Kristin's Camera

Christiania ~

Copenhagen's Fading Alternative Enclave

 

Every society has its rebels and long before the "Occupy" movement,

there was Denmark's Christiania.

 

 

Located in the heart of Copenhagen, Christiania has been a source of controversy from the moment squatters first took over and 'occupied' a military area ~ Bådsmandsstræde ~ more than forty years ago.

 

It's hard for me to imagine desiring an even more progressive atmosphere than what Denmark already enjoys, but every society, even those stitched together by a sea of social safety nets, has its malcontents.   

 

And so I came to Christiania to try and get an understanding of the place through the lens of my camera.

 

 

But Christiania is a bit of a challenge for a photographer.

 

The area has a unique status and is regulated by its own special law, the Christiania Law of 1989.  Christiana has its own school and its own post office. And until recently, even its well-known cannabis trade was tolerated by the authorities.  

And therein lies the tantalizing problem for a photographer.

Because of the unabashed, uninhibited, open air use of pot and hash, some residents get uncomfortable if you take out a camera ~ and spring upon you with yelps and gestures ~ which in any language clearly mean 'put the damn thing away before I smash it.'

 

And so, despite its nearly 1000 inhabitants, what I'm left with after my visit, is a series of strangely empty images ...

 

 

... of a ghost town ghetto of tagged surfaces,

 

imaginative playgrounds, and intriguing sets and stages ...

 

 

 missing their actors.

 

 

But I also had another reason for coming ...

 

 

... memories of a 1984 film called "Midt om Natten" (Middle of the Night) 

with Danish musician Kim Larsen (on the right) who has many times voiced his opposition to established society and instead advocated the right to be different from the mainstream.

(The songs on "Midt on Natten" reflected this philosophy, and it shouldn't surprise anyone acquainted with the Danish mindset that this album become the best-selling Danish album of all time.)

 

In addition to his music, Lasen is also famous for turning down the Danish Order of Knighthood a few years ago.

"Da jeg ikke synes, det sømmer sig for en gammel gadedreng og popsanger at føre sig frem med kors og bånd og stjerner, takker jeg pænt nej til ridderkorset ..." he said, by way of explanation.

"I say a polite thank you and 'no,' as I do not think it befits an old street urchin and pop singer to lead the way with crosses and ribbons and stars."  

(He also said, with that wonderful Danish sense of humor, that "it would have been nice" to instead share a cigarette with the Queen inside the royal residence.)

 

 And now, back to the film...

I saw "Midt om Natten" long ago with my long ago Danish boyfriend.

 

 

(et litografi from 1910 1984)

In the film, two unemployed bohemian plumbers, Arnold and Benny (played by Larsen), create their own little anarchic world in an abandoned factory, falling, along the way, in love with the same girl.

 

In love myself, I bought the album and memorized the lyrics. 

What I remember most about that time, in addition to the music, is the sweetness of holding hands in a movie theater in Århus, listening in the dark to whispered translations, helping me understand the film ...

 

and my visit to Christiania, which some say the film was based upon, was a way to once again touch those memories.

 

And so, soundtrack playing in my head, my friend Lene and I wandered through the crazy tagged campiness that is Christiania. 

 

 

This guy, once upon a time a Californian, discovered Christiania some years ago, and stayed. He was the only person who give me permission to take his photo.

In exchange, I bought a bracelet of beads from him, which he tied onto my wrist ~ a reminder of my visit to Christiania until, years later, I finally cut myself free from it.

 

No longer avant guard or edgy, these days there's almost a quaintness to Christiania, like a time warp where hippies from days of yore make candles and beaded jewelry and carve wooden things to sell, where they play music and use drugs freely... 

In many ways, Christiania feels not so very different from my own town, Asheville.

Except in Christiania, I couldn't escape the nagging feeling I was visiting a zoo, a come and see hippies-in-their-natural-habitat, the place where they deposited the counterculture of decades ago, where we tourists of the new millennium could come and stare for awhile, and then leave for the real time and reality of our technologically advanced lives.

