridge

The first worship services conducted in the Danish language on American soil were conducted among the men who traveled with Jens Munk from Denmark in 1619–20 in search of a passageway to the Orient. They traveled in two small ships called the Unicorn and the Lamprey. Little did they know that in their attempt to find the Northwest Passage to the Orient they would instead journey down the St. Lawrence Seaway and settle on the banks of hudson Bay. here they would spend the long, very harsh winter. Cold and disease ultimately claimed the lives of all of the men …


“The Important Fact Is That I Always Felt Danish”: Preserving Ethnic Memory In Virginia Sorensen’S Mormon Novels, Sarah C. Reed Jan 2018

“The Important Fact Is That I Always Felt Danish”: Preserving Ethnic Memory In Virginia Sorensen’S Mormon Novels, Sarah C. Reed

The Bridge

American author Virginia Sorensen (1912–91) grew up a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Manti, Utah, in Sanpete Valley, a place known as “Little Denmark” because it was a major center for the Danish immigrant community in Utah. In 1956 she described her hometown like this: even now if you go to see the fine white Mormon Temple that dominates the landscape night and day you will likely be shown about the grounds by somebody with a Danish name, perhaps even with a Danish accent. he will tell you about the famous spiral staircases in …


A Brief History Of The Kroman Family, Inga Borre Kromann Jan 2018

A Brief History Of The Kroman Family, Inga Borre Kromann

The Bridge

No abstract provided.


Integration Challenges And Langkær Gymnasium, Nete Schmidt Jan 2018

Integration Challenges And Langkær Gymnasium, Nete Schmidt

The Bridge

Denmark used to be a fairly homogenous country where stereotypes of homogenous Nordic-ness could be happily and easily applied. Immigrants, often seasonal farmworkers, were invariably white. A young woman named Stefania was one of the many Poles who came to Lolland-Falster in the years 1893–1929 to work in the sugar beet fields in order to send money back to her family. She was thirteen when she arrived, with fake papers. At that time, Danish farmers and squires often hired young Polish women to do the most difficult work in the fields—weeding and harvesting the sugar beets. At the time, this …


Danish Genealogy Research Today: How To Become The Family Detective, Kara Mckeever Jan 2018

Danish Genealogy Research Today: How To Become The Family Detective, Kara Mckeever

The Bridge

No abstract provided.


My Uncle In America; Or, How Danes Love And Hate "Americanness", Lars Handesten Jan 2018

My Uncle In America; Or, How Danes Love And Hate "Americanness", Lars Handesten

The Bridge

No abstract provided.


Editorial Statement Jan 2017

Editorial Statement

The Bridge

No abstract provided.


Recollections Of S. D. Rodholm, Peter D. Thomsen Jan 2017

Recollections Of S. D. Rodholm, Peter D. Thomsen

The Bridge

In both pulpit and classroom, S. D. Rodholm was a great teacher and a true servant of the church. His capacity for learning and discernment was enormous, yet he never used big words nor in any way intimidated anyone. To me, he was always the wise, old seer. He made it very clear that his purpose in teaching was not to make cut and dried theologians out of us. His purpose, rather, was to help us, his students, become servants of THE WORD. He said many times, “Simple Christianity has been my life’s goal.” He hoped it would also be …


Bunch, Mads. Isak Dinesen Reading Søren Kierkegaard: On Christianity, Seduction, Gender, And Repetition., Troy Wellington Smith Jan 2017

Bunch, Mads. Isak Dinesen Reading Søren Kierkegaard: On Christianity, Seduction, Gender, And Repetition., Troy Wellington Smith

The Bridge

In the inter-and post-war periods, the Danish baroness Karen Blixen published, in English, several story collections and the autobiographical novel Out of Africa in the United States under the nom de plume Isak Dinesen. These same works appeared soon aft er under her legal name in her own Danish translations in Denmark. During the same period, works by Dinesen’s deceased countryman Søren Kierkegaard were being translated into English and published in the United States by Princeton University Press. No longer merely “world-famous in Denmark” (as the saying goes), Kierkegaard became a shibboleth for anxious intellectuals on both sides of the …


