(Denmark)…I was in Denmark recently and made a beeline to the coastal town of Dragør. It was the second time I was there, both times on the number 30 bus, which leaves Copenhagen, crosses to the city island of Christianshavn and then travels to the suburb of Amager and onto the island of the same name. The scenery soon turns into countryside, and the houses become more spread out. Close to here is the country’s international airport, which can be walked to from Dragør but does not fill it with noise, perhaps because of wind patterns.
The first time I read of this attractive town was in a short piece of writing by Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano in his book El Libro de los Abrazos (“The Book of Hugs”)—“Durante más de un mes, la abuela vomitó desde la cama un incesante chorro de insultos y blasfemias de los bajos fondos. Hasta la voz le había cambiado. Ella, que nunca había fumado ni bebido nada que no fuera agua o leche, puteaba con voz ronquita. Y así, puteando, murío: y hubo un alivio general en la familia y en el vecindario. Murío donde había nacido, en el pueblo de Dragør, frente al mar, en Dinamarca. Se llamaba Inge. Tenía una linda cara de gitana. Le gustaba vestir de rojo y navegar el sol” (“For more than a month, the grandmother spewed from her bed an incessant stream of insults and blasphemies of the coarsest language. Even her voice had changed. She, who had never smoked or drunk anything stronger than water and milk, was playacting with a raucous little voice. And as she was playacting, she died; much to the general relief of the family and neighbourhood. She died where she had been born, in the town of Dragør, facing the sea, in Denmark. She was called Inge. She had the beautiful face of a gypsy. She liked to dress up in red and sail around the sun.”)—my apologies for any mistakes in translation.
The first time I visited was in an early December, and it was chilly. I found warmth and coffee in the Dragør Bistro, on the corner of Kongevejen and E.C. Hammersvei, which inside has three rows of sketches of local characters, presumably its customers. I walked around the pretty village, which has small, well-kept houses, narrow lanes and cobbled squares, and I said one day I’d come back when I had more time. That time was last month. The weather was perfect as I walked across its marsh, the Øresund bridge in the distance which, and only since recently, is the only road link between Denmark and Sweden. This marsh is where I first saw a Dragør goose.
The town boasts thousands of them, but the living ones have been “exiled” to an area known as the Goose Republic betwixt marsh and fort, honking away in a large, free area of chicken-wire fence and wooden barricades and scuttling after one another in long lines. They are mainly an off-white; in the old part of the town, geese can be seen in wooden carvings, as weather vanes, on an old packet of local salt I saw in its small museum (which has a twisted roof that in its guise as a former town hall was supposed to stop snoopers from sitting on the roof and listening in on secret conversations), on shop signs and in garden ornaments. They far outnumber the humans. The low fort is by the beach, and a line of humble yachts border a breakwater that ostensibly moats the battlements.
It was built during World War I together with four other fortresses, which I will list just because I like their names—Flakfortet, Kongelundsfortet, Mosede and Taarbæk—and has a restaurant inside it; when I was there, a company called Humanic (www.humanic.dk (only in Danish)) was putting on what looked like a Crazy Olympics. Helmeted contestants—and all were men—threw themselves along a greased runway as human bowling balls to knock down skittles; other were tied into a human-size Fussball game, and others dressed in padded costumes that made them look like human hamburger rolls negotiated an obstacle course.
The old part of the town consists of a fishing port (almost all activity ceased now) and the aforementioned narrow lanes and cobbled squares. There is an interesting history. It first came to importance in the 14th century when the Hanseatic League of tradesmen gave it certain business rights in regards to salting fish (the salt came from Lübeck, Germany), which it was a little easier to catch from here than elsewhere in the region, the fisherfolk occupying the place between August and October.
Boxes of herring were marked with one, two or three rings, depending on their quality. In the 16th century, the Swedish King Christian II—known also to a few as By the grace of God, King of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, the Wends and the Goths, Duke of Schleswig, Holstein, Stormarn and Dithmarschen, Count of Oldenburg and Delmenhorst, but only to a few, invited the Dutch, who were at the time far better farmers than the Danes, to settle there, and 25 families took him up on the offer. Traces of them still remain, even though when Christian II died in 1523, that was it for the 126-year-long Kalmar republic, which brought together—never easily—Denmark, Norway and Sweden. He might have been beneficent to the Dutch farmer, but he also was known as The Tyrant. He took over Sweden following the notorious Bloodbath of Stockholm in which scores of people—mainly those supporting the Swedish Sture political party, who favoured the peasantry at the expense of the nobility and clergy (a belief never likely to succeed in medieval Europe)—were executed.
The defeated party’s leader, Sten Sture the Younger, was injured in the mêlée and died on the icy wastes of Sweden’s Lake Mälaren as he was being taken back to Stockholm. His widow, Kristina Nilsdotter of Tullgarn, still considered a hero to the Swedes, took over the defense of her country but was herself finally defeated north of the Swedish capital at the Battle of Uppsala. Did this all come about because of herring? Perhaps.
The inner section of the town is a joy to walk around, and hollyhocks of every colour grow literally everywhere, as numerous as are the geese. The houses have steep, thatched roofs and often an ochre or dark blue colour, while dotted around are old advertising, water pumps and ironwork. It exudes the calm of a warm September weekday afternoon.
I then walked, first passing a tumulus covered in large rune-like boulders, to the neighbouring village of Støre Magelby, which I was told was where the Dutch set up its community. There were no Dutch names in the church’s cemetery, which I reached after walking along a main road but then ducking down some narrow, grassy lanes bordered with neat bungalows. Støre Magelby has a small duck pond, a few thatched cottages and—best of all—a rusting card with a round, rusting sign that said Dragør Sportfiskerforening, which I think means Dragør Sports-fishing Association.