More Danish Experiences

On Sunday, I headed south of the city to go to Moesgaard Museum. This is a Danish history museum located on an old manorial estate. Their claim to fame is this bog mummy that was found in the area in 1952:
The body was found in a bog by some peat cutters. The body was in fact so well preserved that many in the village believed that it was the body of a local drunk who had vanished about 20 years earlier. Bogs mummies are very well preserved due to a combination of conditions: very acidic water, cold temperatures, anerobic conditions, as well as the sugars found in the sphagum moss present in bogs. What was really interesting was all the precautions that the curators had to take after the mummy was removed from the bog to keep him from disintegrating. Once the mummy was no longer in the special bog conditions, it had to undergo many treatments to preserve it. Scientists removed many of the organs to determine characteristics about the mummy, such as age, health, and cause of death (ritual sacrifice, most likely). They were even able to remove his stomach to determine his last meal!

Another cool exhibit the museum had was on rune stones. Some of them were the typical rune stones that are used to mark graves or ceremonial sites:
Another one I thought was really cool was this one of Loki, the trickster from Norse mythology.
You can tell that this is Loki because his mouth is sewn shut. Apparently, the trouble started when Loki thought it would be funny to cut Sif's, Thor's wife's, hair off. Thor was very angry, so Loki promised to go and ask the dwarves to make a golden wig for Sif. Loki, trickster that he was, pitted two dwarf clans against each other to make the golden wig and other gifts for the gods. However, when Loki returned to Thor with the gifts, Thor was unimpressed, as none of them were as great as Mjolnir, Thor's hammer. So, Thor helped the dwarves catch Loki, with the provision that the dwarves could have Loki's head. However, when the dwarves were about to chop off Loki's head, he reminded them that they could only have his head, not his neck, as decapitation would require. So, they had to content themselves with sewing his mouth shut.

Another really cool aspect of the rune exhibit was that it made the point that runic was a working language for some time, not just something that was used on gravestones and monuments. There was a wide variety of objects with runic inscriptions. Many were used to mark ownership, or to send messages to others. Here are a couple translations:
And here are some modern-day objects translated into runic.

The museum was set on a large patch of forest. In a field, there were examples of burial sites from around Denmark. Most of them were made with large stones. Because they took so much effort to make, they were often reused once the previous body had decayed. Most often, they also contained offerings or objects to be used in the afterlife, such as food, jewelry, or weapons.
What you can't see in this picture is that the field was also filled with sheep - they were swarming me! I also took advantage of the great weather (around 75F, which sadly enough, feels hot to me now) to walk in the very pretty Danish woods.

Tuesday, yesterday, was a holiday in Denmark. It was Sankt Hans Aften, or Saint Hans Eve. This occurs ever year on June 23rd, the summer solstice. This is a pagan holiday that celebrates the arrival of summer. Bonfires are lit on the beach, because the pagans believed that they would keep away evil spirits that roamed free during the summer. In Denmark, a witch is typically made out of straw and old clothes. The witch is placed on top of the bonfire and burned. This burning sends the witch back to Blocksbjerg, a mountain in Germany were witches were thought to have gathered (this is only one of the many ways that Danish love to diss the Germans; another example being that the literal translation of the word mullet in Danish is "german-hair").

I was invited over to the house of Ulla and Joergen, who are friends of another Ulla I know, a Danish woman who lives in Yakima. We ate a delicious dinner with their daughter Susanne, her husband, and their two granddaughters. One of the granddaughters is heading over the the U.S. soon to spend the summer in Yakima; unfortunately, she leaves at the same time as I head back there. They were all very nice and interesting to talk to - funnily enough, they also mentioned that Danish people are cold and unfriendly initially as compared to Americans. Susanne lived in Greenland for some years, and it was really cool to hear about her experiences there!
Ulla and Joergen live right by the beach, so after dinner we headed down to watch the fires. They told me that they swim there every day, even in the winter! Here was one of the bonfires, complete with a witch:
Then, it was time to light the bonfires. The Danish people also sang songs while the fires were being lit.
One really cool thing, which I think is true of Danish holidays in general, is that everyone participates. There were all sorts of different people there: families with small children, elderly couples, groups of teenagers. It's not considered "uncool" to celebrate a traditional holiday such as this one; there were plenty of drunk teenagers at the beach singing along (the students were extra rowdy because they had just finished school - they also wear sailor hats when they graduate, making it extra hilarious).

Finally, one bonus picture, of the owls that live in the forest where I go running:

Lauryn