Danish Heritage Tours is a Danish based tour operator arranging and performing genealogy tours in Denmark.
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My unique concept is to provide individual and tailor-made tours primarily for Americans, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders having Danish ancestors. I specialize in tours customized just for you and your group. You will see the specific places in Denmark, where your ancestors lived. Having an MA in History and many years experience as an archivist and a genealogist, I will help finding the
exact places. The house, where Great Grandfather grew up and the school he went to. The church, where he and Great Grandmother were married and the cemetery, where the names of your relatives can be found. During the trip by car or van, I will also show you sights of interest and tourist attractions where relevant. Included in my tours is my service, accommodation in 3* and 4* hotels or inns, all meals, if relevant also insight visits in museums or attractions, and if needed transfer airport/hotel. A trip usually last 2 - 5 days but this will depend on your wishes and budget.
Inside the department store Magasin du Nord in central Copenhagen, you can visit a room that the Danish fairy tale writer Hans Christian Andersen lived when he was 22 years old in 1827-28.
The room is located at the top of a building in Vingårdsstræde. It is a very small room with just a bed, a table, one chair and a fireplace. During the time Andersen lived here, he wrote 9 works.
It is possible to visit the room during he opening hours of Magasin du Nord.
If only walls could talk.
In the Middle Ages, approx. 2700 churches were bulit in Denmark - most of them in the 12th and 13th centuries. As unique cultural heritage, the remaining 1800 medieval churches are well preserved.
It is a pleasure to be able to show my guests from the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand the old village churches in which their ancestors were baptized, confirmed and married, or where their funerals were held. Also the cemeteries surrounding the churches are well kept.
This weekend is graduation time for high school students. For many years, it has been a tradition in Denmark for students to rent a wagon or lorry and drive around the area where they live.
They visit each student's home and get a little to eat and a lot to drink, just as they also drink a great deal along the way between the visits.
It can easily take an entire day and evening to visit up to 30 students' parents and the day typically ends with partying all night.
All the students are waering a special white cap with their names enbroidered and a coloured ribbon that shows which type of high school degree they now have.
Tonight, 23 June, bonfires can be seen all over Denmark, as we will celebrate Sankt Hans aften (Saint John's eve). We gather around a bonfire, listen to an official speech, and sing a the Midsommer's eve song.
This is a remeniscence of an old pagan celebration of summer solstice. Until a few years ago, there would have been a doll made of straw and looking like a witch at the top of the bonfire. Her evil spirit would be sent away by the flames.
Holger Drachmann and P.E. Lange-Müller wrote the "Midsommervise" (Midsummer hymn) in 1885 called "Vi elsker vort land..." ("We Love Our Country") that is sun...
June 5th is Constitution Day in Denmark. We had our first constitution in 1849 and it has been amended five times since then, most recently in 1953.
The constitution introduced freedom of religion as one of the first countries in Europe. This meant that many missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints traveled to Denmark, which had the consequence that many Danes became Mormons and left their homeland to settle down in Utah in America.
The picture shows a painting from 1856 by Chresten Dalsgaard and has the title 'Mormons visiting a country carpenter.
Is there anything more American than a hamburger?
But forget about the burger as an American invention and think instead of a blacksmith from Southern Jutland, Denmark.
It was Danish Louis Lassen who was behind the world's first hamburger. His first name was originally Ludvig, he was a blacksmith and emigrated from Denmark to the USA in 1886, aged 21, and without knowing that he was going to create an iconic American lunch.
He set out to sell eggs, butter and milk from a small cart pulled by a horse. In 1895, he converted the carriage into a mobile lunch place and in 1900 he had a busy customer who asked for a lunch to take on the go. Louis Lassen ran some beef through a meat mincer, shaped the meat into a bun, fried it and put it between two pieces of toast. A little tomato and onion. The world's first hamburger.
Since then, Louis Lassen established his small burger place Louis’ Lunch in New Haven, Connecticut, which still exists and is today run by 4. generation Lassen.
One of the Danes who emigrated to the United States and became famous was William Knudsen (1879-1948). He was born in Copenhagen but left Denmark in 1900.
Knudsen was a leading Danish-American automotive industry executive and an American general during World War II. He worked for Ford from 1911 to 1921, a decade that saw the formative development of the modern assembly line and true mass production. After 1921, Knudsen worked for General Motors and was president of the Chevrolet Division of General Motors from 1924 to 1937 and was president of General Motors from 1937 to 1940.
His experience and success led the Franklin Roosevelt administration to commission him directly as a lieutenant general in the United States Army to help lead the United States' war materiel production efforts for World War II. Knudsen was the only civilian ever to join the army at such a high initial rank.
