Provenance

It was March and everyone at the Danish folk high school I went to had the flu. The doctor came over and over. Some people could not get out of bed. I had chills and fever some of the time, but I took an Excedrin and went out to class and to meals. The worst of it was that I was due to visit my second cousins for a weekend. Three couples had been organized from across the Danish peninsula to meet their American cousin. I hoped I was no longer contagious, but I could not deflect the expectation.

Putting on my warmest red sweater with a woolen cowl neck, I walked out to the bus in the wet weather. Trees budding and crocuses showed it was spring, but it was cold. The Danish winter, though dark, had actually been less harsh than I expected. When my host, Bodil, picked me up, we drove through the neat suburban streets. Danish red and white flags stood out in the yard of a neighbor. “Someone is having a birthday,” she said. I had seen student friends celebrating each other’s birthdays with small Danish flags flanking their breakfast plates.

The twins, Jonas and Axsel, had spent much time with Bodil growing up. Dark haired, trim and attractive, they all had grown children now. Our grandfathers were brothers. I never knew mine, Hemming Hansen Frost, as he died when my mother was small. He had gone to America, while theirs, Karl Hansen, was blinded at a young age. He remained in Denmark, worked at schools for the blind, married two wives and had five children. Jonas, who taught English, had knit all the cousins together across the Atlantic, with Christmas cards and photos over the years. The name my grandfather took, Frost, was the name of a farm which had once been in the family.

Jonas and Axsel had married sisters. When we sat down to a big dinner, roast beef and green beans, the six couples and myself, I at first understood what they were saying to each other. Indicating this was a mistake, as they began to speak more Danish. Most were less comfortable in English than Jonas, but they translated when I got too lost. Danish is an earthy, humorous language. I didn’t get the many jokes.

With sunlight pouring into the dining room, there were still lighted candles on the table to give it life. The point was discussion, reminiscence for them, explanations for me. They told me that the only time anyone left Denmark was during the hard times in Scandinavia in the middle of the 1860’s. By this time I had seen the neat farmsteads and towns, the opportunities for education at every level, though I would not be around for the long, lovely days of the summer. 

I was still a little sick, nauseous whether I ate or not, and my limbs ached. I tried to hide this and enjoy their company. After the meal, we walked around the neighborhood and came back for coffee and prune cake. Axsel sat down at the piano and Bodil passed out the folk songbooks they had used as young people. All the cousins sang together as the light faded on the afternoon. A rich moment.  After that? Another long meal: Smorrebrod, or breads with toppings of liver pate, egg salad, ham with vegetables, pickled beets, fish and salad. 

As soon as I got back to school, I wrote to my mother, Florence, who would have loved to have visited her father’s homeland, Denmark. Her mother, Gina Ellingson, was the daughter of Norwegian immigrants who settled in southeast Minnesota. My father, John Kronlokken, no longer living at the time of my Danish visit in 1995, was the son of Norwegians with roots in south central Minnesota. Our ancestors thus found places comfortable for them in the new world, bringing their genetic makeup with them. My parents met at Luther College, established in 1861 to train pastors and teachers for the Scandinavian community.

The word “provenance” denotes place of origin or early history. We often use it to talk about the origins of the food we eat. But I have also noticed that personal characteristics and traits can be traced through looking at one’s origins. For instance, I have no patience for laissez faire capitalism as my Hong Kong friends did (pre-1997), given its run-away path towards income inequality. I am happier with the regulated economy of Nordic states. In Denmark, natives told me that it was said, “no tree should be taller than any other tree.” This leaves little space for extremes in art, class or even excellence. I think it may be a fair price to pay.

The European Film College in Denmark was a one-year program intended for students who hadn’t committed to university yet. It occupied a beautiful new campus designed by Heikkinen-Komonen Architects. Most of the students found it austerely modern. They decorated their rooms with things they brought from home to make a coziness they were used to. In this area, I did not share the habits of my kindred. I loved the plain, simple lines the Finnish architects had laid out and felt no need to adorn my room with anything. 

Most of my Danish relatives’ homes were full of heirloom furniture, the provenance of each piece known and beloved. In one house paintings and drawings were hung two or three deep on the walls, as there had been many artists among our ancestors who could not be ignored. In this too, I was glad I had not been given the task of preserving so much history. My own way is to strike out for the new and live as simply as possible.

The great respect for nature evident in the north is a hallmark of my family background. My own parents enjoyed the woods, canoeing and bird watching. The same could be said for all my relatives. Technologies for living in northern climates have always worked with the particular ecology found there. 

Beyond a certain seriousness, Scandinavians have been seen as dour. I haven’t found this to be true. A penchant for realism, in my experience, leads to a wry humor about the arrival of humans in the world. We are something of a joke, only a part of the world, and should not, therefore, take ourselves too seriously!

And notwithstanding the idea that no tree should be taller than others, great artists have come from many of the Scandinavian countries, achieving grudging acceptance. Edvard Munch heard the “enormous, infinite scream of nature” and depicted it in memorable paintings, living near Oslo until his death. Henrik Ibsen, who is seen as “the father of realism” on stage, wrote plays which are performed around the world second only to Shakespeare’s. I have been mesmerized by the extraordinary storytellers Sigrid Undset and Isak Dinesen. Ole Rolvaag emigrated to America at 20 and portrayed his pioneer experience in several novels.

More recently, Noma, which opened in the warehouse district of Copenhagen, was for several years designated the best restaurant in the world due to the innovative foraging and sourcing of Nordic natural ingredients by its chef Rene Redzepi. Karl Ove Knausgaard, whose six-volume novel titled My Struggle gripped the literary world in the last decade, is an instigator of this blog. In an interview given to The Evening Standard in August, 2018, Knausgaard talked about the boundlessness of love and the inner life, saying, “My work is about the inner self -- it’s huge, but the physical self is constricted.”

It was this idea, the way the finite physical world interacts with our boundless inner one which prompts this writing. The seam between them and the cross-overs, the inner life becoming actualization and physical life demanding limits, which I find so interesting. Art, innovation and production on one side. Aging, illness and work with physical disability on the other. By necessity we can only be one person, though our empathy with others is vast.

I felt very much like the cousins I met in Denmark. Strong values for family, education and love of the natural world could be seen on both sides of the Atlantic. I did not hear that I had given my cousins the flu and, indeed, went to Jonas and Solvejg's house the next weekend. Representing our families to each other was a pleasure and confirmed my understanding of my own provenance.