Pages IIII and V

     Our attentions are now being turned to page IIII. It's intriguing to me that he chose to write the Roman numeral for four like that and yet he did. The title of the page is; "Discovered or Invented."
-1487, on the 30th of January the glockenspiel is invented.
-1650, on the 22nd of February the air pump is invented.
-1609, 25th of March, the discovery of the Hudson River.
-1517, the start of the Protestant Reformation.
-1751, on the 30th of December, New Zealand is discovered.
-1791, opening of the first bank in America.
-1551, the first railway in England.
-1833, the first railway in America.
-1441, the printing press is invented.
-1505, Luther entered the monastery.
-1619, first legislative assembly in America.
-1513, discovery of the Pacific Ocean.
-1663, establishment of first printed newspaper.
-1763, Florida is sold to England.
-1460, the art of woodcarving is invented.
-1640, Diet of Worms
-1492, Columbus returned to Spain.
-1550, first English tram.
-570, the birth of Muhammad.
-329, the city of Constantinople is founded.
-970, first ever jury trial.
-1530, Diet of Augsburg.
-1665, England occupies Jamaica.
-1792, France becomes a Republic.
-1775, the start of the revolution in the U.S.
-1765, the Stampact is put into place.
-1767, tea is being taxed.
-1600, the founding of the East India Trading Company.

     Page V is yet another list of facts and figures and carries the title; "Different things."
-1790 The patent law is implemented.
-1780 Riots in London.
-1314 Battle of Bannockburn.
-1750 Corsica is sold to France.
-1690 Bank of England is founded.
-(1650) 1812
-1879 Opening of the Suez Canal.
-1819 Alabama becomes a state.
-1845 Texas becomes a state.
-1837 Michigan becomes a state.
-1803 Ohio becomes a state.
-1870 Virginia becomes a state.
-1899 Cuba is transferred to the U.S.
-1897 Sinking of the USS Maine in Havana's harbor.
-1815 Peace between England and the U.S.
-1840 Queen Victoria and Prince Albert are married on the 10th of February.
-1754 On the 7th of April France captures Pittsburg which back then was called Fort Duquesne.
-1788 A group of New Englanders started a colony in Ohio.
-1798 Congress formed the Mississippi territories.
-1818 General Andrew Jackson captured the fort in St. Marks Florida.
-1831 Pedro I of Brazil abdicates.

Even more dates, people and places. He obviously copied this information from somewhere since he wasn't alive for a majority of these events. While this information is very interesting, it seemingly has very little to do with this immigrants story or life as a whole. So why include it and why is it of interest to us now. Perhaps we should not focus on the jumbled collection of information and spend more time thinking about the source of this wealth of information. The where will allow us some valuable insights into who the author was as a person and what motivated him to create his own collection of random knowledge. For now I'll let you ponder where this info came from and rest assured that all will be revealed once the next two pages come around.

Pages II and III

    

     Since I have already read and translated the entire text, I feel confident in saying that this next page might be one of the more telling ones when it comes to trying to get to know the author and his intentions. It's a very intriguing tapestry of individual lines from a multitude of Danish Battle songs and religious hymns which include some of the works of Laurids O. Kock and N.F.S Grundtvig. They are a collections of melodic celebrations of Denmark and what it meant to be Danish. They elicit our connection with the present while simultaneously strengthening our bonds with the past. The songs accomplish this task via the conjuring of familiar Danish imagery. The flowing fields of wheat, the breathtaking shorelines, the near constant proximity to the sea, the deep seeded history and the language interlacing all facets of the Danish experience.

     Talking from my own experiences I found it extremely telling that he chose to highlight these particular songs. My mother has an incredible gift for taking existing traditional melodies of Danish songs that every school child knows and rewriting them in order to use them for sing-alongs at weddings, birthdays and anniversaries. This helped instill in me an appreciation for the good old Danish songs that had been handed down from generation to generation. Even now as I'm typing these very words, I'm doing so wearing headphones and listening to the wonderful music of such great troubadours as John Mogensen and Povl Dissing.

     Having had the opportunities to listen to a multitude of Danish artists has in many ways allowed me to retain much of my "Danishness."A lifeline if you will, tethering me securely to where I came from while still allowing me enough give to go where I'm headed.

