Crazy Calendar
Complicates September Planning
Every so often the calendar flummoxes
us. Danes are involved this time, but I don’t think we can blame them. Right
now local Danes and adopted Danes are making final preparations for Solvang’s
annual Danish Days that will roll into town in less than two weeks, Sep. 21-23.
It happens every year the third weekend in September. Right?
Almost. Not quite.
Danish Days is a three-day event
beginning on the third Friday in September. This year it will begin on the
third Friday, for sure, but a look at the calendar confirms the scary truth
that most of the festivities will take place on Saturday and Sunday during the
fourth weekend of the month. Some confusion has arisen because this year the
first day of September falls on a Saturday. Ironically, we are in the midst of
one of the shorter months that nonetheless in 2007 contains five weekends.
Saturday night’s dinner-dance at the
Vet’s Hall sponsored by the Rebild Society is one of Danish Days’ premier
events. This year the Rebild committee was shocked to discover that the
city-owned Veterans’ Memorial Building was not available. Months ago it had been booked for a wedding.
Quite innocently the clerk at City Hall, knowing that the Danish Days banquet would
be scheduled for the third weekend in September, checked the calendar and
booked a request for a wedding reception on Sep. 22, a date that gave all
appearances of occurring on the fourth, not the third, weekend of the month.
Of course the banquet will go on. This
year, thanks to the continuing community spirit of Old Mission Santa Inés, it
moves to the Mission’s parish hall. For me this venue is serendipitous. It
reminds me of my favorite Danish Days theme, going back to the ’60s or ’70s,
when Solvang was a Danish jewel in a Spanish setting.
Viva Danish Days!
Danish Days draws notable visitors
Adding luster to the celebration will
be the return of master puppeteer and storyteller Randel McGee, who missed last
year, but recently, has shown up annually during Danish Days in the persona of
Hans Christian Andersen, randomly strolling the streets of Solvang as well as
stopping for storytelling sessions at specific venues on the official schedule
of events.
Traveling all over the world from his
home base in Hanford, Calif., during the last dozen years Randel has continued
to enhance his impersonation of Andersen and is always an audience favorite.
His CD featuring several sprightly Andersen tales is currently available.
Also among this year’s Danish Days
revelers will be Hanne Pico Larsen, the Danish folklorist who spent several
months in Solvang studying the community, particularly its tourism and ethnic
heritage, as the subject of her Ph.D. dissertation from the University of
California Berkeley.
In fact, Danish Days is major focal
point of Hanne’s research. She will be coming to Solvang from her current home
in Chicago, accompanied by her father and stepmother who are visiting from
Denmark and will be seeing this area for the first time. Hanne, who endeared
herself to nearly everyone she met here, will be doing
a lot of visiting, including a stop at Elverhøj, where she will present the museum
with a bound copy of her dissertation.
Scandinavian Books Galore
Danish Days gives
Among the authors spotlighted are Hans
Christian Andersen, Isak Dinesen (more commonly known in Denmark as Karen Blixen)
and Nordic mystery writers in translation (a large group dominated by Swedish
author Henning Mankell).
Place of honor in a wide array of
cookbooks goes to “Cooking Danish”
by Stig Hansen ($34.95). Stig, who goes by the sobriquet “The Viking Chef,” has
just produced a lavish volume that he describes as “the only complete
full-color Danish cookbook available in English.” He is pretty much right about that.
There will be a sizeable selection of
Scandinavian dictionaries and learn-the-language books. Store manager Ed
Gregory got an early start installing our Danish Days window display and it is
catching the attention of passersby’s.
Two young men in their early 20s
popped in to ask for a copy of “Concise
Dictionary of Old Icelandic.” For their “obsessive” friend, they said.
They were told, “Well, we might have one.”
“You do,” they replied, “We saw it in the window.”
Once again, VIVA
DANISH DAYS!