Viking Hills

Hey everyone,

So very exciting week and weekend.  This past Thursday to Saturday I was on a study tour with my core course at DIS.  These study tours are amazing!!!!  If any of you know someone looking for a cool place to study abroad recommend DIS, they actually build in travel time into the classes you take here and pricesare subsidized and/or included in tuition so it is a great deal.

This thursday my core course in European Culture and History called Memory and Identity in France went to Julland (pronounced Jutland) which is the biggest island of Denmark and where the first towns and cities were established.  Our fist stop was in Ry at the Højskole (pronounced something like folkschool)  This is a school where students who just graduated from high school or are in the middle of college can take a break from school and for six months come there to take creative classes and classes they would normally not take.  These Højskoles are located all over the country and some of them specialize in certain areas like theatre or dance or sports while others like the one my group went to, has a variety of classes and areas of studies.  Some of these areas included Ceramics, art, music, theatre, journalism, and outdoor exploration.  There are no grades at the Højskole and if they try to have final exams the government takes away their funding!!!  So it is basically a glorified summer camp.  But it sounds like a lot of fun and allows the students some time away to try and figure out what they might want to do with their lives.  They are able to learn new skills and meet new people.  Overall, I think it is a great idea!!!!  While there I took a theatre class on masks and it was amazing and a lot of fun.  The students love it there and were very nice.  They even had three students from America, which was a little strange.

After the Højskole we went to Sdr. Omme to visit the open prison there.  Now this was a strange place and again summer camp is the only way I can explain it.  Basically, this system in Denmark is trying to rehabilitate the prisoners and help lead to normalization so that upon their release they can adapt back into society better.  So this prison has no walls, fences, or gates, it is just an open area with little houses that fit about 50 prisoners each and are very comfortable with kitchens and laundry.  The prisoners get their own rooms with tv and computers.  All the prisoners also must work on the prison grounds or take online courses during the day to keep them busy.  During the summer they can organize games of soccer or baseball and have barbeques.  It literally seems like you have entered a prison, the guards do not carry any sort of weapon at all and you can't tell the workers from the prisoners since the prisoners do not have to where uniforms.  The whole idea of this system is that it paces individual responsibility on the person.  He must work and or study while in prison he still has to cook his food and do his laundry as well as help clean the barracks.  It also allows them to see that their decisions are up to them and they need to learn how o do better. Most of all this shows a lot of social trust within the society.  Trust that the prisoners will not escape or abuse their times out of prison (each prisoner can leave the prison for a few days if granted leave.  The prison we visited gives out 50,000 leaves and only 2.3% of these are abused)  and trust that society will return the prisoner if he escapes.  The system also forces te prisoner to leave in a society where he has to become a contributing member.  This way upon his release I can see that they would be better prepared.  Although this works for Denmark I have no idea how it would work for the US, we are more about punishment than rehabilitation I feel and I don't think our society has the social trust to allow for this.

We then went to visit Jelling (pronounced Yelling)  which is the site of the two runic stones that proclaim Denmark as a christian country.  the site is a very interesting mix of pagan and christian.  There are two large mounds of dirt that use to be surrounded by a uge oval of stones.  In one of the mounds was buried Gorm the old, the first king of Denmark.  The complex was done by his son Herald Bluetooth (also new fact for you the symbols for bluetooth on your phone are the runic symbols for this kings name...pretty interesting!!!!!)  It was basically done to show the German emperor that Denmark was willing to become a Christian country and thus should remain independent.  The site started with the one mound in which Gorm was buried.  However they then added a Church and Herald ordered his father dug up form the mound (it took them four years to bury him in this mound) and place him in the middle of the church.  So they did this (they had to actually cut up his skeleton to get it out in buckets from a whole they had dug in the top of the mound).  Next a second mound was built so that the church would be positioned between the two of them and the stones ring was added around it.  (interesting that the stone ring is actually a pagan symbol to help the dead pass on to the next world but this was supposed to be a christian site).  After this was completed Herald had an artists from Ireland come and sketch a runic stone to proclaim Denmark as Christian.  However since the people could not read he also had to carve pictures in to show the people that they had to convert.  Basically the pictures show that the snake consuming itself is about to be destroyed (an old pagan symbol for the end of the world) then on the other side it shows Jesus Christ as the only thing that could stop this so the people had to convert.  Of course this did not work and to baptise people, priests on sunday had to give away free white robes so people would come to the hurch and as they left the priest could sprinkle water on their heads to baptise them.  Of course this also meant that some people ended up being baptised quiet a few times!!!!  Another interesting fact I learned there was that the current monarch Margaret II is related to the first king Gorm the old and that there were no coups that displaced the royal family.  

While at Jelling my group climbed the biggest of the two viking mounds (not an easy feat to accomplish in the snow) and tried the viking drink of honey mead (very good).  Then we all slid down the hill together.  It was a lot of fun and something I would have to recommend if you come to Denmark.  The nice ting about Jelling is that archeological excavations are still going on.  Most historic sites like this tend to stop excavations but the group is very interested in trying to learn more about this first town.  They even have a plan for the excavations until the year 2014.  

We spent the night in Skanderborg at a youth hostel.  It was very beautiful and situated right on a lake (which of course we had to walk on since it was frozen).  The next day we drove to Arhus the second oldest town in Denmark.  While there we went to the Aros art museum.  It was actually really cool, my favorite exhibit was the architecture one.  the ideas the danes have for some of their new buildings are incredible including twisting ones, and ones that look like mountains.  After wards we did a scavenger hunt of the old part of the city.  the interesting thing about arhus is although buildings have changed the streets have not since the founding of the city so you can ltierally find places that are thousands of years old!!!!!  It was definitely a trip back into history.