Discovering Helen of Troy in Iceland & Other Adventures

Grain fields in Central Jutland, Denmark                                           photo by Baker Franklin

by Pringle Franklin

Dawn erupted beneath us as we flew toward Iceland. To my son Baker,  the orange clouds looked like the gateway to Hell, as if one could fall into the pit of Dante’s bubbling inferno. My thoughts were more heaven-bound:

If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea,

even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.

Psalm 139:9-10

Whether toward heaven or toward Hell, our course was fixed, and a new day was breaking. I struggled to watch as the fiery ball of light broke through the cloud line, but my head flopped over; helplessly I tumbled into a jagged sleep. We had been traveling for 20 hours after getting a laughably cheap but logistically painful ticket from Charleston to Boston to Reykjavik to Billund, Denmark.

For me, sleep on airplanes is always fractured by the noise of people moving around, and before long my semiconscious brain detected that the stewardess was working her way down the aisle, offering some comfort item to the passengers. Though still in a fog, I wrenched open my eyes to see if it was worth shaking myself awake to receive whatever goodie was being peddled from the push cart.

Helen Appears

What a shock! When I opened my eyes, the angelic face of Helen of Troy was hovering above me and looking down at me with warmth and interest. I blinked, stretched my ocular muscles to erase the blurry edges of my vision, and looked again. Helen was still there, and now I could see that she was presenting a sleek bottle of Icelandic water.  Was I thirsty?

I nodded, unable to speak fluently. I stared at the benevolent woman’s chiseled beauty like a waking child looking lovingly at her mother’s reassuring face. Her vivid blue eyes, her prominent Nordic cheek bones, her radiant white teeth, her golden blonde hair pulled back into a stylish twist — this really was a face that could launch 1,000 ships. Even the little smile lines around her eyes were pleasing, softening the sculpture of her angular face.

Who knew that Helen of Troy’s  direct descendent was working for Icelandic Air? And she was smiling so kindly, offering the purest, cleanest water on the planet, water from some Viking glacier on her unspoiled island. I gratefully took the ice cold water and quenched my thirst as Helen nodded and moved along to the next row.

Clearly, we were NOT headed toward the inferno.

Okay, let’s be honest here: apparently I was gaga over these Icelandic people because when we landed, the 25-year-old customs agent in the Reykjavik airport reminded me of Helen’s lover, Paris. In an instant, I could understand how even the Queen of Sparta might run away with him: a tall, broad shouldered blonde with a strong chin and crystal blue eyes. His rakish sun-streaked hair was flirting with his shoulders, while his ironed uniform shirt stretched taut against his chest.  He ushered Sam and Baker through with the minimal concern. Yet when my turn came, Paris sat in his glass booth staring intently at my passport, then scrutinizing my face,  then staring again at the passport.

Back in the States, I have recently received “trusted traveler status” from the U.S. government to spare me from the lunacies of being treated like a terrorist (I am a Bible study teacher and mother of a Boy Scout, for heavens sake), but none of that mattered here. Handsome as he was, Paris was starting to look a bit fearsome with that strong jawline set into a stern frown. I remembered Baker mentioning that Erik the Red had earned his nickname, not only for the color of his locks, but for his bloody behavior. For all I knew, Erik the Red was this guy’s great-great-and-triple-great grandfather! At the very least, Erik was  lurking somewhere in the DNA.

What could be the problem? I wondered. Then I remembered.  “I cut my hair,” I offered. In my frumpy passport photo, my hair was slightly unkempt and past my shoulders. In honor of my upcoming move to France, I had chopped it into a chic bob. These seemed to be the magic words. Paris flashed me a devilish grin, then winked at me.

That gorgeous guy winked at me while handing back the passport and gesturing me on past the customs barricade. Too bad we were only changing planes here on the way to Denmark. After looking at the wall posters in the airport cafe of the natural hot springs, I suggested to my husband that we might need to come back to Iceland on holiday. He agreed — certainly he had noticed the natural beauty of the area as well.

************

Welcome to the Land of Lego

Next thing I knew, it was wheels down on the tarmac in Billund, Denmark, at an airport that Lego had originally built. Lego sets — and the stones bruises I’d contracted from stepping on stray pieces in the dark  — were the extent of my previous exposure to Denmark; we decided to visit here because I’d always wanted to tour Scandinavia, and  we’d arranged to swap our home for a Danish family’s manor house in the forests of Jutland. Their father, Peter, was meeting us that morning to drive us to the house.

While collecting the assorted luggage, we were contained in a secure room. Through a glass wall, I could see people waiting in the lobby for their friends and family arriving on the international flight. Some were eagerly waving paper Danish flags — a cheerful design featuring a red background with a white cross in the center.  (Danes love their Dannebrog even more than South Carolinians love their Palmetto State flag. Hard to believe that anyone could love a flag more but they do! The Danes wrap gifts with the red flag paper; hang strings

Clay with the Danish flag

of flag pennants in the park at children’s birthday parties;  fly the Dannebrog proudly atop every castle, canal boat, or sidewalk sausage stand; march around waving paper flags whenever two or three of them have a reunion.)

