Happy 200th Birthe-day! Heritage trails in Denmark

happy 200th Birthe-day!

Thirteen years ago on this blog, I wrote a post for Bertha's birthday (linked, with video), and since then, I have come to spell her name the Danish way, Birthe, and visited her hometown, gaining new insights into her Danish life.

We drove across the long Storebaeltsbroen bridge leaving Zealand towards Odense, and marveled at the brilliant yellow rapeseed fields dotting the land. 

Birthe (and Mary on May 18) would have had a golden birthday every year!

One particularly interesting discovery was seeing signs for the nearby Viking fortress. When Birthe's daughter Mary Sorensen says "Ve are Wikings!"--she lived a couple kilometers, less than an hour's walk, from this 900 AD circular Trelleborg fortress, and that history would have been present in her life.

Trelleborg fortress (unfortunately closed on Mondays, when we were there)

not her headstone (which is in Providence UT),
but fun to see the word "Mormor" (grandmother)
and her name Birthe, in her location

we stopped at the Vemmelev church
(interior locked)
where both Birthe and Mary were christened,
and where Birthe was married

We looked through the extensive church cemetery trying unsuccessfully to find ancestral headstones for Birthe's husband Jacob Christensen (1851), and their parents Christen Jacobsen (1846), Ane Rasmusdatter (1862), Hans Sorensen (1835)--for future reference if anyone else has better luck. They were buried there, but the Danish graves turn over to new occupants if the old burials aren't maintained, and I imagine from Utah, that wasn't happening. Prior online research hadn't given me any hope that we would find them.

a door she surely knew well

the back side of the church has this distinctive brick work and cross

nearby we found Vandværksvej 2, still a working farm, the land owned by Birthe and Jacob, and later sold by Christian Poulsen, where Mary would have grown up (not sure about the island home Mary recollects so fondly, couldn't quite pinpoint the house location)

we made a quick stop in Fjenneslev on the way home, since I love the Sorensen family home and twin-towered church we first visited in 2014

at the Sorensen home in Fjenneslev
Langtoftevej 4

Visiting the Hans Christian Andersen home and museum, we realized that his life paralleled the lifespan of Brigham Young, and his fairytales would have been published, and part of the milieu our Danish pioneers knew

did they think of the princess and the pea mattresses,
sleeping on the ground with quilts crossing the plains?

HCA home in Odense

the yellow fields out the car window continued to delight throughout the drive, and were featured in a painting in the Copenhagen temple women's dressing room as well

Nyhavn steps

along the Copenhagen harbor Nyhavn, these historic steps still stand
Our Danish pioneers traveled to here and left from this spot

and on, to Zion!