Olive Murray Chapman

I had a call the other day from a TV producer in England. He was interested in what I knew about the British travel writer Olive Murray Chapman as his company was in the process of possibly creating a segment on her winter travels in Lapland for a documentary series on women adventurers. In the thirties Chapman visited a variety of countries and wrote books about her travels––Iceland, Cyprus, Madagascar, and Lapland––books that included photographs and watercolors. 

"The Lapp Market at Bossekop", watercolor by Olive Murray Chapman

Her book, Across Lapland with Sledge and Reindeer (1932) was one of the historical sources for my own book, The Palace of the Snow Queen. I liked Chapman’s courage and spirit. She set off alone by ship from England to Oslo (“The North Sea in February can be very unpleasant”) and then took a train north to Trondheim, the coastal steamer up to Hammerfest, and then a smaller boat down to Alta. Her intention was to visit the “Lapp market” traditionally held in Bossekop outside Alta, and then drive a reindeer pulka into the interior of Finnmark. While her views on the Sámi now seem outdated, Chapman made an attempt to summarize her observations and reading for the general reader and does a credible job. Her description of the Bossekop winter market is valuable, given that with the occupation of Norway by German forces in 1940, the centuries-old tradition came to an end and was never revived.

I pulled out her slender book to reread her accounts of the intense cold and the striking beauty of the Arctic in late winter when the sun is returning and it brought back many memories of my own journey—unhappily by dogsled—over sections of the Finnmark Plateau. I wish I’d had her furs and her “leather flying helmet” (I imagine Amelia Earhart traveling by reindeer) on my trip but I didn’t envy Chapman the blizzard she encountered on her way to Mollesjok fjellstue. Having been at Mollesjok during the last days of December years ago, I can attest that the tourist cabin, while not any more luxurious than seventy years ago, was still a very welcome sight to our group, just as it was to Chapman as she imagined "the joyous thought of warmth, food, and shelter..."

Christian Jungersen's The Exception

I’ve just finished the Danish novel Undtagelsen – in English, The Exception, by Christian Jungersen. I bought it in April in the Copenhagen airport on a friend’s suggestion. I’d never heard of it, had no idea it was a European bestseller, and had been translated into English (reviewed in The New York Times no less). I spent two weeks completely engrossed in this psychological thriller. It’s rare to encounter a plot so Byzantine that up until the last few pages I couldn’t have guessed how it was going to end and who would be responsible for a whole series of lesser and greater crimes.

The Exception has four main female characters, all of whom work at the small, invented office of the  Danish Center for Genocide Information. There’s a great deal about genocide in the background; in the foreground are the complex and shifting relationships among the women and the petty, mean, and incomprehensible ways they treat each other. In reality I don’t quite go along with this portrait of women coworkers and the philosophical underpinning of the novel is a bit jejune (we are all evil under the surface, or no, we aren’t). But as a masterful story with a hundred twists and turns and real insight into the dark depths of office rivalries and harassment, it’s riveting.

I was thinking as I read it, about another Scandinavian mystery from earlier this year, Snowman, by Norwegian Jo Nesbø. A gruesome page-turner, but I have to say that the murderer seemed obvious to me from around page 120 or so. And for all the ratcheting up of tension, the ending seemed contrived. How exactly was someone supposed to bring in enough snow to make a giant snowman in an upstairs room while the people downstairs were around? I felt plagued by questions like this. But The Exception, while hardly a traditional thriller, had my mind spinning like a top. I’m still putting all the clues together, a day after finishing it, and full of admiration for Jungersen’s cleverness and psychological understanding.

Danish Windpower

Frederiksberg

Today I was working "at home" in Vesterbro and went out for a walk mid-day with my camera to enjoy the sunshine.I had been planning to go to Copenhagen's City Museum, right next door. But instead I contented myself with taking a picture of the model city (1580) in its courtyard.


I walked up Frederiksberg Alle to the large gardens and park and then back along Gammel Kongevej. Two Danish women artists I've written about, Emilie Mundt and Marie Luplau, had their home and art school on the fourth floor of number 136. A door or two away is a used music store where I found a CD set of Leonard Bernstein conducting Carl Nielsen. Although I love the Blomstedt recordings, Bernstein really captures the spirit of Nielsen, especially in the opening bars. Gammel Kongevej reminds me of the Upper West Side--a quieter version. Lots of people out and sitting around in cafes with faces turned toward the sun. Chocolate shops full of Easter eggs and bunnies. Flower shops in abundance.

Last night around eleven I was sitting here reading a thriller (Liza Marklund) and all of a sudden: bang, bang, bang. It sounded like gun shots in the street. I looked out the window and a short distance away, fireworks shot up into the sky. Why? The Queen's birthday? But that's on Saturday.

No, it was Tivoli. Celebrating its opening April 14th.

A star magnolia at Frederiksberg Have

Moler cliffs of Fur

Raining steadily in Copenhagen. I’m staying at a friend’s flat while he’s away, high up in  a converted apartment in Vesterbro. Even though the sun’s not shining it is light here and a pleasant place to be writing up my notes from research at the National Archives.

Time to post a photograph of a brighter day a week or more ago, on the island of Fur in the Limford. Part of my novel about Emilie Demant Hatt takes place there. I’ve long been fascinated by the geological story of Fur and its fossils. The cliff formations of ash and clay date from the Eocene. Read more about Fur here. 

Sunday in Copenhagen

I've been working hard the last couple of days in the National Archives here in Copenhagen, reading through Emilie Demant Hatt's letters. It was time to take a break today. My friend Lis took me to Ingolf's Kaffeebar for brunch. The Danes are now into brunch big time; if you order it, a plate of small delicacies arrives, everything from gravlax to scrambled eggs to cheese slices and homebaked bread. We sat outside in the back terrace in the sunshine. It was easily in the 60s today. Blissfully spring.

Encouragement from the Dalai Lama at the Skive train station

You know how it goes. You get to the train station in a foreign country and the print-out you have of a schedule turns out to be wrong. Instead of waiting twenty minutes for the train, it turns out you have to wait over an hour. And the waiting room isn't possible, because the cleaner has poured soap and wax all over the floors and wants to get on with doing a nice scrub while no one is around. So you go down to the platform (this was in Skive, Denmark, and I was on my way to Aarhus this morning to retrieve a suitcase and then to Odense) and it's windy and chill.

And suddenly you see a Danish railway poster with a cheering recommendation to be kind and you look more closely and it's a quote by the Dalai Lama and there's even a fun picture of him. The message, translated is:

Be kind and friendly
when it's possible.
It is always possible.

I like Denmark for so many reasons. This is one of them.