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Ancient Burial Grounds and Interesting Shopping Discoveries

We started driving down an unmarked wooded path where the trees appeared to be closing in on us. Annelise asks if we are getting scared. I say “No” and encourage her to keep going. Finally, she stops at a place where the road seems too narrow to pass and we get out. There are stacks of chopped wood, a sign that someone has been clearing a path for us and other future visitors to this place. It is very quiet. We don’t even hear a bird cry or flap it its wings, only our own footsteps along a muddy path. There is no one living here currently, but we soon see evidence that someone lived here a very long time ago, maybe over 5,000 years ago, we’d later learn. To our right, we approach a mound of precisely arranged boulders with a pathway between them. Annelise suggests that it could be the grave of a village leader. We pick up sharp pieces of flint scattered around the site and understand why this was a good material for making axes and other sharp tools. The people who used them may have been Denmark’s earliest settlers who came to hunt reindeer–the same ones so well-preserved at the National Museum in Copenhagen.

 Annelise says there is more to see as we move deeper into the woods. In the next clearing we see a circle of large rocks, maybe 4-feet-tall each, with several in its center and one stacked on top, reminiscent of Stonehenge. We venture farther to see a massive mound covered in grass and wild flowers with a small doorway, another burial site, across from a number of large boulders seemingly strewn about, possibly a mass grave. We’d been following a string of trees marked by yellow spots and we saw more ahead. Annelise excitedly asks if we should go further and we say why not? Traipsing through more mud and past tall grass and weeds, we continue to follow the dots in search of more ancient archeological finds. But the rains from earlier in the week make our path impassable and we have to be satisfied with the day’s archeological investigation.

 

 

 

 

 

We have driven to Falster’s sister island of Lolland just to see where Denmark’s past is still buried. But we’ve also seen one of the island’s newest sites the Fuglsang Modern Museum. Only a few years old, the beautiful airy exhibition space features works from Danish artists, particularly the Cobra (Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam) collective of artists inspired my Picasso and other modern and cubist artists of their day. Aaron, Annelise and I walked around and picked our favorites of the pieces on display. We seemed to have similar tastes with the most vibrant paintings winning our favor. The most impressive feature of the building though was the very simple picture window and the back of the building that looked out onto Lolland farmland.

 

Lolland, Falster and the rest of Denmark, for that matter, is pretty flat. We get a real sense of this on our drive past wheat, rye and sugar beet fields, dotted with windmill farms. Each appears to be a staple for Denmark, with wheat and rye bread as a major part of the Danish diet and sugar beets to be processed into sugar and the windmills generating green energy. Along the way, Annelise shares more stories of Lolland’s past, telling us the story of farmers who rebelled against a tax-raising nobleman. The official brokered a deal with the fed-up farmers and said they only had to give him 12 white cows in exchange for lower taxes. The problem was they only had 11. But they did have a white cow with one brown ear which they painted white. The farmers are now seen as local heroes and there is a carved stone honoring their unusual rebellion.

 The fishing town of Nysted on the coast of Lolland was quite quaint with the area’s signature red-tiled roofs and colorfully painted homes. We stop here for a quick lunch at the seaside restaurant Rogeriet with sailboats and Baltic-swimming swans and its backdrop. Aaron and I order traditionally Danish dishes of herring and salmon on warm toast with Jacobsen Brown Ales while Annelise goes more American with a massive club sandwich. Sometimes Annelise prefers more American things over Danish ones, but she is very proud of her heritage and has been happy to share it with us, telling us about growing up on Falster with three other siblings during World War II. She was in her 20s when she left her banking job in Nykobing to move to the United States where she knew only one person in Washington, DC. Since that courageous leap of faith, she calls it ignorance, she has built a lovely life in America with three children and four grandchildren that get to visit her home country every summer. I think it is the perfect example of the American dream.

