Doverodde Diary: Day 13 - Red Arrows

A single sheet of paper is large enough to hold a whole country, as well as the water around it. This chart shows Denmark and the tip of Sweden as blank, sand-coloured landmasses surrounded by a white sea. It can be used by sailors travelling home around Denmark’s coast and along its waterways. Red arrows indicate ‘retninger for indgående’ – ways to enter. They sweep over the top of Jutland, into each harbour and around the islands. (Bornholm, the island everyone forgets, is ringed with red.)

Cities dot the east coast, round and regular as floats on an eel net: Aalborg; Hobro; Randers; Aarhus; Horsens; Vejle; Kolding. On the west coast Esbjerg stands alone.

Doverodde Diary: Day 12 - Closed On Account Of Happiness

“Closed on account of happiness”

Two Danish resistance fighters guarding a shop 

while the owner celebrates the British liberation of Denmark. 

(With thanks to Wikipedia) 

On 5 May 1945 the German occupation of Denmark ended. People took down their blackout blinds and burned them in the streets. Today, we mark Liberation Day more quietly with candles placed on our windowsills. 


As I strike a long match and hold the flame to the wick of a tea light, I notice the moon rising. Tomorrow evening brings the moon to its perigee: full and curious, it will pass closer to Earth than at any time in its orbit. It looks very large and very bright, as if reflecting the light of all Denmark’s candles.

Doverodde Diary: Day 11 - Disappointment

The thief of birdsong is trying to catch the colour of rain.

- It’s just grey, he complains.

Doverodde Diary: Day 10 - The Wild Swans

Swans make a wheezing sound as they fly, and for years I thought this came from their beaks, because with their necks stretched out ahead of them they seem to be straining to breathe. Now I realise it is the sound of their wings beating against the air.

There’s a Hans Christian Andersen tale in which a wicked queen turns her eleven stepsons into swans. To restore them to human form, their sister must knit shirts of nettles to throw over their backs. While she knits she cannot speak a word. When the time comes to rescue them, she has still to finish the sleeve of the final shirt, so the youngest prince keeps his swan’s wing. There are at least eleven swans on the lake at Doverkil but I can’t find any nettles. And I have no desire to silence the swans' wings.

Doverodde Diary: Day 9 - Returning to Sand

You can see the beach from the brick factory, where pallets of new bricks wait in a warehouse without any walls. The shore glows iron red with bits of brick. These are the rejects, flung aside after firing and sucked into the sea. The bricks are perforated during manufacture with rows of wire-cut holes, but in these rejects the pattern of squares and slits is often twisted. However worn the outer edges of the brick, these channels are still sharply defined. People collect these folorn objects, which become far more desirable in their destruction than any perfect thing.

Some have been polished to slim shards by the sea, and if the waves weren’t so furious I’d try a round of ducks and drakes. All the bricks will come to this in time, but for the moment some are still recognisable, although it’s a strange house you would build with them.

Doverodde Diary: Day 8 - The Ants

Twice a week I cycle to the grocery in Ydby, a thirty-minute ride through the woods. My bike is a gold model with the word ‘MOSQUITO’ on its frame. The brand name acts as a reminder that my ant problem remains unsolved.

I am reading the collected essays of Orhan Pamuk, who writes: ‘words [...] are like ants. Nothing can penetrate into the cracks, holes, and invisible gaps of life as fast as words can.’ I can tell that Orhan Pamuk has some experience of ants. I hope he will go on to say something useful about them, but to my disappointment the remainder of the essay is mostly about words.

Anna emails me a link: How To Kill Indoor Ants Naturally. The site recommends leaving white vinegar, bay leaves, garlic cloves, peppermint teabags or cucumber slices in places the ants frequent. Sprinkling lines of cayenne pepper, cinnamon and lemon juice under doors and windows has also been known to help. Or I could try piles of crushed dried mint leaves and freshly ground cloves in my store cupboards.

Since my cupboard contains little more than teabags, porridge oats and salt I’m concerned that I will have to make a special trip to the grocery just for the ants. But something must be done – if I continue to exterminate them using my notebook, there will be no room for any words.

Doverodde Diary: Day 7 - Liberation

He plans to sail to St Petersburg.

– When will you leave? I ask.

– When I’m ready, he says, winding a rope in his hand.