Soil And Salvation: Danes In Montana, 1906-10. Part I: Soil, Jakob Jakobsen Jan 2017

Soil And Salvation: Danes In Montana, 1906-10. Part I: Soil, Jakob Jakobsen

The Bridge

When I discovered that my great grandfather and his fiancée had participated in the founding of the Dagmar colony in Montana in 1906, I did not expect my initial interest in this to lead to a research grant from DAHS that would enable me to dive even deeper into their adventure, for which I am very grateful. My fascination with their story follows from its connection to the collective history of Danish America. In this sense, my ancestors acted as individuals, but their “navigation” took place in a “landscape” that changed due to larger developments. As a result, they can …


Ethnic Preservation Or Americanization: A Study Of Language And Ethnicity In The Danish Brotherhood In America, Nick Kofod Mogensen Jan 2017

Ethnic Preservation Or Americanization: A Study Of Language And Ethnicity In The Danish Brotherhood In America, Nick Kofod Mogensen

The Bridge

Once European mass immigration to America began in the mid-nineteenth century, roughly 400,000-450,000 Danish immigrants made their way to the United States,2 with approximately 300,000 of them arriving between 1880-1920.3 Immigrant historians agree that Danish immigrants assimilated rather quickly into American core society, i.e., the white Protestant majority population of Anglo-Saxon descent.4 One of the main reasons for this ease of assimilation was the relative scarcity of concentrated settlements of Danish immigrants compared to other immigrant groups, as Danes oft en sett led in areas in America with few other Danish immigrants.


Full Issue Jan 2017

Full Issue

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No abstract provided.


End Matter Jan 2017

End Matter

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No abstract provided.


Finding Sanctuary: How Danish American Churches Helped Immigrants Navigate Life In Uncharted Waters, Krister Strandskov, Russell Lackey Jan 2017

Finding Sanctuary: How Danish American Churches Helped Immigrants Navigate Life In Uncharted Waters, Krister Strandskov, Russell Lackey

The Bridge

The summer before graduating from Grand View University, I set out on a journey throughout the Midwest and California to photograph Danish American churches.1 My purpose in visiting these churches was to discover what stories their architecture told. I wondered what tied them together as well as what made each unique. I also hoped to learn more about my own Danish American heritage by visiting the very places many of my relatives worshiped and even pastored. Here is what I learned.


Inside Cover Jan 2017

Inside Cover

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No abstract provided.


Table Of Contents Jan 2017

Table Of Contents

The Bridge

No abstract provided.


A Biographical Sketch Of S. D. Rodholm, Renee Showalter-Hanson Jan 2017

A Biographical Sketch Of S. D. Rodholm, Renee Showalter-Hanson

The Bridge

Miriam Showalter, S. D. Rodholm’s youngest daughter, once wrote that “in a visual memory to most of his friends, S. D. Rodholm stands elegantly clad in what his wife laughingly called his grasshopper suit: black cutaway morning coat with grey striped trousers, red tie, pince-nez spectacles fastened to his coat, his hair a halo of silver curls.” Søren Peter Damsgaard Rodholm was born in Morke [Mørke], Denmark in February 1877. He att ended a private school, in spite of his parent’s poverty, studied the classics, and was deeply infl uenced by the Grundtvigian movement. He remembered fondly the religious training …


Barbara Sjoholm. Black Fox: A Life Of Emilie Demant Hatt , Artist And Ethnographer, Sandra Laursen Jan 2017

Barbara Sjoholm. Black Fox: A Life Of Emilie Demant Hatt , Artist And Ethnographer, Sandra Laursen

The Bridge

Two young women on vacation, an art student and a teacher, meet a mysterious local man dressed in animal skins who persuades them to climb into his boat. He rows them across a beautiful mountain lake where they begin a wilderness adventure in the land of the midnight sun. It sounds like the start of a fairy tale, but it is a true story from the opening chapters of Black Fox: A Life of Emilie Demant Hatt , Artist and Ethnographer.