     I can't help but wonder if he chose to copy these words for the very same reasons. Music has the uncanny ability to evoke a multitude of emotions! Perhaps having these few lines was enough to elicit a reaction from the author because they held some sort of importance to him. Were they part of his lifeline, keeping him from drowning in the Great American Meltingpot? Or perhaps they were simply stuck in his head. I mean, who among us hasn't been plagued by a single verse from a song at some point in their life.  

     At the bottom of this post I've decided to add several links to the songs that he had copied lines from along with a few links to songs that I consider important staples in my own music library.
      Page III is titled "Explorers," and consists of a list of notable Scandinavian explorations.
-In the year 860, Iceland is discovered by a Norwegian.
-In 982 Erik the Red was banished from Iceland.
 Erik the Red was the first person to settle down in Greenland, and he called his home Brattahlid.
-In the year 1000, Leif Eriksen discovered Labrador and later Nova Scotia. Later on he discovered Nantucket on the New England coast and the area around the Massachusetts Bay which they named Vinland.
-In 1112 Erik Gnupsøn was the Bishop of Greenland. However, in 1121 he traveled to Vinland and from 1121 to 1409 Greenland was without a bishop.
-1570, the Norwegian Priest Absalon Pedersen Beyer published a detailed history of Norway. He died in 1574.
-In 1576, Martin Frobisher was in Greenland on his way to India.
-In 1568 Christian Aalborg went searching for Greenland.
-In 1579, King Frederick II of Denmark sent forth an expedition and on the 25th of August 1579 they found Greenland.
-1581, Mogens sought to find Greenland. He was decapitated (Mogens Heinason) 18th of January 1589.
-1605, James Hall ventured out and found Greenland, he died on the 23rd of July 1612. In 1608, the Norwegian priest Hans Poulsen went to Greenland as a missionary and he died in 1758.
-1219, Dannebrog is implemented in Denmark.
the Latin name for Hazelnut is Corylus Avellana.
-1036, Knut the Great died.
-1688, there's a revolution in England.
Now here's an interesting collection of names, dates and events. Why in heavens name would he have included this seemingly random information in this book? Food for thought. Personally I have a few facts and a whole lot of ideas relating to the issue of why, but there are still several pages like this one before we get to the actual written account of the family history and while I know where the information came from, his motivations for its inclusion will have to remain a mystery for the time being.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcZLwuBq35U

http://runeberg.org/nfsgudv/9/0198.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jW4gIrImyxc

https://books.google.dk/books?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bctlvz-qpKE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th0gdtRMpG0

     

      

Opening the book.

 
     The inside of the cover is bare except for a bit of Victorian die cut. It depicts what appears to be a "horn of plenty" filled with flowers. An interesting side note here is that these sort of die cuts were traditionally something that girls would play with. To find this in a book containing the very detailed family history of an immigrant couple is quite intriguing to me. Did it come with the book when it was bought. Should we look at this along with the picture on the cover and perhaps consider the possibility that the book started out belonging to someone else and was rehabbed for the purpose of compiling this wealth of memories?
     The opposite page, which also is the first page of the book, has no page number but for our purposes, and due to the fact that the pages from this point on carry some sort of numerical value, we'll designate this page with a Roman numeral I. Here we see the simple words; "Memories from my childhood" by Niels Hemmingsen, born on the 3rd of June 1836. Short and to the point. This might as well be the title of a short story or even a novel, and one has to admit that Niels Hemmingsen's penmanship is spectacular. It speaks volumes to whom the author was as a person as well as to the times he lived in.

The Hemmingsen Text: Diary, family history, legacy.