Knudsen's influence not only smoothed government procurement procedures but also led companies that had never produced military hardware to enter the market. America outproduced its enemies. As Knudsen said, "We won because we smothered the enemy in an avalanche of production, the like of which he had never seen, nor dreamed possible."
Another very valuable help when you wish to read Danish is FamilySearch.org's website, where there is a page with many old Danish words that relate to genealogy: https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Danish_Genealogical_Word_List
The Danish Genealogical Word List shows Danish words and their English translations for many words that are found in documents used to research Danish ancestors. If the word you are looking for is not on this list, please consult a Danish-English dictionary. (See the "Additional Resources" section b...
Not able to read Danish? AI may be of help.
I have tested the AI program Transkribus and it can be helpful. The program can be used to transcribe both printed Danish and handwritten Danish (mainly from the 19th Century). It is free to use for individuals. Once you have registered as a user, you can watch several videos that explains how to use the program.
Transkribus is not error-free and there are some things you must be aware of. For example, different transcription models are used for printed and handwritten text, respectively. Therefore, the program does not work well for mixed texts.
Also, if you ask for a transcription of a document with columns, such as church registers and censuses, it is best to upload one column at a time.
In the picture below, you can see an application handwritten entry for my Great Grandfather's birth (1872) in the church records that I had transcribed (if you wish to try, remember to choose Danish as language).
Afterwards you can use ChatGPT or Google Translate to translate from Danish to English. ChatGPT is usually quite accurate.
This is the transcription of the handwritten part of the text in Danish telling Peter's rank and which regiments he served in and when:
Peder Halvorsen Bonet
4 juli 1820
1848- 50
1848 ved 11. Liniebataillon
1849-50 ved 5te Reservebataillon
Ved 11 Bat. 3die Komp
5 Reservebat. 1 Komp No 30.
ved førstnævnte Komp No 30, ved 5 Reserve erindres No ikke
i 1848 fra sidst i Marts til først i November
1849 fra sidst i Marts til først i September og fra midt i Mai
i 1850 til Februar 1851.
Som Undercorporal.
Nei
Nei
Nei
Nei
Ja
Sæby Afdeling - No 34676
Huusmand
Sæby Hede.
Huusmand Peder Halvorsen, Sæby Hede per Sæby
Happy Easter!
I have already received my first 'gækkebrev' this Easter. As I have posted before, we have in Denmark an Easter tradition that exists only in our country.
A person - typically a child - writes a little poem on a piece of paper also decorated with fine cuttings. The 'gækkebrev' is sent to someone the person cares about - very likely a grandparent. The letter is signed with dots - one dot for each letter in the sender's first name - and the receiver must then guess who the sender is. If the recipient cannot guess it, the sender gets an Easter egg.
These days I am doing research for a client who is coming to Denmark later this year. We will then visit the places where the person's ancestors lived in the middle of the1800s.
A married couple among the ancestors divorced, which was not very unusual in the mid-1800s, but certainly not common either.
In this connection, the male spouse, Peder Nielsen, sent a letter to the king, in which Peder applied for a divorce, as the couple had lived separately for more than six years. The reason for the separation was that the wife was unfaithful to her husband.
At the bottom of the letter to the king is Peder Nielsen's signature, and below the signature there is an abbreviation 'm. f. P.', which stands for 'with led pen'. This means that Peder Nielsen was not able to write the letter himself, but has had the help of an official.
In the middle of the 19th century, the average life expectancy in Denmark was only 45 years. But if you correct for child mortality, which was very high at the time, you get a different picture. On average, a newborn boy could look forward to living for almost 43 years. If he survived the first 10 years, however, he could expect to live another approx. 48 years.
A large part of the population thus lived to be both 60 and 70 years old, and later in the 19th century 10% of the population lived to be 80 years old or more.
Information on causes of death at the time may be uncertain. They were often given on the basis of an immediate assessment, not many were autopsied, and doctors judged differently. Many diseases were also perceived differently than we do now. Today, for example, you cannot die of old age (in Denmark), but you often see that cause of death stated in older church records.
However, we know that most people then died of the same diseases as today: cancer and cardiovascular diseases, especially strokes and heart attacks.
The coming weekend, Fastelavn is celebrated throughout Denmark. The tradition is more than 500 years old and like many other old traditions, Fastelavn is a mixture of religious and secular customs.
Nowadays, it is mainly a feast for children and their families. Children dress up in various costumes and they 'beat the cat of the barrel'. In the old days there could be a live cat inside the barrel, but now it's candy and fruit. The child that strikes the barrel to pieces wins a prize and so does the best dressed child.
In the middle of the 19th century, the Danish priest N.F.S. Grundtvig introduced folk high schools for young people. The idea was, that young commoners through information about history and the importance of community learned to take responsibility for and share in the country's future.