We had checked six bags way back in Charleston, and they were taking a frighteningly long time to appear here on the conveyer belt; we were still waiting after the  flag wavers had embraced their traveler and departed. Finally the first bags  popped out, and I felt an immense relief: they had not been left behind in Boston or Reykjavik . We were practically the last group in the baggage claim area, and I was anxious that our host might write us off as a no show, so I volunteered to push the first luggage cart out while Sam and Baker collected the rest.

As I scanned the arrival lobby, several older gentlemen were standing by expectantly, but only one was waiting with a lovely long-haired red dachshund on a leash. I love dachshunds, so I approached him first among the three suspects.

“Peter?” I inquired.

The tall, lean man smiled and nodded. Quick introductions were confirmed. “I thought you had a husband and son with you,” Peter said.

“Yes, they are collecting the rest of the bags,” I answered.

Peter quickly surveyed the suitcase and four large carry-ons that threatened to capsize my luggage trolley. “Yes, I can see that you do not have nearly enough bags there,” he quipped.

Too much luggage?

Moments later, Peter gulped nervously as Sam and Baker showed up with two more laden trolleys. I had recently purchased the suitcases  for our trip — they were metallic red and big as footlockers. In Jutland, people generally spend simple lives on farms or pleasant country villages. Showing up as three Americans with 10 pieces of luggage felt obscene. “I am not sure if you know but we are here for ONE YEAR,” I explained a bit defensively.

No Rhinestones on My Blue Jeans!

Self-indulgence would not be condoned in the Nordic lands; I knew this much because I have several friends from Wisconsin who are proud of their Scandinavian roots. The Wisconsin women rarely wear more makeup than a natural-looking lipstick; they bake authentic lard pie crusts using their grandmother’s blue ribbon recipes, and they laugh about raising a pet lamb as a 4-H project and later eating it with their large and happy family for Easter dinner.  These Wisconsinites all have professional degrees but, when the occasion demands, they can wield a grout gun or take apart a vacuum cleaner to save from calling a handyman. (In contrast, my Korean friend raised in Atlanta, GA., convinced her husband that she was a “delicate flower” who would wilt without a full-time housekeeper.)

Anyway, back to the luggage: it was a reasonable leap of logic that not a single Jutland girl would be caught wearing rhinestones on her blue jeans. Not that I would, either. But Peter did not know that. He probably imagined those whale-sized suitcases were stuffed full of frivolous female clothes. As if reading my mind, Sam chimed in as the lead of the Greek tragedy chorus.

“Actually, she wanted to pack a lot more, but I wouldn’t let her!” Sam declared, producing that indignant snort recognized by every battle-weary husband the world-over. Here he was, shamelessly trying to establish friendly man-to-man relations through the trusted technique of complaining about the woman. I took the opportunity to squat down and scratch the dachshund behind the ears. Just let me hide my face a moment, because not only was I feeling like a ridiculous female but a ridiculous American female!

Peter, too wise to wade into what was clearly a domestic swamp hole, merely laughed benignly, but I felt as if I had Old Glory tattooed on my forehead, and it did not seem as cute as the Dannebrog at that moment. When you travel abroad, people are always viewing you through the lens of being a foreigner. They make assumptions about you based on their stereotypes of Americans; it is a bit unnerving, knowing that you are being judged and evaluated.

In Denmark, this scrutiny happened because we didn’t know how to buy a Metro ticket or count change in Kroner or blend seamlessly into the check-out system in the grocery store. Every little encounter with their monoculture was an opportunity to stumble and blunder and seek grace from the homogenous locals, who have a higher rate of group think and synchronistic behavior than any culture I’ve encountered.

Flawless English

Despite this, no, in fact, because of this, Denmark is the ideal place to get acclimated to Europe. Most Danes speak impeccable English (unlike the Germans or French, they do not dub foreign TV shows into Danish so they actually hear English from a tender age). As a society, Danes are honest, peaceful, and helpful. They might stare a bit and smile at our buffoonish confusion, but if we sincerely ask for help — in English — they are calm, intelligent, and completely able to communicate sound advice. And they do this without any smugness or sense that they are superior; in their thoroughly egalitarian and cooperative society, they understand that it is decent and good to provide assistance to traveling fools.

Peter and Charlie

The adorable dog was the perfect ambassador to set me at ease. During our one-hour car ride to the manor house, Charlie perched happily in my lap and gave me kisses. (Later I would learn that Queen Margrethe herself has dachshunds. This confirmed my assumption that the Danes were wonderfully sensible.) The rolling bucolic hills and evergreen woodlands, along with the abundance of solar panels and stacks of split firewood, reminded me of Vermont. Yet the small, cute houses looked adorably Danish — with orange-tiled roofs and tidy brick facades, perhaps they’d been built from the Lego sets of my childhood.

“Our house” was isolated on a woodland estate on the fringe of a hamlet, way out in the country among chewing cows and sleek modern windmills, so Peter kindly suggested we stop at a village grocery to pick up supplies to get us started.