 

Has Christiania become ... a cliché?

 

In fact, it almost felt as if there was more freedom of expression outside the walls of Christiania ~

 

 

where just around the corner, taggers allowed me to take photographs ~

of them in action,

 

 

of emotions being expressed, and of art in process of being created.

 

At last.

 

 When we exited Christiana, Lene pointed out the words painted (for some reason in English) on the backside of the entry gate ~

"You are now entering the EU" it says.

As if we were about to go through customs.

 

A farewell?

Or, a warning....

 

© Kristin Fellows 2012

 

 

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A Fairy Tale Afternoon in Dyrehave ~ 

 Denmark's "Deer Park" 

 

 

A Danish friend and I have spent the afternoon riding bikes (the best way to get around in Denmark) through the forests of Dyrehave, which lies just north of Copenhagen.

There are about 2100 deer scattered throughout the eleven square kilometer park, but today we have yet to see one along any of the trails we have explored.

But we have seen lakes and swans (who apparently crap even more than geese),

 

a very old mill,

 

a trio of picnickers,

 

  and charming traditional Danish houses.  

 

 

Dyrehave, or "Deer Park" was created by Denmark's King Frederik III,

 

 

who in 1669 decided to fence in a forest of beech trees – an area known as Boveskov – and create a royal hunting ground by herding all the wild deer from the surrounding areas into it.  Boveskov was originally the property of Valdemar the Victorious, Denmark's William the Conquerer, but that was more than four hundred years before Frederik got his hands on it.

 

In 1756, Dyrehave was opened to the public.

 

 

Not far from the lake, we came across an old warehouse...

 

and paused to examine the faded yellow bricks making up the exterior wall.

 

 

We could see people had inked or scratched their names into the bricks, along with the names of their towns. Some of the signatures dated back as far as 1901.  Danish graffiti, we laughed ~ more than one hundred years old! 

 

Curious about the building, we climbed up to peek through one of the windows.

 

Through the glass, we could make out a heavyset man with disheveled blond hair, dressed in baggy blue jeans and a torn and dirty old fleece jacket. He turned, saw us peering through the window and with a smile, waved his arm in a curled embrace, wordlessly beckoning us to come inside.

 

Not knowing what to expect, we walked around, searching for a way in.

 

 

Behind the building, I saw a Five, my lucky number, in the tossed-aside bits and pieces of sculptor's stone. I took it as a positive sign that it was okay to further investigate this invitation from a stranger.

 

Eventually, we found a door at the back, across the courtyard from the discarded blocks of stone and my number five.

 

 

We made our way past some metal boxes with intriguing phrases stenciled on them,

 

 

only to discover that we were suddenly in the studio of sculptors

Stine Ring Hansen and Steffen Lüttge.

 

Hansen is celebrated throughout Denmark for her beautiful bronze interpretations of Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales, like "The Ugly Duckling."

 

 

 Kim & I looked at one another and smiled, feeling like we, too, had suddenly stumbled into a fairy tale.

 

Kim chatted with Steffen while I wandered around, taking photographs...

 

 of their art,

 

 

 

their inspiration...

 

 

their relaxation...

 

and, their tools of creation.

 

 

 

An hour passed, and then it started to rain.  

 

We said our goodbyes,

 

then took shelter at a nearby kro

 

 to wait out the rain over hot coffee and æblekage, fresh Danish apple cake with whipped cream and almonds.

 

All in all, a fairy tale of an adventure.

 

 

© Kristin Fellows 2012

 

 

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Going Viking...

 

Going Viking...

 

It was a cool and cloudy late September morning by the waters of the Øresund ~a handful of miles north of Copenhagen along Denmark's picturesque east coast.

 

Not the sort of weather I imagined myself prancing about naked in ...

