Denmark with dad

Lutheran, The, May 1999 by Mueller, Carol

It wasn't too late to see where `Papa Lars'was born BY CAROL MUELLER

he attendant on the Chicago-to-Copenhagen flight looked from my father and sister on one side of the aisle to me on the other. "I like that. I really like that," she said with a broad smile, as we explained the circumstances of our trip.

What she liked, perhaps, was that we were adult siblings vacationing with an elderly parent. Did I say "adult" and "elderly"? At 57, 61 and 92, we three were 210 years old!

But we were a young 210, off on a long-planned and anticipated adventure. This was our first visit to Scandinavia for a sort of father-daughter pilgrimage. We were taking a sentimental journey to Denmark, the birthplace of my maternal grandparents.

As the plane landed at Kastrup Airport in Copenhagen, my sister, Marilyn, nudged me and pointed to a patch of grass and weeds along the runway. "See that?" she asked. "Those are our roots."

We laughed. It was an apt comparison. Our Danish roots never seemed all that deep. Our immigrant grandparents died before we were born, and our mother believed strongly in assimilation. "I'm an American and so are you," she would say when we asked about our ethnic background. We were never sure if she was joking or not when she said our ancestors were horse thieves in Denmark. But we knew she wasn't kidding when she described how lutefisk smelled. And smelled. And smelled.

Still, my godmother was a Dane. And we went to the Danish picnic. And we bought Danish sausage at the Danish market. And my mother made Danish meatball soup and started my collection of Danish porcelains.

But we never spoke the language or smelled lutefisk. And my mother never saw Denmark.

I like to think we saw it for her. Though she died 14 years ago and had never expressed a desire to go there, she was with us every step of the way. In fact, our trip grew out of my father's memories of her family. Though he is of German extraction, Dad was close to his Danish in-laws and reminisced often about my Grandpa Hendricksen, whom he called "Papa Lars." Grandpa was from Aalborg, a city on the north end of the Jutland peninsula. "Some day I'd like to see where Papa Lars was born," my father would say.

That day came last June. My sister and I left our families for a week to travel with our father and explore half of our heritage. Despite careful planning, we knew the trip would be a challenge. Just weeks before we headed north, Dad's back went south, making walking intermittently painful for him.

But he is otherwise healthy and younger than his years, as his reception in Denmark proved. "You were born in 1906?" the customs agent in Copenhagen asked disbelievingly as he looked at Dad's passport. "That would make you 92!" My father smiled. Already he loved Denmark.

We spent our first night in Copenhagen, then picked up our rental car and headed northwest to catch a ferry to Jutland. Our plan was to start in Aalborg and head south, sightseeing our way down the peninsula. Then we would cross over to Funen and back to Sealand to spend the last three days in Copenhagen.

It was an ambitious itinerary, parts of which cracked under the strain of a too-tight schedule. We missed a lot but saw things we'll never forget. Among them: Budolfi Cathedral in Aalborg is a 900-year-old lesson in church history. Two large plaques in the back of the beautiful nave sum up the Reformation.

On the left is a list of Katolske bisper (Catholic bishops) beginning with the year 1060; on the right, a roster of Lutherske bisper (Lutheran bishops) from 1537 to the present.

* Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen is a charming amusement park that's long on lights, flowers and music and short on lines, thrill rides and junk food.

Kronborg Castle in Helsingore is an awesome edifice by the sea. Hamlet never slept here, but the scowling statue of Holgar Danske, "the fiercest Vlking of them all," still guards the dungeons.

And we discovered more in Denmark than great sightseeing. We found familiarity:

In the faces, like a man on the ferry who was a ringer for our uncle.

In the food, like rulle-poulse, a cold cut we hadn't tasted since childhood.

On a roadside sign, Kom godt hjem. It means "Come good home," our mother's favorite send-off for departing guests.

On the last day of our trip, my sister and I shopped Copenhagen's famed Stroget (shopping street) and then stopped at a sidewalk cafe for smoerrebroed. As we watched the world go by on that sunny Danish afternoon we experienced a rush of gratitude andjoy so strong, and a memory of our mother so vivid, that we cried.

"Come good home," she always said. We did, Mom. We did. [

Mueller, an editor and columnist fbr Pioneer Press, a suburban newspaper chain, is a member of Lutheran Church of the Ascension, Northfield IlL