- Piet Hein
So, I have been exploring my spiritual side for about a year now. I know, I know. If you had told me six or seven years ago that I would one day lie on my bed, stare at the ceiling, and ask myself: “What is the meaning of life?” I would have told you to shut the hell up and pass the Old Monk.
But there comes a time in a man’s life when you do ask yourself such questions, and I have been thinking about religion, whether there’s a God, and most importantly, whether there’s an afterlife. I find it hard to convince myself that such things exist, but for the first time in my life, I could feel a mild curiosity, a sort of “what if...?” sentiment.
Now if you’re thinking about religion for the first time, you tend to gravitate to the exotic. Hippies come to India, but where do Indians go? I am a Hindu, and was surrounded by Catholicism in university, which cuts out two options. Besides, I was more interested in the origins of it... in the legends and myths that gave that particular religion its shape.
Of course, many religions started in the North African desert landscape. Someone who visited the Sahara said he could understand why – the supreme beauty of the desert, its awesomeness (in the non-Americanism sense) somehow inspires you to think beyond the mundane, he said.
My finances meant a trip to the Sahara was out of the question. So I was delighted when Mandy suggested on an impulse that we drive up to Denmark. If the extreme weather and beauty of the Saharan desert gave rise to one form of religion, the Nordic region is the other extreme. The long freezing nights in winter and the cold, endless days in the summer, when a dim sun hangs about for pretty much all of the six months leading up to the next winter, at which point the ice and snow take over; and all this fringed by glacial arctic waters. This inspires a different sort of awe, and the Germanic myths took seed there, and left behind a stunningly rich ream of myth, religious belief and literature. Some of this seeped over to England when the Vikings conquered the North. My mate Laurie reckons he has Viking blood in him. I can well believe it, based on his reaction this one time a girl tipped his beer over at the bar.
Now, I knew very little about the region before we set off – I had been to Finland once before, and had been suitably impressed by Helsinki’s architecture –grim buildings frowned down upon the freezing inhabitants walking through the town square, giving the place an air of foreboding. But I hadn’t seen enough of the country to judge – it was just Helsinki and Espoo, where the Nokia factory is located – not a very religious experience, there wasn’t even the annoyingly messianic air that Steve Jobs used to put on over at Apple. Olli-Pekka Kallusvuo, Nokia’s CEO at the time, was frustratingly self-deprecatory.
With regard to Norse myths, most of my knowledge came from the poetry of a fictitious character in AS Byatt’s Possession, a multiplayer game called Ragnarok (oddly, the same name as Byatt’s character’s poem) and from that Led Zeppelin song.
I won’t go into Norse mythology too much, but suffice it to say there are links to all the other myths and religions we are familiar with. There is the same tale of resurrection as in Christianity, and their beliefs around the afterlife – an endless war waged to amuse the more bloodthirsty Gods – is similar to the Greek belief during Homer’s writing of the Iliad.
Denmark is the country furthest south in the Nordic region, or at least, the only country that doesn’t stretch out beyond the Arctic circle. But it was north enough for me. We set off from Hamburg, where M. had just finished her exams, ignoring the lure of Flensburg (the last German town on the Germany-Denmark border) and headed north-ward. This was my first really aimless trip – we were just driving with no particular destination, deciding to simply go to the first town that caught our eye, and stay at the first reasonably priced hotel we came across.
The German countryside is quite beautiful, but I was still disappointed initially that Denmark was not very different. I don’t know what I expected really. But slowly some subtle differences began to surface. Germany is quite cheerful – the shops and town centres are usually painted in stark, bright colours quite pleasing to the eye. Denmark was somehow softer, more subtle. And the weather and the landscape also seemed to dull slightly as we moved further north – the sky turned from blue to iron grey.
We stopped for a hotdog (Danish hotdogs are the best in the world, according to M.) and scoured a map of the part of the country that's part of continental Europe (you have to cross part of the Baltic Sea to get to Copenhagen and the rest). Aabenraa was on the coast and sounded promising. It’s one of those names that sound vaguely familiar, but you can’t quite place it.
Aabenraa turned out to be a little coastal town with some industrial-looking harbours and some unimaginative architecture. For some reason it depressed us both, and we decided against sticking around. But if any citizens of Aabenraa come across this and object, I humbly beg its pardon; no town deserves to dismissed out of hand in a couple of lines, but that’s how we felt.