Grundtvig had imagined that the folk high schools should be a civic school for life, where young people were taught what it meant to be Danish and living in Denmark.
The first folk high school was founded in 1844, and already in 1872 there were 52 of them, in 1890 there were 75. In 1866-67, approx. 1,000 students attended folk high schools, fifteen years later the number was up to 4,000. Most of them were young people living in rural communities.
For a young student, a stay at a folk high school could mean an encounter with a new world and completely different attitudes. Many have described the stay as a time that completely changed their outlook on life. What you learned at the school could be taken home to the parish and used in everyday life.
In today's Denmark, there is still a tradition of taking classes at a folk high school. For most adults it is for just one week, while for young people it is often a stay of 9 months.
The picture from 1894 shows a class on a trip in the island Bornholm's rocky landscape.
On 14 January 2024, Denmark got a new king. Our queen of 52 years, Margrethe, abdicated in favor of her son, who is now King Frederik 10.
Denmark has been a kingdom for more than 1,000 years and is thus one of the oldest in the world. The monarchy is of great importance to many Danes and our new king was also shown huge support and trust on the day of his appointment.
Coronations are long gone in our country, so the new king was proclaimed by our prime minister from a balcony of the parliament building.
Congratulations to His Majesty King Frederik 10 of Denmark, the Faroe Islands and Greenland.
From the 16th to the 18th century, it was common in Denmark for the wealthy citizens to be buried under the floor inside the local church. In some larger churches, there was even room for crypts under the church floor. In many of the Danish churches, especially the largest, you can still see tombstones in the church floor.
During the 18th century, there were several nationwide epidemics with thousands of dead, and in such cases the indoor burials caused an unbearable stench.
Due to hygienic conditions, it became illegal from 1805 to be buried inside the churches. From now on, everyone was to be buried in the cemetery. In the countryside, these were located around the church itself, while in the cities several large cemeteries were built outside the city centre.
The cemeteries were now more regulated and divided into neat plots separated by hedges, as you usually see them today.
In the 19th century, most people in Denmark lived in wooden or half-timbered houses. In half-timbered houses, the walls - the space between the wooden beams - were filled with either bricks or clay-lined walls. The latter could be a mixture of clay, straw, soil or sand.
A protective layer of wet lime was then applied, which could be mixed with a natural colour. The houses usually had a thatched roof.
Bricks were primarily used for churches, castles, manors, fortifications, and for houses for wealthier people in the cities.
The necessary materials for both half-timbered and brick construction were available in most of the country. Clay and lime occur in large quantities in the Danish subsoil, and straw and reed is available along coasts, lakes and streams.
'Hygge'. That special Danish concept.
Hygge comes in the form of both a verb and an adjective – something can be hyggelig(t) (hygge-like): “What a hyggelig living room! It was so hyggeligt to see you! Have a hyggelig time!
We have to state how hyggelig everything is – all the time. We talk about how hyggeligt it will be to get together on Friday, and on Monday we will remind each other of how hyggelig Friday was.
Hygge is a key performance indicator of most Danish social gatherings, as hygge is mostly about being with someone you feel good with - winter or summer, day or night.
The hygge manifesto: Atmosphere, Presence, Pleasure, Equality, Gratitude, Harmony, Comfort, truce, Togetherness, Shelter.
Happy New Year! I hope you will have a hyggelig time.
If you have had a DNA test done, you can see your 'estimated ethnicity'. But what does that really mean?
Many people make the mistake of thinking that they are shown the origin of their family. But that is not the case!
The map instead shows where people who have DNA similar to yours live today. Thus, in my case, I share DNA with primarily Scandinavians and a few in the eastern US and Canada (where some of my family immigrated to). See the picture.
My DNA can of course only be compared with DNA from others who have also taken a DNA test from (in this case) MyHeritage, just as I will only be presented with possible matches, if both they and I have a family tree on MyHeritage's platform.
Many of the Danish immigrants in the United States read fairy tales to their children written by Hans Christian Andersen. One of the places in Copenhagen that Andersen visited and that inspired him for his stories was Tivoli Gardens, which opened in 1843.
Walt Disney visited Tivoli three times in the 1950s and got the inspiration for Disneyland from there. Walt and his brother also visited the Hans Christian Andersen Museum and bought a large collection of fairy tales which is now part of the large Disney archive.
Several of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales have been adapted into Disney films. Most famous is The Little Mermaid, which in Disney's version from 1989 has a happy ending, unlike Andersen's original story, which is very sad. The two Frozen films are based on Andersen's fairy tale The Snow Queen.
Should you come to Copenhagen, then do not miss a visit to Tivolig Gardens.
On December 13, the female martyr Santa Lucia from Sicily is celebrated with processions and singing a special song all over Denmark. It is a tradition we got from Sweden, where it goes back to the 17th century, but in the 19th century was mixed with a German custom.
