By Ellen Margrethe Helweg

Translated by Klaus Jeppesen

A month later, when I slept upstairs in my father's house, you suddenly stood in the balcony door. "It's just me," you said.. You had heard that your father was ill, and you had longed for us. However, you soon had to return, and share a cabin with the famous high school principal Holger Begtrup.

Then came the world war. "Vaterland" was involved in war service. They would not have women and children across the Atlantic; the submarine war had begun. You've told me that many nationalities (there were not many passengers) gathered in the evening, and showed each other pictures of your children, and that you always had a life-belt next to you.

Meanwhile I should seek a pastorate call at home; I thought that we had to go to the Far West here in Denmark. Why it was Jernved in Ribe, I do not remember.

At Christmas I became ill with the flu and the fever would not leave me. For a time the postal connection between us ceased, and I did not know if I ever would see you again. One day I heard the doctor say to mother: "I know nothing else that can help her, but her husband coming." Suddenly one day you stood beside my bed as if you had only been gone a week; you had just swept everything aside. You arrived with a Norwegian boat. When you were a ways out of Bergen, you were taken to Kirkwall in England, where you remained for the detection of stowaways and finally given permission to sail again.

And so we traveled to Jernved, a nice place. Jutlanders welcomed us so warmly. The large room in the parsonage had a beautiful red color; Konstantin Hansen had painted it when his son had been a priest there. From the windows we could see Ribe Cathedral.. Downstream of the rectory garden flowed Kongeåen between the lovely meadows. We also had a stork on the roof. The southern end of our parish was adjacent to the border, but we saw nothing of the war; it was so peaceful in the parsonage and the beautiful garden.

Our president was the Reverend N.A. Jensen, who had been there for 12 years, and he managed the entire parish and the parsonage in a way that made it a peaceful haven . You thought perhaps it was a little too peaceful, but it was nice that Jensen had installed electric lights and leased the farm. Otherwise you probably would have begun a larger farming business. My dad put a glass veranda on the south side, so we could sit in the shelter and sunshine and look out over the meadows all the way to the Ribe Cathedral.

One of the very first things we did was to go to Puggaard one evening. Is was not very far, they said, but we walked and walked, and it was 9 pm before, we reached the farm. We were received by Maren, Niels Peter and Ingeborg as dear old friends, and it has been the mildest and most loving friendship ever since up to today when his son, Einar, who now has the farm, sits among our guests.

Jutlanders were cordial people, who always received us with a Velkommen. But there were three little things you had difficulty accepting. First, people were indeed good to come to church, but were not on time. You tried to talk to them and explained it was best to be present from the beginning of the service, but you finally had to relent and find the longest hymn to begin church services to allow for their lateness.. The other was that when there was a funeral scheduled for 2 pm, it might be 4 o'clock before people came, because the procession could not start before the mourners were ready to go. An agreement was made that you would remain at home at the vicarage until the teacher would call when he saw the mourners approach. Finally ,there was the parish cook. When there should be a party, wedding or christening, she was always asked before you. You thought that you, who would perform the ceremony, surely should be asked first, but anyone could understand that there could be no feast if the cook was unavailable and so you accepted that they would come to you second!

The happiest day at Jernved was probably Torstensen's day of christening, where for the first time we could had both parents and the entire family present. It was a lovely summer day, and your father gave the most beautiful speech about the little boy and the small flowers in the meadows.

It was cold in winter when the sea fog came in over the flat meadows. George and Ruth could not withstand the damp cold. They were born and raised in a dry climate in a completely different continent, so the doctor said they had to have a change in climate every winter, and father and mother were happy to have them.

On such a cold winter day, you were somewhere north to give a talk, and I had to pick you up at the station about noon. There fell much snow, and when the train finally came, you were not on it. The innkeeper wanted me to stay for the night, but 1 wanted to go home. The horse was cold from standing and waiting, and when I came to the broad road that leads from Braminge to Ribe, precisely at the point where Queen Dagmar’s song says: "And when he came to Gredstedbro then only Karl Riis followed him", a big car came with bright lights that shone even more brightly than usual because everything was white. The horse ran away and there was nothing to do but to drive it into a large snowdrift, where it could stop and stamp its unrest and fear. When it finally was quiet and tired, we drove into the white night of the long road back to the vicarage. When I had unharnessed and put the horse in the stable, I went to bed, but was frozen, so cold I thought I would never be warm. I could not fall asleep, but at night there was a knock at the window. It was you. Your train had been delayed by the snow, so the Ribe train had already left when you came to Braminge. You would not spend the night there and you walked the long, long path through the snow to the parsonage.

We also had a little experience with what it is like to deal with a Jutlander. Because we had 3 small children, we decided it would be good to give them goat's milk. Old Herla had several goats.

"Well, this one, that was surely a ferocious goat, and it was rough, but it could give milk." Herla said and the more she praised the animal. the more excited you were. and triumphantly went home with it. But when the goat was milked, there was not a drop of milk. Our indignation burst into flame, "Such a person to fool the priest!" But old Herla saw it differently. She told people that she had justly deceived the preacher. He was nuts to believe everything she had told him about the old goat. "He should have looked for it himself, at least he could have done that," she concluded. We heard that Herla was proud to have tricked the priest and felt justified. Our indignation hovered in the air. But it was true that you could have checked it yourself, yes that you could. So there was no more talk about that goat.

Jernved was in truth a little Nazareth. Once I walked up from the village along a path that led to the parsonage, I saw beyond the flat landscape without trees, and thought: "A stranger would probably think this was a boring place to live, but down there at the end of the village is my home where I have my husband and three young beautiful children."

The years in Jernved were lovely, but even here, we could not be at rest. There were several calls to go somewhere else, and one day, Jørgen Jørgensen and Valdemar Hansen were on mission to have you move to Ousted at Lejre to a parish in need of a fresh young man. The same priest had been there for 38 years, and he was now very old. You said no, but one day you said to me: "I just saw that the deadline for applications for Ousted expired today, and now I have therefore sent my application." I knew then that life in Jernved was over, and we had to move again.

Over your grandfather's old desk hangs a picture that we bought at an art exhibition in Weimar. When you saw it you said that you would like to have it. It depicts oxen plowing uphill, so they must put all their efforts into the plowing. So have you always wanted to plow where you came, and when it was hard, you arched your back and you slogged on!