Culture and Environment: The Outbound Danes.

The Outbound Danes

The question is: Welcome to which Denmark? Denmark, New York?

Denmark, New Hampshire? Denmark, Vermont? Mississippi? Kansas? Oregon? It seems that no fewer than 21 towns in the United States call themselves Denmark. You would be welcome to the 22nd — Denmark, Tennessee except that this hamlet, founded during the plantation period in 1869, disappeared from the national map a few years ago. Jes' plumb went outa bizniz fer lack o' people. Wisconsin takes up the slack with two Denmarks. And would you believe Michigan has three? Makes you wonder how the U.S. Post Office did its job before we got zip codes.

Not all take their name from the anglicized spelling of the mother country's name, either. The biggest—a traffic-jammed metropolis of 4,000 in South Carolina--was dubbed in 1891 in honor of a railroad engineer, Captain Denmark. The oldest, from 1745, was christened----nobody seems to know why—by an English family who bought the original property in Virginia. Today there are so few houses left that the village is approaching the extinction it faced when the Indians attacked and killed several residents back in 1759.

''Ellis Island'' at The American Dream exhibition in Brede. Photo: Luke H. Garner.

The American Dream

This intelligence from the Drømmen om Amerika (The American Dream) exhibit, open through October 21 in Brede, Kingdom of Denmark, was reported in Berlingske Tidende. Scandinavia's oldest newspaper was founded long before all Danes won the right to express radically dissenting opinions in print. That's why the democratic socialists Louis Pio and Poul Geleff traveled in the 1870s with a coterie of followers first to Kansas, halfway across the country, to found a political colony and put out a paper. "Today, no Dane need travel to the United States to express himself and to publish a newspaper," Terence A. Todman, a black from St. Thomas, Virgin Islands (once the Danish West Indies), remarked at the exhibit opening in Brede. Continued the new U.S. ambassador to Denmark:

"Let us commemorate the Danish-American sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who designed the Mount Rushmore national memorial in South Dakota . . . showing the faces of four American presidents.... (and) remember the social reformers Louis Bronck, for whom the Bronx of New York is named, and Jacob Riis, once New York's most useful citizen, who opened our eyes (mainly through the revealing eye of his journalist's camera) to the abuses of the poor. Let us discover the Danish-American cowboy Chris Madsen, who became part of the legend of the American West.. (and) sing praises to the Danish-American tenor Lauritz Melchior, who became a celebrated member of the American Opera Company, and to the virtuoso . . . Victor Borge, whose . . . wit and musical artistry de-light audiences on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean."

And what about the accountant Rasmus Nielsen, whose institute's popularity ratings make or break commercial TV programs?

Those incandescent names aside, some 371,000 workaday Andersens, Hansens, Petersens and fellow countrymen braved the North Atlantic from 1868 to 1914 to start life anew. They renewed it, too. In the 1980 U.S. Census, 1,518,273 Americans declared they were of Danish descent. "We've tried to present the whole experience--the conditions in Europe and Denmark that started the exodus, the journey over the Atlantic, and how the Danes made it on the other side," says teacher Soren Waast, who heads the National Museum's School Service in Brede. More than a thousand school children a day and many tourists are expected this fall to wander the exhibits in the old clothing factory, in a grassy and woodsy setting beside a mill pond north of Copenhagen. Waast tells me this is the high point of an elementary school study project using a big soft-cover book called "Am Født in Danmark" a quote from a letter by a Danish-American born in the old country.

Ellis Island Screening

The outbound Danes were a fraction of the greatest migration in human history. Some 52 million Europeans moved, 35 million to the United States, in 1840-1914. Nearly everybody suffered the anxiety and indignity of immigration screening at Ellis Island, New York. One was the mother of the state's present governor. "Momma said there was terror and tears, sick people and crying," Mario M. Cuomo was quoted recently in the Washington Post. "The people who went through Ellis Island were offended by the mechanics of it: Names were distorted and they were treated like cattle."

The weedy "isle of tears" is to be restored as a national museum, with computers to help visitors trace relatives back to their ships, even itemizing their baggage and telling whether their names were changed. The stairway that was climbed by immigrants unaware that doctors were observing them for signs of disability will be rebuilt. Taped sound effects may evoke the babble of languages and cries of children worn out and sometimes sick after the long sea voyage in "steerage." My own maternal great-great grandparents, the Frederick Fradleys from Birmingham, England, were informed that one of their two little sons was ill. The startled parents protested that the baby was perfectly healthy, but it was detained overnight for observation at Ellis Island. Next day, the mother was told her baby had died and was gone. "She went to pieces and died of a broken heart," my aunt tells me. The baby's brother, my super-Victorian great grandfather Joseph F. Fradley, rose to become a prominent silversmith and millionaire in late 19th-century New York City fulfilling the American Dream.

Typical American Meal

Wherever you're from, visit the Brede exhibit, open seven days a week from 10 to 5. Take the "A" train from Copenhagen Central Station at 12, 32 or 52 after the hour. Transfer in Jægersborg to the red trolley that whisks you through the woods to Brede. Dine with the Danes at Brede Gamle Spisehus, where workers in Denmark's oldest factory used to get at least one meal a day. (A typical American meal is now served Wednesday evenings.)

"Reviewing the past," says Ambassador Todman, "can make us more human. It can give us the wisdom of hindsight and even sometimes the foresight to anticipate where we are going." Let's hope it does.