Boo and I took an impromptu road trip west, through Bay City to the town of Midfield, then south through Danevang to Blessing and back home through Bay City. This post is confined to Danevang, one of the dozens of nation-specific European 19th Century settlements that helps make Texas such a crazy quilt and distinct from your average former slave state.
As the name implies, in this case the settlement in question was home to people from Denmark.
Above, the giant, 6400-sq.-ft. heritage museum. Alas, not open on Mondays. The pride in this community is evident in both the structure and the manicured grounds.
The community was founded in 1894. Most of the original settlers had already spent some time in America, freezing their asses off in the Dakotas and Minnesota, where for them, anyway, the Lake Wobegon dream did not materialize. They lit out for the Sunny South, where they were joined by others, some also pre-existing immigrants, some direct from the Old Country. (The meaning of “Danevang” is described variously as “Danish meadow” and as an old term for the nation itself.)
Where there are Danes, there will be a Lutheran church. Note obelisk at right — some community history is carved into its face. The low building to its left is their party / meeting room.:
And where there are people, there will be a cemetery, eventually:
Spot check of the graves and everything checks out: most of the people have names like Jensen, Andersen, Madsen, Nielsen, Mortensen. It’s legit.
Kidding, of course it is. On a side note, there was a Norwegian colony near my great-grandfather’s Bosque County hometown of Meridian, one larger than Danevang. Swedes scattered hither and yon through 19th Century Texas. There was once a concentration of them in what was then the farmlands of what is now the Houston area of Aldine. The Swedes were never quite as organized in their Texas settlements as were the Norwegians and the Danes.
On another side note, I got to know a few Scandinavians on my European travels, and especially on my kibbutz stays, where it seemed like the volunteers were 1/3 British and Irish, 1/3 Aussie / New Zealand (and South African), and 1/3 Scandi, with tiny minorities of continental European, Latin American, and American.
I really enjoyed talking to the Danes and Swedes I got to know, as well as a dude named Hjalmar, a native of the Faroe Islands. It was Hjalmar who taught me the Scandinavian origin of the form of tobacco consumption we know as “dipping”: those popular brands are called Skoal and Copenhagen for a reason. And he let me in on a little secret: while Swedes love to claim a proud Viking heritage, the Norwegians, Danes, Faroese, and Icelanders regard them as posers in the historic raping an pillaging department. “They were nothing but farmers,” Hjalmar would say.
Swedes had their own prejudices. Because of our work schedules, I used to share a 15-minute coffee break daily with a Swede named Peter. We'd sit there over our strong Turkish coffees and tell each other about our home countries and our neighbors.
Peter told me that the Danes, Norwegians and Swedes were basically the same people, who spoke languages they could all mutually understand.
"What about the Finns?" I asked.
"Ya,” he sighed. “Ya, de Finns, day get tronk and stobb each udder wid da leedle knives," he said.
But back to Danevang. These Danes were into weather. Seriously into weather, like, even to a degree beyond most people in that agriculture-heavy era.
After finding the upper Great Plains too cold and the Texas Gulf Coastal Plain too hot, a contingent of Danevangers headed west to California. There they helped found a town called Solvang, or “Sun Meadow.” How California can you get? (Today it’s a thriving tourist town — beginning in the 1940s, the locals starting playing up their heritage and now it’s a little like a “Danish village” Disneyland style.)
Enough remained behind in Texas to keep the settlement going. As with the Texas Germans, Danish Texans learned both English and their native language in their local school. (Danish was used in church services in Danevang until 1971; old country customs are still observed in that sanctuary’s Christmas services.) They put together a lending library, a mutual insurance company, a phone exchange and a Danish farmers’ co-op — oh, those Scandinavians and their communal ways. And after some rough years of drought, fire, and the Great Storm of 1900, the promise of that blackland prairie soil that had in part lured them south was fulfilled with bountiful crops of cotton and grains. (The area today is still mega-fertile — you can practically hear the corn erupting out of the flat fields nearby.)
As we mentioned, Danevang was a town of weather junkies, and a mere two years after it was founded, they had established the first official United States weather station between Sugar Land and Victoria, shaming more established towns like Wharton, Richmond and El Campo. Despite the fact that the population is now about 60 people (down from a peak of 500 circa 1920), there is still a Danevang United States Weather Station.
Per the Texas State Historical Association:
As of 1993 only seven persons have acted as recorder. All were men except one woman, Johanna Allenson, who was the recorder for thirty-one years. Rainfall and temperature are recorded each day, and all the past recordings have been kept on file and stored at the assembly hall.
The town celebrated its 100th anniversary in 1994. At the church and community center, the remaining locals played host to their children, grandchildren, cousins, and former neighbors with a feast of Danish sausages and pastries, traditional music, and dancing in native costume.
And this being Danevang it was all capped off with…
….what else but, as recorded by the TSHA, a solemn ceremonial “display of the weather bureau records.”
100 years of them.
Above, Boo unimpressed with strange wagon over door at trailer across the road from Danevang’s church.
Chihuahua side eye is non pareil
Come back to Danevang October 23 this year for the Harvest Celebration.