We were about to be turned loose in an unfamiliar kitchen with alien European appliances; during the first 48 hours, I would spend long minutes just staring at the electric water kettle and gas range in complete bafflement; I even took a photo of the meaningless  Danish commands on the washing machine and posted it on Facebook, where a kind friend translated it via Google. I was a complete neophyte in this world, and even shopping for groceries perplexed me.

Shopping in a Daze: What is “Kogt Skinke”?

As I wandered around the rustic store, nothing looked appealing. I felt as hopelessly lost as when I venture out to the Asian grocery back home only to find disfigured gourds, pop-eyed fish heads on ice, and bundles of warty roots. How can these bizarre objects ever be transformed into appetizing food? Usually I buy one can of low-fat, sugar-free coconut milk and leave. Now this same dearth of culinary knowledge was tripping me up in Denmark.

I needed to find something that I could confidentially purchase, despite the fact that my brain felt numb and my legs had begun to wobble. The jet lag was starting to slap me around, so I wandered to the selection of sandwich meats behind a refrigerator door. I picked up a plastic box of sliced meats. What the heck does “kogt skinke” or “skiveskaret kalkun” mean? Now, “salami” was something I could compute. But it was not something I would normally eat.  At this point, I decided that my strict food regimen would have to take a back seat to survival, so I tossed the fatty and nitrate-filled meat in the cart and went searching  for bread.

In my normal life, I prefer to ingest only whole-grain bread, the kind covered with sunflower seeds (Harvest bread from the deli at Harris Teeter rocks my world), but this shop had nothing except white hamburger buns, hot dog buns, and sandwich loaves. Doesn’t anyone in Jutland eat whole wheat? I mean, the entire area is either tree farms or fields waving with gorgeous golden grains!

After closer scrutiny of the bread shelf, I spotted a molasses-colored loaf that was oddly dark and wrapped in a package with a smiling lumberjack. “Smovmank“ it said on the label — except the “o” had a that funny slash through it. There did not seem to be another viable choice; gingerly I lowered the mystery loaf into my shopping basket on wheels.

Sour is An Acquired Taste

The next morning I would discover that this bread was both mushy and extremely sour, and it smelled like the fermenting hops at the Carlsberg brewhouse. Apparently sour is an acquired taste among the Danes, who also love salted licorice (beware of this mean trick posing as candy). Anyway, the hops bread was like eating sauerkraut with too much vinegar! What a waste of 45 Kroner. Perhaps the Smovmank was meant for the Lumberjack to carry  into the woods to feed the reindeer.  A few weeks later in Copenhagen, we would discover this hearty rye bread was the foundation of the famous Danish open-faced pickled herring sandwich.

But I didn’t know that yet and, even if I had, I wouldn’t have known how to assemble a smørrebrød. In my shopping basket, I had salami, dark bread, a few apples….at this point, I was desperate for the staple of every exhausted mother in the States.

“Do you think they have peanut butter?” I asked Peter.

His hazel eyes widened as if I had asked for some exotic delicacy such as shaved Italian parma or fresh squid from Spain. “Oh! I don’t think so,” he said. Yet ever the good host, he walked over to ask the clerk in Danish if they might possibly have peanut butter for the silly American woman. Soon he returned smiling and holding up a small jar.

Finally! We were making headway: even better, a few moments later Peter uttered the universal food word: “How about some spaghetti?” he suggested,nodding toward a packet of pasta that had gone undetected by me.

“Yes! Please!” (Never mind that the spaghetti was shaped like thin straws with air in the noodles, creating a rather chewy texture. We would not discover that until later.)

In our household, spaghetti is Sam’s favorite meal to cook. This was a bonus because it meant we’d found something that everyone would eat and that my husband considered within his domain to prepare. God was smiling on my exhausted self.

The Peace of the Woodlands

About 10 minutes later, we pulled up to a long driveway blanketed with gravel. Before us stood a lovely, stately manor house with an advantageous view of a pond and sheep paddock. The tiled roof, the wooden shutters, the beautiful hydrangea bushes and flower gardens, the emerald green spread of grass, all gave the ambiance of classic good taste. We were ecstatic and yet also felt instantly at home. During our 12 days here, I often felt I was on a retreat in the Appalachian mountains. The fresh air, the evergreen trees, the solitude from other human commotion — the ambiance was one of rest and total relaxation.

We rode mountain bikes past billowing grain fields, picnicked among honeybees in the wildflower meadows, swam in the cool, clear waters of a glacier lake, and canoed past sentinels of tall, straight spruce and beech trees. The sun rose around 4:30 a.m. and did not set until around 11 p.m., giving us deliciously long days that lulled us into leisurely breakfasts, allowed us to enjoy outdoor activities long into the bright evening and set the stage for late dinners with chilled wine on the veranda.

After my harrowing months of preparing to move abroad, this was exactly the tonic needed. What a stroke of incredible luck. By the grace of God, we had managed to find a soft landing — and a fluffy down comforter.