     Some ten years ago when I was still a student at Northern Michigan University where I was pursuing a degree in history I registered for a history class where the overall grade was largely based upon a large research paper that we were to have ready for the end of the semester. As students we were tasked with finding and defining our own research topic which then went to the professor for approval. Many of my peers chose to highlight different aspects relating to what it meant to live in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Some of them decided to highlight a specific cultural or social group who had helped shape the area. Furthermore, others focused on individuals or organizations that that had left their mark on the areas history.
     For my part, since I was the proud owner of a Danish passport why not try to call attention to the marks that Danish immigrants had left on the area. When I initially brought this subject matter to the attention of my professor he seemed very interested in the potential of the project but was unsure if I would be able to find enough primary sources that I'd be able to use in order to create a successful paper. So I ventured out into the world and started looking for those elusive primary source materials. When I found those who might possess such information and offered them my ideas I was continuously met with the same response ; "The Danish immigrants that came to the area had left no discernible impact upon the local cultural makeup. Try the Finns instead!" Soooo, I wasn't about to take that laying down and I proceeded to dig deeper. Apparently the only people of Danish descent that were worth mentioning were two Danish immigrants in particular. One was remembered for having opened the first brothel in the city of Marquette, while the other one was known quite well to local law enforcement because he ran a drinking establishment where he was running a slew of illegal enterprises out of the back.
     There simply had to be someone else out there. Then the search brought me to a passing mention of the Hemmingsen text, which was apparently left behind by a gentleman whose family had settled in Negaunee Michigan. There they had started the Danish Sisterhood of America which was an organization meant to act as an insurance company which was to help families with funeral cost that might arise upon the death of the insured.
     Needless to say, my interest had been peaked. So where was this text? Had it been translated before? Could I perhaps be allowed to do the translation? So many questions that needed answering! So my wife and I decided to meet with, and join the local Christine Lodge #1 in Negaunee, and where I'm now currently the president. In my capacity as such I have had uninterrupted access to the text for several years and have all but fully translated the text in its entirety.
     Then, lo and behold, I was able to attend the National Convention for the Danish Sisterhood of America in Denver and I spoke with many wonderful people who weren't just celebrating their Danish heritage through actions but who also were able to still converse in Danish which was a huge treat for me. During the convention the issue of retaining said Danish heritage kept creeping into the conversation and I was becoming more and more convinced that whatever history relating to the organization that might be floating around out there should be shared on a national level.
     So in order for everyone to have access to the translated version of the Hemmingsen text I've chosen to make it available to the general public through this blog. There will be no set schedule for when postings are made public but assume that every couple of days there will be several translated pages made available along with my own commentary, which will consist of thoughts and insights gathered during the translation process. If anyone from the readership comes across something that might spur questions or further insight I would implore any and all of you to contact me because I'd be more than happy to shed light on anything that you might have questions about.
     So, that was a lot of me me me me me, so how about we now switch gears and focus on the translation. Stay tuned.......

February 2016 Meeting

Members with completed owl paper cutting project. Photo courtesy of Kris. 

We had a fabulous meeting this month hosted by Kris. She made a wonderful dinner and dessert for all of us!

We discussed having representation at the District Convention coming up in April. It looks like we ill have a handful of members in attendance.

After dinner and our yummy cheesecake dessert we made some traditional Danish Paper Cuttings! This month we made owls that were patterned after jul hjerte!

Our president, Allan sporting his completed owl! 

Our next meeting will be held at the Villa Capri on Monday, March 14 at 6:30 p.m.

Interested in joining our organization? New members are always welcome!

For more information on membership please contact our secretary- Amy Ahola amyahola@hotmail.com

National Convention and Upcoming Lodge Meetings!

We have returned safely home from a wonderful National Convention in Denver, Colorado!

A special thank you to all of the sisters from Lodge #21 in Denver 

for hosting a fabulous convention this year! 

We have returned with some fantastic ideas and look forward to sharing them with you at our upcoming meetings! (Remember- the 2nd Monday of the month at 6:30).

Monday, November 9, 2015 - Jackson's Pit in Negaunee

Monday, December 14, 2015 - Ahola-Johnsen house in Marquette

to RSVP and/or for directions contact Amy at (906) 225-5594.

Hope to see you all soon! 

Upcoming Meetings

Negaunee Danish Sisterhood Upcoming Meetings:

Mondays at 6:30 pm

February 9- Jasper Ridge, Ishpeming

March 9- Root 41, Beaver Grove

April 13- Perkins, Marquette

May 11- The Villa, Marquette

June 8-  Red Lobster, Marquette

July 13- Border Grill, Marquette

August 10- BYOD Miner’s Park

RSVP not necessary, but appreciated - 

secretary amyahola@hotmail.com