1.
Why does the annual Danish Cultural Conference always occur in a place that looks like Norway?
Denmark doesn't have rivers or mountains, so you can't expect us Danes to feel at home in the Colombia Gorge. It's simply too gorgeous. Danes only feel at home when the surroundings are flat, and everybody gets naked.
However, absolutely no one got naked at the Danish Cultural Conference at Menucha in Corbett, Oregon. Most of the people present were in their seventies or eighties. They were Danes who immigrated to the US in the fifties or sixties but still yearn after knækbrød - great people who got teary eyed watching the raising of our Danish flag, Dannebrog. So for three days we could all pretend that Oregon was a Danish colony, just like Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Northern Germany, Ghana, Trankebar, the Virgin Islands and England were in the good old days.
2.
The annual conference offered a lot of cultural event for us fine connoisseurs of leverpostej.
I was the keynote speaker and did my presentation of The Tsar's Dwarf, my novel that's out in English, French, Portuguese, and Danish. John Mark Nielsen from the Danish Immigrant Museum spoke about Jens Jensen, a noted prairie landscape architect that I've never heard of. Christiane Lauritzen from the Royal Danish Embassy in Washington DC enlightened us on the History of Danish Diplomacy. Luckily enough, she didn't bring any of the cartoons they adored in Saudi Arabia and Syria ...
At night we listened to the great folk singer Flemming Behrend from Olympia and Frederiksberg. Some people even got drunk, just to show that they hadn't forgotten their Danish ways. I got to talk with quarter Danes from Solvang and Argentinians who escaped into the woods to avoid all this Danishness.
Yes, you should have been there. Menucha by the Colombia Gorge is gorgeously situated in the middle of nowhere. It's full of wild life, too: elks, bears, bob cats, raccoons, rabbits, squirrels - I bet they enjoyed the raising of the Danish flag as well.
