After a nice breakfast we took off for a small farming town called Skæve. I'm pretty sure it was exactly the same in the 1860s when Geoff's great, great, great, great grandparents lived there. Now this family we had information about. The mother of this family had been married a few years when her parents and siblings, from a town about 30 miles away, all joined the Mormon church, left Denmark and joined a handcart company headed to Utah. This daughter (and a brother) were the only members in the family to not join the church and to stay in Denmark. Her name was Karen Marie Mikkelsen, and her husband was Christen Hauerslev. He was the area school teacher (there really isn't a "town" nearby), and the census says he was a "choir singer". We knew all of the children (there were twelve, six lived to adulthood) were born in the Hugdrup School.
We drove into this "town" and it was farmland with homes here and there. Thank goodness for those great white, Danish churches. It was the only thing that let us know we were in Skæve.
Most items, like pulpits, fonts and benches were the same as when Geoff's family attended these churches.
The painted ceilings were amazing. They have been the same since the Middle Ages, and a specialty painter restores them, as needed. In Saltum, there were details the Catholic Priest had painted on the ceiling to try to be sympathetic to the Reformation (hoping to keep the peace.) All still there.
Walking around the church grounds I noticed a woman mowing the lawn in a far corner. She was the only person around. Was there some wild chance she would know about a school house from the mid-1800s? Doubtful, but worth a try. She pointed to a nearby house and said she thought it might be an old school. It was the only house in sight.
We drove to the little house, a beautiful, Danish farmhouse, and knocked on the door. No one was home. Hmmm. We wandered around the driveway for not even two minutes when an old farmer drove up. At the sight of us he began to smile broadly, like we were family, and he was expecting us. We marveled at his friendliness at seeing a family of strangers on his doorstep! His Danish was not great, but he was eager to understand our story. He told us that the current house was half home and half school back then, and built in 1864. This was likely it!
Of course, it had been renovated over the years. We tried to imagine it as a home and school. Meanwhile, the farmer told us to wait a moment and disappeared for a few minutes. He came out with an old painting that came with the house. It was a painting of the house in 1923.
On the left was the home, and on the right was the small school. And look at the name in the bottom, left-hand corner. Hugdrup Skole! This was the place. It was a little wink wink from the great ancestors. Notice the proximity to the church.
We asked if we could look around for a few minutes and the farmer agreed and went inside. A few minutes later he came out dressed to work and drove away in his tractor. We saw him later working in the fields about 1/2 mile away as we drove out of town. Think of it, he was home for a total of ten minutes. That ten minutes happened to be when we went to his house. Any sooner or any later we would have missed him completely. We considered it a miracle.
We planned to take a quick trip to Skagen, the Northern tip of Denmark. We were really looking forward to it, but Geoff really wanted to see if we could find the town where Karen Marie Mikkelsen's parents lived, and where they joined the church. We decided to skip Skagen and search for any clues. We had what we thought was a town name; that's it. The countryside was so beautiful. By horse and buggy it would have been quite a trip to see family. Christen and Karen had a great life developing in Skæve. They probably moved in to this home a year or less before her family took off for Utah. We wondered what they knew, what they thought, and how hard it must have been to see them go.
We didn't have much luck finding their town. We found, what we think, is the Methodist church where they worshipped, and where they were persecuted. It was curious that the Mormon's were so persecuted when just a few centuries before they entire country left their previous religion for a new one. But so it was.
Adele trekked for Karen Marie Mikkelsen in July on our pioneer trek. We wanted to give her the opportunity to make the journey her family made 150 years ago.
Like I said, we had some place names, and with the help of locals, this was the closest town we could guess to where Karen Marie Mikkelsen's parents, Michel Pedersen and Dorthe Knudsdatter, lived.
Original interiors:
We drove straight to Frederikshavn where we had a quick lunch and caught a late afternoon, 3.5 hour ferry to Gothenburg, Sweden. It was a packed ship, and a very long ride.
We loved the small islands as we approached Sweden.
And the cute little lake houses!
We arrived at our friends, the Malms, in the evening and it was a very happy reunion! Elder and Sister Malm lived in our apartment building while he was serving as a general authority for the church. Their son, Carl, and his wife, Matilda, and children, came to visit for a month a few years ago. Our children played every moment they could and have kept in touch, despite the language barrier and distance. We met other family members, too, over the years. When we saw Carl and Matilda and kids it was as if no time had passed. They are like family.
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