27 August 2019
On the 27th, my one full day in Denmark, I visited Lejre. Only once I was there did I learn that this town is considered by archeologists to be where much of the epic poem is set, which was especially fun for me because I had enjoyed reading Beowulf in high school just a few years ago.
“On the basis of legendary analogues, specialists in the Old English poem Beowulf have long inferred that the action of the main part of that poem is situated at the village of Gammel Lejre on the island of Zealand, Denmark. Archaeological excavations undertaken from 1986 to 1988 under the direction of Tom Christensen of Roskilde Museum yielded spectacular confirmation of that inference by uncovering the remains of two great halls at Lejre dating from ca. AD 680 to 990, one built on the site of the other. At that time, this discovery had little impact upon Beowulf scholarship, in part because the chief monograph reporting on the excavations was available only in Danish. In 2004–05, however, a new round of excavations revealed that a still earlier hall had once stood elsewhere at Lejre. This hall has been dated to the mid-sixth century, very close to the time when the action of Beowulf is set. The question of the Danish origins of the Beowulf story is thus now highlighted.”
http://www.brepols.net/Pages/ShowProduct.aspx?prod_id=IS-9782503527345-1
Bo Christensen had shown me how to get to the train station 10 minutes from his house and had helped figure out how to take the train to Lejre the night before, so getting to the town itself was pretty easy. He also lent me an old out-of-use iPhone with a google maps screen shots of how to walk the 3km or so from the train station to “Sagnlandet Lejre.” This turned out to be helpful because although I struck out along the road parallel to the tracks as the picture showed, after 2km of my scenic walk, I realized I was on a different road than I had expected. Google Maps on the iPhone may have not done much else, but it did show my location, and I saw that I was going the right direction, just a bit more south than I needed. So, I got to walk along a more private road in between some fields, and then through a forest until I got up to the golf course mansion that was the midpoint on the original route. There was a bit of thunder and lightning far in the distance, and it rained slightly as I was going underneath the trees. Also, I saw many wild pheasants.
In the end, the detour was just right for the timing of the day. I got to Lejre Sagnlandet later than I thought I would, but I finished seeing everything there right before Bo came to pick me up (more on that later).
Sagnlandet Lejre is a reconstruction of a Iron Age village, where archeologists from around the world to gain new knowledge about the people of the past through practical experimentation with their recreations. On one of the signs I read that they built a house in the style and construction of the Iron Age, and then lit it on fire to see and record what would have happened in similar situations in the past.
For example:
My mom had highly recommended coming to see Sagnlandet in Lejre after coming and enjoying it a lot several decades ago. One of my favorite features was one that was only set up in the past 5 years or so (by a huge set of volunteers, and something like 5,000 man-hours). This is a stone viking ship monument, modeled after the style of one several kilometers off. I had a lot of fun with trying to get the perfect picture with my camera stand. In one case I had it spread-eagled against a nearly vertical rock face, balancing one foot on a dime-sized indent. For another picture the boulder in the middle of the field where I wanted the picture from was not high enough for the right angle, so I ended up balancing a random piece of firewood on it, then balancing my big water bottle on its top (which was only several inches wide, being a wedge from when they had moved the stones), and then using the three flexible legs of my camera stand to pinch over the mouthpiece of the water bottle lid, and hold the camera up for the picture with me in it (the stories are better than that pictures, which aren’t posted here).
Of course I wondered whether I could get in the picture to provide the “human interest” component.
Just a few minutes after I finished at Sagnlandet, Bo and his daughter Laura picked me up, and after gleaning a few nearly ripe apples of some trees on the way out, we had dinner with his parents, Hans Erik and Lisbeth (hopefully I have the spelling right), Lisbeth pulled out some pictures from when I and my family were her last, which she realized was practically 16 years to the day. I believe I have added 3-4 feet since then.
Sincerely,
Samuel Rausch
The success of this day was made possible by Bo Christensen and his family, as well as the Issaquah School District (for their handy surplus sale where I got my camera and its increasing famous stand for $5. If you’re in the market for a small camera and near Issaquah, check them out.) Köszönöm szépen! (Thank you very much!)
Hungary4Harmony 