Grateful Friday + Copenhagen

Hello from this lovely spot.

We got here yesterday evening.  I'm grateful to be here.  I don't know why I can't be two places at once, because I always want to be here and then I keep doing other things.

There was an air of neglect around here.  The yard was very overgrown and the house was dirty when we got here.  Adam mowed quite a bit and I trimmed the lilacs so you could walk on the sidewalk without being impaled.   Adam vacuumed and I wiped down the kitchen counters and the rest of everything is waiting for us today.

Also, I'm looking forward to walking with the ladies and we are going to make potato salad too.  I want to quilt with Olivia.  

This is all to say, I'd better get moving.

I'm grateful for America too.  Happy 4th of July!  I think we're on the struggle bus in a lot of ways, but I also have hope that despite the polarization and crazy misinformation and just plain crazy, things are OK.

We have people who care deeply and we all want the same thing: a good country.

Here's some travelogue for you: 

June 22-June 24, 2025

Copenhagen is beautiful and friendly and colorful and treacherous if you aren't wearing tennis shoes (cobblestones).

I've never seen so many bikes in my life.  

We stayed in a charmingly crooked apartment in the middle of the action.  When I set down my roller bag, it rolled away because the floor was so uneven.  

This is the little hall to the bathroom.  Walking around the apartment felt like a funhouse.

I loved how light filled it was.

This was the world's most uncomfortable couch, only matched by the Danish torture contraption that was the bed.  The second night I gave up and tried to sleep on the little bench over by the window.

There were a washer and dryer up this perilous little set of steps.  Adam dropped me off and went to return our rental car and I attempted laundry.  

I was using Google Translate to understand the washer and dryer.  I decided not to go with extra torrent.  Sounded dangerous.

This is us on the colorful escalator to the Metro on our way to church on Sunday.

Here's where we went to church:

The set up of the church reminded me a little of the Yale ward where we attended in New Haven.  Upstairs there was a big multipurpose room with chairs set up and that was the chapel.  It was way bigger than what we had at Yale though.  It was a full sized ward with an overflow down below.  About 5-6 people greeted us at the door.  They would say "hej" to us and we would answer with hello so they knew that we spoke English.  They all spoke English too and were super friendly and welcoming.

I got exactly three bits of information out of the meeting.  The talks were based on Elder Stevenson's talk from General Conference.  One sister missionary who spoke was from Fresno, CA and the other was from Layton, UT.

I liked hearing the meeting in Danish though.  I liked the singing and I was glad to be able to take the sacrament.  Adam told me later that it was meaningful to him to hear the sacrament prayers in Danish and consider that was how his great-grandparents first heard them.

There were a lot of kids in the ward and it was wild how loud it was.  (Granted our ward with very few children and lots of older people is extra quiet.)  I loved how the bishop smiled fondly at the ward the entire time.  He just looked tickled that everyone was there.

My favorite part of the meeting was the pianist.  He seemed to me to be about Braeden's age.  He had a man-bun and was wearing a closely tailored plaid shirt.  He added flair to the songs.  He added extra chords and runs and it was delightful to me.  He sat right in front of us between songs and pulled out a bag of knitting.  He was working on a really complicated pattern using 3-4 different colors of yarn.  I told Braeden about him and Braeden said, "I love this guy!"

I think they would be friends.

After church we walked about half a block to the Copenhagen Temple.

Beautiful!

Other highlights of our time in Copenhagen:

Vor Frue Kirke

The original Christus statue is in this church.  The same artist created sculptures of the twelve apostles.  Copies of them are at the temple in Rome.

Yes, I did switch into my tennis shoes after church so I wouldn't die on cobblestones.

I love going to all kinds of churches and I've noticed that I never quite feel the Spirit in the same way as I do in our churches.  This place felt like an exception to me.  It felt very reverent and sacred.  I just loved it.

We stopped at (you guessed it) Coop for lunch and ate on a park bench near Rosenborg Castle.  We took a walk in the King's Garden.  

Also, in Copenhagen we paid a visit to The Little Mermaid...

...and took a canal boat tour.

We saw lots of great stuff on the tour, including but not limited to the narrowest house in Copenhagen.

The tide was low, and this is how some of the canal bridges were!  I can't imagine if the tide was high!

What it comes down to is that I loved Copenhagen.  I loved it even more with this guy.

Midsommar

Friday was Midsommar Eve and we were not prepared.

It felt like everyone was having a party without us.

We stopped at our favorite lunch destination and got our favorite lunch.

Notice the big strawberry outside?  Strawberries = big deal

We took a picture, because by now, we were super fans.

Here's our cart.  I loved the way you pulled it behind you like a little red wagon.

We bought these strawberries and they were the best strawberries of my life.  I have moved up a strawberry bracket!  They seemed to be a big thing for Midsommar and once we tried them, it was clear that no one would want to eat anything else.  Ever.

