I must not omit to tell you about one of the Danish festtivals [sic] which I never heard of anywhere else, Fastelavn. Very likely it may be everywhere, save in America, only I never heard of it. It comes just before Lent, and I think it must have something to do with that, though it surely has no religious element now, and it comes on a Sunday and Monday, not Wednesday. In general character it is more like our Hallowe'en than anything else we have. It is primarily a children's time, though the elders sport around the restaurants in somewhat carnival style. The youngsters are supposed to get up before their parents, to beat them with little twigs and to call for Fastelavn buns. The child who lives just down the corridor from me was awake nearly all night, anxious lest she sleep too long! She was up by seven, very early in Denmark, and I think her mother must have helped her dress in her little fancy carnival costume with bells on all its little poitns. She was joined by three other little folks belonging in another professorial family and they sported about presumably waking Father and Mother with the Fastelavnris, the twigs above mentioned. Do not think of these as plain twigs! Not at all, they are little bundles of tiny twigs, with candles and small toys and gay decorations tied on and they fill the confectioners' windows for ten days or so before Fastelavn, cost 15 - 50 cents. The buns which make as [sic] essentialpart [sic] of the breakfast are a glorified Wiener Brød about as different from ordinary stuff as are our Hot Cross Buns. After this group of children had played around a spell there was a telephone from another Father - "Tell the children to come over here, we can't stay in bed any longer!" Of course they could not get up until "waked" by the children. This was on a Sunday and on Monday, behold, little Bitta came to Dr. Landis' roomand [sic] to mine to wake us up! And she really did wake him to her great joy - but I was unfortunately half dressed! She invited us to eat the Fastelavn buns with her that morning.Another side of the celebration is seen in the begging of children about the streets. One man told me that when he was a boy they went about with little bags and collected buns at every house! Now they [sic] children who are dressed in awful old clothes as I saw them in a little town where I was that week-end go about singing old Fastelavn songs which everyone seems to know and asking for little coins. The six-year old child in the family where I was was most excited - she took the money to the door every time there was the ringing of the bell or the sound of singing. Somthing [sic] of the same goes on the city - I saw children out in costume as late as Monday afternoon with their coin-boxes and startled nearly to pieces by giving her as much as five cents, because to be sure she had on a U. S. A. cap!
In some of the country towns there survive remnants of the old customs, one of which near København in Soøre Magleby is the election of the "Cat-king". In a barrel hung over the main street is supposed to be a cat (now omitted in these humanitarian days). The farmers gather in procession on horseback and in old-fashioned costume and ride under the barrel and try to beat it to pieces. The one who gives the finishing blow as he rides under is thereby elected "Cat-king" and must give a feast for the whole crowd at his farm. At another town there is a similar thing in boats, though this is not as old. Many people go from the city but it was beastly windy this year and we were busy on Monday at the time of the cat-king episode, so I did not go.
The succession of dinners and social engagements of varied sorts continues. At one dinner I sat beside a Capt. Michelsen (sp?) who is well-known here as an explorer of Greenland. One of his first remarks was "Of course MacMillan is a fake - everybody knows it." This comment on the idol of the Maine coast! Of course there was the interesting chapter of Dr. Cook to discuss - a sure-enough fake who at first took in Eøbenhavn, and also there were asperions [sic] cast at Peary. He, it appears went on an astonishing number of miles per day as soon as he lost his last white companion! Capt. Michelsen said there had been some recent investigation by our finding out exactly what Capt. Michelson ... [last line on page is cut off]
flask was. On my other side was the guest of the occasion, a reserved and rather shy (?) Englishman, young, representing the London Times in an assignment over here for some special things. Capt. M-- leaned across me and told the boy how he had himself been with the Prime Minister, Stauning, the day before just before young Mr. Parker was to have his audience with him. Parker was three minutes late, and said Captain Michelsen, "The Prime Minister said, 'Where the Hell is that Englishman?['] Poor Englishman boy got all colors of the rainbow and did not know what to say. But later the Cpatain [sic] seems to have retreived [sic] himself, for they went off into the library and talked Greenland, also one of the things the boy was to find out about. You see, Greenland is Danish, and has not been too cordial in the past, and it seems much in the public eye this year.
There is one tiny little venture in a University house for woeman [sic] students and the plan for one to house about 50, so they are raising money for both. There was an entertainment the other night to which I went - and it surely felt like home in some ways, for a men's student singing club (= Glee Club) sang. It might have been Dartmouth! Very good, with the same type of good songs. One difference, a few older men included, professors, I should guess, who like to sing. One must have been sixty. Afterward they went singing down the street, the first time I have heard that here, but I am not in the right part of the city. The rest of the entertainment was the reading of some fine Danish things by a very popular retird [sic] professor of Danish Lit, and a man who made things real. I could get most of one thing, the death of an old sinner who is finally dragged into Heaven by the preacher. One other was a dialect thing of which I got nothing, and only a little of Number three. Also a woman sang, a "Royal Chamber-singer", which may mean that she did not aspire to the opera. My neighbor who speaks very good English told me she had long since "retreated" - but she still sang well. The place of this was the University Fetsal, a beautiful big room, though too small for the university of 3,000 students. It is a big quadrangle, with the royal box on one side and opposite it the pulpit-like place where speeches are given I suppose. Huge painitng [sic] around the walls, in architecturally devised spaces, with some fine carveld panelling below. A funny little gallery way up high, almost like a running track, where the singers are said to be a university gatherings. The stage for the other night was a temporary affair at one end of the room. I should like to see it for some University reception for it has a fine floor, and would become good clothes, men with decorations and such.
Yet another occasion was a "Frokost" at a Husmoderskole (guess that!), one of these cold lunches glorified. Each student had to prepare one of these wonderful dishes, you just can have no idea how that table looked, with about thirty or more of these platters arranged along it, with flowers and so on. It was the room where the girls usually eat, and there were a few mothers as guests beside a former teacher whom I know, the Principal and I who sat with the teacher of the course at one end. You took samples of as many of these things as you could, lobster whichlay [sic] whole on the plate but which had its back off and windows in its big claws. Meat taken out, fixed with salad dressng, returned, and decorated with little things such as truffles and green bits. Lots of things were is [sic] jelly, they like to do that, a roast cut into very thin slices, with little jellied mounds of vegetables along the sides of the platter. I made the mistake of taking a whole little mound of peas - I should have taken only a third or so - but they were so small! Liver paste I am going to know about when I come home - it seems tome [sic] just as good as Pate de Foie Gras and is not expensive at all. This was in a brown jelly, decorated. And there was a salmon with skin, fins and head off (rare) and the pink meat keeping the outline of the fish which was furnished with sales cut from bits of truffles and with a truffle eye, all embedded in a clear grey jelly. I can't remember all of them- but they were all worth it. Coffee and cheese afterward. As different from a show lunch at a Home Ec. school with us as you could imagine. But very nice. The school is "practical".
This week I go to the dedication of the new radium station at the Finsen Institute and that will be another story. I am sure.
[Unsigned, but written by Abby H. Turner]