During the darkest time of the winter in December, when the day in this country is only 7 hours long, it is wonderful to see all the lit candles and listen to the singing. Here from the Town Hall of Copenhagen.
Most of the Danes that immigrated to the USA, left Denmark in the second half of the 1800s. If you wish to know more about what happened in our country during that century, you can read about it and watch an 8 min. movie (in Danish with English subtitles) here: https://danmarkshistorien.dk/en/open-online-course/modules/module-6-from-absolutist-composite-state-to-nation-state-1814-1914
When emigration from Denmark to especially the USA increased in the mid-1800s, an emigration law was passed in 1868. It existed unchanged until 1914. The purpose of the law was primarily to protect the emigrants during the voyage.
When a person wanted to emigrate, he/she usually approached an emigration agent, who then arranged the ticket with the shipping companies. With the new law in 1868, it was required that the emigrant agents had to be approved by the authorities.
The law also required the agent to draw up a contract in duplicate, which had to be sent to the Copenhagen police. The police then signed the main contract and sent it back to the emigrant. The other party retained the police and entered the information from that contract into the immigration records. Many of these entries in the emigration records can be found here:
Her er det muligt at foretage søgning i Udvandrerprotokollen frem til 1908 (for søgning længere frem i tid se nedenfor)
The primary reason why hundreds of thousands of Danes left their homeland to travel to America was the prospect of better economic conditions. It is therefore not surprising that the lower social strata of society dominated among the emigrants.
In the years 1868-1900, more than four out of ten Danish migrants were farmers, while one in four belonged to the working class in the cities. Almost every fifth emigrant was a craftsman.
Especially the young people left. About three out of four emigrants were under the age of 30, and just over one in four between the ages of 20 and 24. Most emigrants were men. A little more than a third were women. However, the proportion of especially young women from the cities increased towards the year 1900.
In the 1870s and 1880s, many entire families left Denmark. During those years, families made up approx. 40% of emigrants. Towards the end of the century, the number fell because Danish industrialization accelerated and the opportunities to acquire land in the USA became smaller.
Denmark is said to have the world's oldest functioning kingdom. It is strange in a way to have something as old-fashioned as a monarchy in a very modern democracy, but it works well in this country, where the monarchy and the royal family are more popular than ever.
What is it like to be a crown prince, predetermined for a given job, where there is no exact job description? You can get an insight and a possible answer to that question in this documentary from 2021: ps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eoX3cVenHI&t=2405s
English subtitles available (Press CC), made by me. Please be aware that I'm in no way a professional transcriber, not a translater, so the subtitles may not...
Before everyone had a clock, church bells, the sun and shadows, light and darkness, the sound of roosters and birds and the like, were used to keep track of the time.
Clocks were invented in the Middle Ages. It was important for monks to know exactly when they should say their daily prayers.
The first clock introduced in Denmark could be seen on Ribe Cathedral.
In the 19th century, time was perceived as cyclical and not linear, as today. Everyday tasks were repeated day after day or year after year along with e.g. the seasons.
The time was also different from east to west. In 1894 it was decided to use the same time throughout Denmark.
'Aftægt' (provided support) was a commonly used arrangement in the countryside in 19th-century Denmark. It was an agreement to ensure the provision of the owner of a farm (also copyhold farms) that was passed down to the next generation.
This often involved the new owner providing the previous owner a place to stay on the farm and certain services.
That is why in many old farms and small holdings you see a small room that has been reserved for example for an old mother/mother-in-law. The services provided were typically food, firewood and transport.
Sales contracts can be found at sa.dk.
In the Danish farming community of the 19th century, many of the objects used in the daily operation of the farm were produced in the evenings during the winter season.
People met with family and neighbors and sat with their crafts and sang, told fairy tales and old legends, and talked about small and big events.
Last week's genealogy tour went to the island of Møn with a family from New Zealand. We visited the museum farm Keldbylille to see how many farmers lived and to get an impression of their everyday life in the 19th century.
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Want your business to be the top-listed Travel Agency?
My unique concept is to provide individual and tailor-made tours primarily for Americans, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders having Danish ancestors. I specialize in tours customized just for you and your family/group. You will see the places in Denmark, where your ancestors lived. Having many years of experience working as a historian and genealogist, I will help find the specific places. Hopefully, you will be able to see the house, where Great Grandfather grew up and the church, where he was baptised and where he and Great Grandmother were married.
Accommodation in 3* and 4* hotels can be included in the tour as well as meals, insight visits at museums and/or attractions and transfer airport/hotel. However, this is all up to your wishes and budget.
The company was founded by Henriette Kragh Brink, MA History & Auth. Tourist Guide.