As the afternoon progressed, we saw that Midsommar was not your Columbus Day, Groundhog Day sort of holiday.  It wasn't even a Labor Day, Memorial Day sort of holiday.

It was like Christmas.

Everything was closed.  Every restaurant, every store.  Everything!

In every little village we drove through we saw people outside, the women almost all wearing dresses and some with flower wreaths on their heads.  They were carrying picnic baskets (presumably with strawberries inside).

We stopped at Ales Stenar, Sweden's Stonehenge!  It was right on the southern coast.  There were restaurants on the water's edge that looked like they would be great places to eat, but everything was closed.

The waterfront was beautiful though.

There was a little path we hiked up and atop a grassy knoll, there are these huge stones in the shape of a ship.  No one knows how they got there or who put them there.

It was pretty incredible.

There are no Marriotts in Sweden, so we had to branch out.  Adam found a sweet little bed and breakfast in Ystad.

We got there on Friday night/Midsommar Eve and there was no one at the desk.  There was a page ripped out of a notebook and it had our name and a few other guests' names on it with a number next to our name.  There were numbered keys and we just checked ourselves in.

The room delighted me.  I felt like I was sleeping in my grandma's basement.  

Despite our fabulous strawberries, we were in fact hungry for dinner.  After checking into our hotel, we decided to try our luck to find something to eat.  We drove around awhile, but finally found a Max Burger.  It was a fast food burger kind of place like McDonald's.  It was the single place I saw fountain drinks.  There were about six other people in the restaurant and they were all young men about Mark's age.

That is the demographic you are apparently relegated to when you don't have a Midsommar picnic to attend.

Breakfast was a little intimidating the next morning.  Everyone was decades older than us and it was in this small room and I felt like I didn't want to do the wrong thing.

This wee Midsommar decoration on the table made me think someone had made it at homemaking meeting.

(In a continuation of Holidays We Don't Understand, in Denmark on June 23, we were driving across the country and saw enough big bonfires that it couldn't be a coincidence.  I googled it and on June 23, it is Sankt Hans in Denmark.  They celebrate Midsommar then with bonfires and witch effigies and singing songs.)

(Kind of) Related:

Adam and I loved the way beds were in Scandinavia.  Two duvets.  Yesterday Mark and I went to IKEA to buy bins for my kiva at school.  I bought two twin sized duvets with white covers.  Very comfy!

Now if I could just get some of those strawberries....

Sweden: the churches

Friday, June 20-Saturday, June 21 

Until I took an Ancestry DNA test, I considered myself mostly Swedish.  If I'd, you know, looked at my genealogy, I would have seen that that wasn't the case, but I think it was because of my grandpa (Harvey Dahl) and my Great-Grandma Jaynes (aka Grandma with the Brown Eyes), Ellen Arvella Nelson Jaynes.  He was 3/4 Swedish and served his mission there.  She was half Swedish and her dad, Eric, was born there.  They valued their Swedish ancestry and told me about it, so it was also important to me.

(I'm about half English/Scottish so maybe my love of London is genetic.  And now Adam and I want to plan a trip to England, Scotland and Ireland.)

The impetus for our entire trip was that when I was looking at where my Swedish family was from, they were all from the southern part of Sweden!  Really close to each other!  And then Adam's grandma was from nearby Denmark.  What if we went there?  What if?

(Tell Adam if you have a dream like that.  He's a granter of wishes, that one.)

I decided to limit our sojourn to the churches where people who emigrated to Utah were christened.  I thought it was a doable goal.  I was hoping to see where some people were buried as well, but if families stop paying for graves in Denmark and Sweden, they take away the headstone and reuse the grave.  You read that right.  Just pack it down and add another body.

Adam said cemeteries would be like a clown car at the resurrection, person after person climbing out of the same grave.

Some headstones were lined up against rock walls in Sweden.  I don't know if people can come and retrieve them or what.  I read that in Denmark, they grind up headstones and use them to pave roads.

To prepare for our trip, I studied Family Search like it was my job.  I read sources and records and memories and pinned down the churches where our people were christened.  (If I knew Danish and Swedish that would have been a whole lot easier!)

Maybe because of the research I had done, going to the churches was very meaningful to me.  I loved it!  It is still very rural, which was great because it helped me imagine what it was maybe like when they lived there.  It was mostly rolling hills of verdant farmland.  Field after field of barley and rye and wheat waving in the breeze.  I don't know if it was all farmland or more forest back then, but it was beautiful. I loved hearing the birds, and using my Merlin app, I could identify them (yes, I am this nerdy).  The European jack daw was a presence. I imagined my ancestors hearing the ancestors of the same birds. and seeing the same blue skies.  I imagined them smelling the same June scented air.