 

After a full afternoon exploring Lolland, we head back to Falster and Marielyst, where Aaron and I decide to walk to see more of the beach town. He was in search of touristy trinkets to take back to his colleagues at work and we stopped into several stores along the way. One seemed particularly promising, Ting & Kram, literally translated as Things and Junk. It was true to its name and was crammed with anything you may have forgotten while on vacation or anything you needed to fulfill any sort of junk craving. We saw everything but touristy junk, things like  grill brushes, crayons, tea, duck tape, girl’s barrettes, book bags and then Aaron stood still in his tracks and asked if I saw what he saw. I look across the store to where he is looking and I see a few feather boas hanging against the wall. Odd, but not so odd in this place. I scan a bit further and spot the vibrating dildos, next to lacy underthings and upon closer investigation, whips and butt plugs. Truly a one-stop shopping kind of place. We wondered if many Danes came on vacation and realized they’d forgotten their dildo at home. Needless to say, we found it extremely humorous and continued to crack jokes about hardcore sex toys conveniently located next to household products and children’s toys as we shopped. Marielyst also appears to be a gambling town with a place called Little Vegas boasting several slot machines and we saw several in other convenience stores along the way.

  

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Bloody Macbeth in the Bard’s Birthplace

When Macbeth shows up on stage he’s covered in blood from the battlefield. Later he’s covered in the assassinated King Duncan’s blood and smearing it on his wife, Lady Macbeth. Then, he orders henchmen to spill his buddy Banquo’s blood, who in turn returns from the grave to spill Macbeth’s blood, which spurts gruesomely from his throat, a metaphorical foretelling of what’s to come. That’s all in the first half of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of “Macbeth” at Stratford-Upon-Avon, Shakespeare’s hometown. I am sitting next to Frances and Mark who live about three hours away, but once lived outside of DC in Annandale and Rosslyn when Mark worked for the IMF. We marvel at the theater packed with students, tourists and locals, presumably all fans of the Bard. We also love the fact that the prescient witches are interpreted as ghost children. I can only take in the first half of the play because I’ve mistimed my stay in Stratford. All the sites close at 5 pm and if I stay for the play, I won’t have much time to check out Shakespeare’s birthplace and family homes.

I’ve made the pilgrammage to Stratford because I happen to be a fan of Shakespeare. I took a semester-long seminar in college with about five others and we contemplated his comedies and tragedies in my professor’s living room. My favorites were the comedies like “Midsummer’s Night Dream”, “Measure for Measure” and “As You Like It.” But I have to say that “Romeo and Juliet”, “The Merchant of Venice” and “Othello” are right up there too. One of the best productions of Othello that I ever saw was at the Folger Shakespeare Theater starring Avery Brooks, The Hawk from Spencer for Hire, and Andre Braugher from Homicide in the roles of Othello and Iago. They were grippingly awesome in their roles.

Shakespeare’s birthplace is a cross-section of Disney meets Jamestown or Williamsburg. Visitors are led through an exhibit featuring short films about Shakespeare’s life and the impact of his plays. There’s a signet ring that he may have worn and the first published book of all his plays. They keep showing clips from that awful “Romeo and Juliet” movie with Claire Danes and Leopardo DiCaprio. My favorite was always this1968 version. It was pretty over acted, but I thought it was oozing with passion and pretty darned great. I loved the music too. But back to Shakespeare’s birthplace. After the exhibit you are led into a tiny two-level Tudor where guides dressed in the period share more details of Shakespeare’s life–he was the third of 10 children and his father was a glovemaker–and life during Elizabethan times in Stratford. Out in the garden are actors reciting the best of Shakespeare’s plays in costume and they invite others to join. One brave soul fearlessly recites Macbeth off the top of his head. And, of course, the whole experience ends in the gift shop as most Disney rides do. But I still enjoyed it all.

I went on to the Nash house, the home that Shakespeare bought for his two daughters and wife. His daughter Judith was a twin. Her brother Hamlet died young, which could explain his use of twins in his plays and the title his longest play. There is an archelogical project going on at the Nash house where they are excavating old Elizabethan artifacts.

Before it is time to catch the last bus and train back toward Oxford, about an hour away, I decide to dine at the Vinter Wine Bar on Sheep Street. It’s one of those dark wood paneled places where they present the specials on a chalkboard, which I like. I decide on an 11-pound set menu of curried butternut squash soup and lamb provencal with saffron mash, paired with an Italian red. I made my bus in plenty of time, which turned out to be the local bus through the Cotswolds featuring stunning views of its rolling hills.