SOME TIME AGO, when I was an undergraduate, I lived in Copenhagen, the capital city of Denmark. I don’t actually remember much of what I was doing in Copenhagen in those days, other than hanging out in night clubs on weekends and confessing to various Danish women that I loved them, “jeg elsker dig.”
One Danish girl did take me seriously enough to arrange a second meeting, which I was not brave enough to attend. I’m not even sure I told her why I loved her. It sounds absurd doesn’t it? But my Danish was primitive, and perhaps it was just the nicest thing I knew how to say to a member of the opposite sex.
I got to thinking about this long-lost Copenhagen night club girl a few weeks ago, on a trip to the Scandinavian city with my daughters. We were over by the university and happened to walked right by that same exact night club, and I only briefly remembered the girl. There were others from that time that began to flit in and out of memory. A Norwegian called Ingrid who was studying economics. Åsa, a Swedish designer. There was an Icelander named Ester, who lived with a fellow Icelander named Jón, who had a very taciturn expression and never said much. Lena from Jutland. What had become of all of them?
THAT WAS THEN and those were my memories of that time, but I certainly never visited any castles when I studied in Denmark. But it was to one such castle, the impressive Fredericksborg, situated in the Danish town of Hillerød, where I took a train with my daughters during the first warm days of May. Fredericksborg was built by King Christian IV in the 17th century. My teenage daughters love castles, you know. They love castles and they love royal costumes, and they love pageantry and jewelry. The castle at Frederiksborg is now an art museum and it is impressive. There are floors of paintings, portraits, clicking wooden clocks that ring and chime, dangling chandeliers, hand-carved beds, mirrors and tapestries, and a movable celestial globe and astronomical clock from 1656.
These were once the possessions and likenesses of noblemen and noblewomen, courtesans and artisans, consorts and escorts. The ceilings and walls are adorned with frescos of angels and gods, characters from antiquity, the stars and the heavens, pineapples and other exotic fruits. The clocks tick, tick, tick, ringing out every 15 minutes, on the half hour, then the hour. Through the warped window glass, one can see the baroque castle gardens on the other side of the lake, nestled in the sun.
One exhibit tells of the origins of the Danish flag, and the 13th century Battle at Lyndanise in Tallinn between the Danes and the Estonians. My daughter noticed the three lions of the Danish coat of arms in the castle. “That used to be on the 1 kroon coin!” she said. “When I was small, we didn’t have the euro, you know. We had kroonid.”
WHILE WE WERE in the museum, I started to became aware of a vague female presence. She was a younger woman, with curly hair, dressed in a sweater and skirt, and I cannot really say any more about what she looked like. That hair was familiar to me. There is something about girls with curly hair, and sometimes I think I continue to fall in love with different versions of the same woman who looks just like this.
Something about this person was so familiar to me, though, and I noticed that when we passed each other, we would look away, as if to ignore one another, and then look back, only to smile. It’s funny how these things work, how people just recognize each other. There was something so comforting about her presence in a haunted old castle, that I badly wanted to know her name. Even if it was something average and Danish, Sine or Stine, Mette or Jette, whatever it was, I wanted to know it.
I felt a little bit like that Shinagawa monkey in the Haruki Murakami story, who steals women’s names. I didn’t want to steal the name of the lady of Frederiksborg though. No. I wanted to cherish it forever. All I needed to know was her first name and I could build her into a breathtaking and beautiful illusion. I would devote myself to her name, pledge my very soul, rechristen cities in her name, rename navy ships, bastions, fortresses. I would write great novels and epic poems, and then affix her name to the cover, or perhaps some reference to her appearance. Something to remember this moment by. Something to last.
ALAS, SHE DISAPPEARED into the museum ahead of me, and I never saw her again. In the gardens I looked for her too, and in the town, and on the train back to the city. I kept waiting for her to walk in with her curls and look at me like she looked at me in the castle, but it never happened. She was just gone and maybe it was better that way. No need to fall in love. No need to troubleshoot a long-distance relationship. No need to worry about what went wrong. No need for anything other than the memory of an ancient castle with chiming clocks and celestial globes and gardens.
Farewell, my Danish girl. Jeg elsker dig. Thanks for the memories!
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An Estonian version of this column appears in the June 2022 edition of the magazine Anne & Stiil.
north! 