So we decided to head to the next town on the map: Kolding. It didn’t sound very exciting but when we reached it much, much later on, we loved it. But that’s in a bit. First we had to get out of Aabenraa and on to the main road, which proved tricky. However we seemed to keep heading for the same, massive, yellow crane no matter which direction we drove. Finally, we went off the beaten track slightly and took a rather rustic-looking road.
After a point, we were so hopelessly lost that we could just about make out the bay, so we headed in that direction – insofar as the winding, weather beaten track would allow. Along the way, M. was sharp enough to spot a sign on the side of the road, and she backed up to have a look at it. The road was only big enough to hold the one car – but the area was so deserted that it was extremely unlikely that we would be blocking someone else at any point.
Out we went on to the deserted farmland towards a rock of some sort, the ocean on one side, and a few sparse trees on the other. The only sign of humanity was a few tractor trails on the parched farmland. As we went closer to the rock, I realised it looked vaguely familiar. It was a dolmen – an ancient tomb, supposed to be incredibly rare. The plaque said this one was unusually large, and probably plays host to the remains of six or seven farmers from the 12th century or whatever.
It was incredibly desolate, looking at this dolmen in the middle of nowhere, and at the same time ridiculously exhilarating to think we had discovered something; even if we only stumbled upon it completely by accident.
Anyway, back on the road, we came across a kindly couple who conveyed, through sign language, the way to get back onto the main road, and we headed Kolding-wards.
This was much better. It was a lovely town with sloping roads and quirky buildings and structures strewn across the streets. We checked into the first hotel we came across, an ancient building on the outside while the interior was decked with strange paintings and ornate mirrors. I was a bit creeped out, to be honest, but that was part of the charm. An unlimited supply of excellent coffee was the icing on the cake.
So I wanted to go to a museum or some other place of interest where I could further my education in Norse mythology, and M. wanted to chill out on the beach. We were not entirely successful in either endeavour. There was just a castle at Kolding, of historical interest certainly, but not really of mythological interest. And the beach was not the chilling out type: it was entirely silent and empty of people, thought it did have a haunting beauty to it.
About the Koldinghus Castle, well it is a 13th century structure perched on a hill with a sheer drop on one side all the way down to Kolding Fjord – a river that originally marked the border between Denmark and the Duchy of Schleswig. It was built to keep the war-like dukes of Schleswig in their place when they got a bit too ambitious.
The building itself was quite unlike anything I had seen before. Not being an expert in architecture, I can’t really express myself very well. It had a sort of clean cut and rich quality that I am now beginning to associate with Northern Europe and, oddly enough, Protestant churches. Though it is a restored castle (a fire all but destroyed the original) they have apparently stayed faithful to the historical design.
I desperately wanted to go in, but after M. and I debated for about an hour whether we could pay the entrance fee or not, we decided we couldn’t afford it: it was a straight choice between visiting the castle and eating for the rest of the day.
Fortunately, we wandered into the (free) courtyard area, and discovered a little staircase in the corner which gave us a sort of backdoor entry into the castle, and even though I feel really guilty about this (if the Kolding authorities come across this blog please do contact me – I can afford to pay retrospectively now) I’m glad we broke in. The view from the top of the north tower is the image that will define Denmark for me.
Then to the beach, which really was nothing more than a few yards of sand that fringed a bay of sorts. You could see the houses on the other side. The water itself was cold and clear – you could see every pebble at the bottom.
For a small town, Kolding had a pretty vibrant night life. The extremely pretty town centre was pretty empty, but you could hear the night clubs blaring and the screams of laughter. Rather lamely, we chose not to participate, instead eating an excellent pasta at the local restaurant and downing a couple of beers.
We were so enchanted by the town centre that we went back the next morning to check it out in the daylight. And yes, the creepy man we saw standing in the dark did turn out to be a statue – and a weird one at that.
We soon said goodbye to Denmark – we could only afford to stay for the weekend – and headed off back towards Germany, where the delights of a RyanAir flight to London awaited me. We only stopped to make one last purchase in Danish kronur – hotdogs, of course.
For me Denmark was all about that image from the top of the castle. Though I can’t explain exactly what went through my mind at the time, suffice it to say I got what I came for.