These wild roses are my favorite flowers that grow in Starr Valley--and now I know they grow in Sweden as well.

It was just the most lovely, photogenic place.   I kept asking Adam why we didn't live there.

I was struck by how well kept the churches in both Sweden and Denmark were and by how close together they are.  You could see another one across the fields.  

Trolle Ljungby

My great great grandfather, Eric Nelson was born there.

Eric died when my great grandma was only 3 years old, so she didn't tell me many memories about him as her father.  I know he meant a lot to her though.

He wasn't christened at Trolle Ljunby, I think because his parents had already joined the Church at the time (they emigrated to Utah when he was two years old).  His parents, Matts and Elna, were both christened at this church and so were their parents.

I can't explain the I'm from here feeling I got over and over.

The next day we saw the rest of the Swedish churches on the list.

Blentarp

Soren Yorgason (Americanized spelling) was christened in Blentarp. He is my Grandpa (Harvey) Dahl's great grandpa.

I read on Family Search that he was 6'4" tall.

He would have had to duck to go into this church.

What is astounding to me is that at the time of his christening, this church would have been 500 years old!  (America is a baby.)

According to what I read, Soren studied the church for three years before joining.  When he was in, he was all in and that decision blessed my life.

Villie

Soren and his wife Karna were married in Villie and she was also christened there.  (Karna's grave is the one we found in Moroni the week before our trip.)

The church was locked, but I held my camera up to the window for a picture inside.

Karna joined the church very quickly upon hearing about it and cried when she first heard the song O My Father, because she recognized truth.  She looks like a woman not to be trifled with.

I love that I have ancestors who immediately took the plunge and also ancestors who didn't enter into anything lightly.  The world needs both kinds of people.

Lyngby

Soren and Karna's daughter Ellen, (my great-great grandmother) was christened in Lyngby.  She is a favorite amongst my sisters and me and we always pose for a picture by her and her husband Alexander Dahl's grave on Memorial Day.  She was a generously proportioned woman and whether we like it or not, when you do the Compare a Face app on Family Search, we all look like her.

I have this picture of Ellen and Alexander hanging in our stairwell and I love it.  There's something about Alexander that reminds me of my dad. (Alexander is from Norway so we didn't get to see where he's from.)

I chose my soda in her honor.

Here's the church where Ellen and her siblings were christened in Lyngby.

Skabersjo

(These are out of the order that we visited them, but this order works with the narrative better.)

My grandma's (Thelma Louise Wood Jaynes) great grandmother, Anna Pearson Oleson, was born and christened in Skabersjo.  While we were on our trip, Emma went to the Salt Lake Cemetery and found Anna's headstone.  Anna's and her twin brother Henry's mother died in childbirth.  They were raised at Skabersjo Castle, where their father, Ole, was groundskeeper.  Henry joined the church first, followed by Ole and Anna.  They left Sweden behind and went to Utah.

The castle is still there.  Here's the private drive (as close as we could get).

On the other end, we could see this view of the back of the house:

Here's the church near Skabersjo Castle where Anna was christened.

Anna did not have an easy life.  I see this picture of her and want to give her a hug.

My Grandpa (Harvey) Dahl's parents were David Dahl and Amanda Pehrson.  David was Alexander and Ellen's son.  Amanda was John Pehrson and Matilda Anderson's daughter.

Here are John and Matilda:

They both left Sweden as young adults and got married once they got to Utah.  They were each the only one in their families to join the Church.

I had the hardest time finding out information about them.  They both were apparently born to unwed mothers and according to my research, that was not looked down upon at the time.  There is a wacky story on Family Search about John being the son of the prince of Sweden, but I don't believe a bit of it.  The story comes from the daughter of one of John's friends who was apparently eavesdropping on John telling her dad the story in Swedish.  They didn't know she'd understand, but!  She did.  

I. Don't. Think. So.

Källstorp

I couldn't find a record for Matilda being christened (maybe I would have had more luck if I knew Swedish), but her mother, Karna, was christened in Källstorp.

It was a very lovely place.

Malmö

My best guess is that John was christened in Malmö.  The big church there at the time was Sankt Petri Kirke (St. Peter's Church).

It was MUCH bigger than the others and more of a tourist destination.  We could go inside.

this was the floor in the Merchant's Chapel

I don't know that there was anything earth shattering about this venture of seeing these churches.  I am not even 100% sure the last church was the right place.  Here's what I do know.  The trip mattered to me.  Between the prep work and walking the churchyards, I felt closer to my family.  I felt increased gratitude that they left everything they knew (this amazingly beautiful place!) for a Gospel they loved.  I appreciate that their sacrifices rooted me in the privileged position of a little girl who knew she was a child of God and that Jesus wanted her for a sunbeam.  

Also, because of what they did, we are all sealed as a family.  What a gift!

I am grateful to live on the rock they planted.