July 1973, Sjaelland and Vendsyssel, Denmark ~

This contact sheet is a collection of photographs from at least four different places in Denmark: Kronborg Castle, a beach house at the north of Sjaelland, a quarry outside Hobro, and Hjorring.

Kronborg Castle was the first castle I’d toured.  The Danes said it was the scene for Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  It helped the Danes command the strait between the island of Sjaelland and what is now Sweden - the pathway from the Baltic to the ocean.  My hostfamily father, Major General Hans Christian Engell told me that all Soviet submarines had to be on the surface when they passed through or it would be considered an act of war.  The interior rooms were vast.  It was hard to imagine anyone, including a royal family, calling it a home.  The photos were from the first weeks of my stay in Denmark.  My hostfamily mother, Else Bergitta, gave me the tour.  

The photos from Hjorring were from towards the end of my stay, six weeks later.  I was out on my own much more frequently.  Mükke, my hostfamily sister, had grown bored with me and had her own life to live.  I’ve always been self-directing so I didn’t need a tour guide.  The photos reflect my general interest in disrepair.  I was fascinated by the Danish rail system and how it differed from the American.  Their worst track was as good as our best.  The wheel trucks were different.  The hitching system was different.  Rail travel was intrinsic to their culture.  Once I was traveling alone outside Copenhagen and got on the wrong train.  I asked the conductor how to rectify the error.  They stopped the commuter train for me at the next station and the following commuter train picked me up - both unscheduled stops just to help this idiot American kid.  That might have happened in the 19th Century U.S. but not since.

I told my hostfamily parents that I was going to mail the photo of the rail car behind the barbed wire to my parents as a post card.  I was going to tell them that I finally made it to my place in Hjorring but it wasn’t at all what I expected.  The family thought it funny.

These photos are solitary, alone.  The Denmark trip was invaluable to my growth.  While I knew that there was life outside Muscatine, it was nice to see it demonstrated.  The trip illustrated that who I could be changed with whom I was with.  I was a social outcast in high school, but apparently not in the rest of the world.