Culture and Environment: Portals of the past.

PORTALS OF THE PAST.

Preserved from the rigors of the Danish climate, furbelowed wood doors from past centuries still welcome you. But remember to duck your head to go trough the doorways. 

Ribe 1800

A front door is the mouth of a house, the opening that invites you to come in or silently signals you to stay out. Welcoming or repelling, the portal says something about the people be-hind it.

Denmark has nurtured an art-door culture in the form of almuekunst, traditional country folk art. The damp and windy Danish climate is "anything but healthy for carpentry," writes Gorm Benzon in Gamle danske døre (Old Danish Doors), 1979. And "if a door facing west or south is not especially well cared for with paint, it will hardly last much more than one hundred years." Yet, adds Benzon, "We have outer doors up to two hundred and two hundred and fifty years old; indeed, the dean of functioning civic doors is nearing three hundred and fifty, but that also hangs well protected and set back in `Købing House' in Ærøskøbing" on the tiny isle of Ærø, south of Fyn.

In the past Danish doorways were traps. The step was almost half a meter high and the lintel so low that even short people had to bend over to get through. Pity the enemy: the defender of home and hearth could whack him over the noggin as he came through the door, headfirst.

Barbara Berger, an American novelist and cookbook writer living in Copenhagen, remembers the thatched-roof cottage she and her Danish husband bought some years ago in Flemløse, southwest Fyn. "The people of three centuries ago really must have been shorter," says Berger. "My husband is tall. Running in or out to check on the baby, he kept bumping his head. He actually got headaches. We tried hanging a bell over the door, but by the time he hit the bell his head had already hit the door."

"Bridal doors" once beautified estates and better homes in southern Jutland. These elegantly decorated half-doors always opened into the "chest chamber," where painted chests for clothes, linens and valuables were stored.

Knobless and lockless, the door stood open when a bride stepped out of her carriage and headed for the chest chamber where her bridal clothes were to be kept. As soon as she had passed through, the door was nailed shut.

Not until her death was the door opened again—as an exit for her casket. After which the door was again spiked shut—to keep out her restless ghost.

But who knows how many doors became firewood or were dumped on the rubbish heap because of fashion's dictates?

Museums have come to the rescue. The Copenhagen City Museum has some beauties on its reconstructed indoor street front. The National Museum in Brede, north of Copenhagen, is said to have warehouses full of doors.

Photographer Barry Pringle feels the most interesting doors are on the Jutland peninsula. "The problem is they're becoming fashionable, and homeowners are over-decorating them. Colors are exaggerated, sometimes even garish. There are some art doors in North Zealand, though not many in Copenhagen."

The oldest functioning wooden door in Europe's oldest kingdom, according to Gorm Benzon, graces the Stadil Church in western Jutland. This iron-backed specimen has been dated to the 1200s.

Town house doors a century or two ago were status symbols—the more stunning the entrance, the richer the tenants. Today's doors are "contourless rectangles with an elongated hole—the mail slot," Pringle says. ■

Here you see a variety of beautiful doors from all parts of Denmark.