 

 

if indeed I had even imagined myself prancing about naked in Denmark at all, which at my age, I certainly hadn't ~

(perhaps back in my twenties... but that's another tale for another time)

 

 But if you want to go native in Denmark, you may just have to shed your clothes. In public.

 

And then jump into some very, very cold water ...

as demonstrated by my Danish cousin, Karen.

 

 

The day began innocently enough in the kitchen of Karen's cosy farmhouse, one of my favorite places in the world, 

 

with a cup of hot coffee and a slab of fresh bread with cheese and jam on it.

 

The first of my many visits to this beautiful old farmhouse happened when I was just 11 years old.

 

I met my cousin Karen, also 11, for the very first time. 

 

I stayed for several days, not knowing a word of Danish other than chocolade (chocolate) and tak (thanks) and farvel (goodbye.)  

Each morning, we rode bicycles across the countryside to Karen's school, a completely bewildering experience for me.

 

Isolated as I was by language,

I still have vivid memories of those sweet days ~

Karen pointing to things around the farm -- cat, rock, house -- and patiently saying their names over and over to me in Danish;

lying in bed at night, warm under a dyne (down comforter), in a tiny bedroom up under the thatched eaves of the farmhouse, listening in the dark to hushed voices murmuring in the kitchen below.

I felt like Heidi.

Or at least a Danish version of her.

 

The next time Karen & I saw one another, we were teenagers in London ~

where I was a senior in high school.

 

 

Years passed before we saw one other again, back at the farm in Denmark,

not long after she'd had her first baby, Anne Sofie. 

A few more years went by, and suddenly, somehow, that little baby had become a teenager, and I was again visiting the farmhouse ~

 

 this time with my own ten-year-old daughter, Zoë (in the floppy blue hat)

 

 

 

These days,

 

the farmhouse looks like this ~

 

 ~ and Karen and I look like this ~

 

 

And so here I was, visiting again, and completely comfortable in that cosy plaid chair with my hot coffee, cheese and bread, when I heard Karen say,

 

"Would you like to come with me sometime when I take my morning swim in the Øresund?"

Karen had told me about her early morning, post jogging dips in the chilly waters that separate Denmark from Sweden.

 

I'd also heard about "becoming a Viking" (swimming naked in the Øresund) from another Danish friend who does the Viking thing each morning after he runs, regardless of time of year, temperatures, or the need to cut a hole in the ice first.

 

Sure, I said, envisioning a nice warm and sunny morning, sometime off in the future, perhaps on another trip.

 

Okay, said Karen. We leave in five minutes.

 

 What?!  Apparently the time had come to lay claim my Viking heritage.

Well, okay, I said, I'll just grab my swimsuit.

 

No swimsuit, Karen said with a laugh.

 

What?!

 

"In the winter, when it's freezing and you have to swim in the ice," said Karen said (who as you can see form the photo above, knows all about doing this from personal experience) "you'll find out that it's not a good idea to wear a suit at all. If it's that cold, you won't be able to get it off when you come out of the water, as it will become frozen to you."

 

But there's no ice today, I pointed out.

 

"I think you will feel more comfortable if you are just like everyone else," Karen replied (thoughtful as always), "and besides, you won't be a real Viking unless you swim without anything on."

 

And so ~ off we went.

 

When we arrived at a small parking lot, adjacent to the pier from which we were to take the plunge, the whole scene looked so innocent and unassuming ...

 

 

I took a quick look around to be sure I didn't know anyone there, then walked a bit nervously out onto the pier, trying not to stare at anyone.

But it was difficult not to notice how stunning the bodies and skin of some of the older 'Vikings' looked, women in their 80s and 90s. Karen said they're regulars.

Encouragement enough. I stripped and cautiously took the plunge.

 

Lost for words. Cold water took breath away.

 

Climbing out some moments later, I couldn't believe the sensation all over my body as the air touched it. If skin could sing and feel euphoric, mine did. 

 

There was only one thought in my head...

 

 

Nu er jeg en Viking!

 

© Kristin Fellows 2012

 

 

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