Strandby and the northern tip of Denmark
June 23, 2019
On Sunday morning we sang at the Methodist church. The pastor is from Greensboro originally. He said he didn't get to preach in English very often, so he was glad we were there to hear him. He has lived in Denmark for 30 years and says that they still kid him about his Danish. The associate pastor translated for the congregation. Everybody we met were quite fluent in English, so they heard the sermon twice. There was some banter between the pastors in the process, and the congregation caught some humor that we missed. Almost all the congregational hymns were familiar to us, so we could have sung them in English from memory. Instead, we decided to mangle the Danish and read from their hymnals. The exception was "Amazing Grace." It appears in English in their hymnal, so we all sang it that way.
They had a luncheon after church, and we got to meet some more of their folks. For the afternoon they had a special excursion for us to the Bangsbo area just south of Frederikshavn. The bus took us to the area, and several of the church members took their cars to transport us between the sights.
I started with the maritime museum, then went to the overlook, then to the WW II bunkers built by the Germans, and then walked back to the bus from an ice cream store by way of the gardens.
The area is still used to monitor possible military threats.
Our hosts fed us a great supper at the dining table behind the house. A daughter and her boyfriend had arrived and joined us for the meal. Peer cooked three large chickens on the grill.
Obviously the summer solstice is a big deal that far north, where the sun is up for almost 19 hours a day, and the sunset twilight carries into the sunrise twilight. In Denmark the big celebrations are on June 23, Sankt Hans Aften, rather than right on the solstice itself. So after supper we headed down to the celebration at the beach.
There is singing and a bonfire where you traditionally burn a witch, these days an effigy. Crowds gathered on a hillside at the beach, and the fire was lit. There was group singing from a booklet the church provided, Kevin spoke briefly, and the choir sang a few songs. Then the scouts helped people make some kind of bread on a stick that they cooked over a campfire. The scouts sponsored by the Lutheran church had another bonfire farther up the beach.
Sombody pointed out that you could tell it was the Methodist witch burning, since after she was consumed, the Cross and Flame were left.
In the morning we took our bags to the church, where they fed us breakfast, and after a lot of hugs, we boarded the bus to head for the ferry to Sweden.
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