Jeanne and I spent part of today at Ingolfs Kaffebar on Amager celebrating the publication of a new book by a member of our extended family, Julia Maria Gieysztor Bertelsen.
Her new novel, Det Store År (The Great Year), has just been published by Tredje September.
The novel centres on Nikola, a young woman living with her husband in an old Copenhagen apartment who finds herself unable, or perhaps unwilling, to keep pace with the great ticking clock of the world. She retreats into books, hides in a wardrobe and even seeks refuge in the sewers.
But the novel does not remain there. Another strand follows Nikola’s uncle to an isolated sanatorium in the Polish mountains, where he is recovering from an illness called “Verdenssygen”, the sickness of the world. And in another time, an elderly writer appears almost as a ghost from the future.
The publisher describes the book as a modern Bildungsroman about being a woman in the 2020s: about love and difficult relationships, family histories, privilege, patriarchy, capitalism and, ultimately, the difficult business of escaping oneself.
I was very taken with Julia’s first novel, Koktebel, published in 2020. It was an unusual and experimental book, dealing among other things with tourism, exoticism and relations of power.
So I was particularly curious when I encountered an excerpt from the new work in the literary journal Trappe Tusind last year. Trappe Tusind is one of those valuable small literary journals where established and emerging writers can appear next to criticism, translation and literary scholarship.
Now the fragment has become a book.
There is something rather satisfying about first encountering a text while it is still on its way into the world, and then, some time later, standing with the completed book in your hands. And even better when the author happens to be family.
I am looking forward to seeing what happened between the fragment I read and the finished novel.
And, as the photograph shows, Julia was already at work turning copies into individual objects through the ancient analogue technology known as handwriting.
08/14/2026 20:27:24
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- Jeanne and I spent part of today at Ingolfs Kaffebar on Amager celebrating the publication of a new book by a member of our extended family, Julia Maria Gieysztor Bertelsen.
Her new novel, Det Store År (The Great Year), has just been published by Tredje September.
The novel centres on Nikola, a young woman living with her husband in an old Copenhagen apartment who finds herself unable, or perhaps unwilling, to keep pace with the great ticking clock of the world. She retreats into books, hides in a wardrobe and even seeks refuge in the sewers.
But the novel does not remain there. Another strand follows Nikola’s uncle to an isolated sanatorium in the Polish mountains, where he is recovering from an illness called “Verdenssygen”, the sickness of the world. And in another time, an elderly writer appears almost as a ghost from the future.
The publisher describes the book as a modern Bildungsroman about being a woman in the 2020s: about love and difficult relationships, family histories, privilege, patriarchy, capitalism and, ultimately, the difficult business of escaping oneself.
I was very taken with Julia’s first novel, Koktebel, published in 2020. It was an unusual and experimental book, dealing among other things with tourism, exoticism and relations of power.
So I was particularly curious when I encountered an excerpt from the new work in the literary journal Trappe Tusind last year. Trappe Tusind is one of those valuable small literary journals where established and emerging writers can appear next to criticism, translation and literary scholarship.
Now the fragment has become a book.
There is something rather satisfying about first encountering a text while it is still on its way into the world, and then, some time later, standing with the completed book in your hands. And even better when the author happens to be family.
I am looking forward to seeing what happened between the fragment I read and the finished novel.
And, as the photograph shows, Julia was already at work turning copies into individual objects through the ancient analogue technology known as handwriting. (08/14/2026 20:27:24)
- A week on Bornholm turned out to contain rather more than sea, rocks and long walks.
Jeanne and I spent a wonderfully slow week on Denmark’s “Sunshine Island” in the second half of July, visiting friends in different parts of Bornholm and spending as much time as possible outdoors.
Bornholm remains one of those rather extraordinary parts of Denmark where the landscape seems to have forgotten that Denmark is supposed to be flat. Granite cliffs, forests and the Baltic Sea make it feel quite unlike almost anywhere else in the country.
One of our walks took us to Randkløve Skår, one of Bornholm’s most remarkable geological formations: a narrow fissure cutting some 14 metres down through the granite towards the sea. It is an impressive place, but also strangely peaceful once you have climbed around the rocks and simply sit looking out over the Baltic.
And then there was the music.
At Gæstgiveren in Allinge we managed to catch APHACA in concert. Apparently, they are currently one of Denmark’s most successful young bands, with a sold-out Parken concert ahead of them later this year.
This information had somehow completely escaped me.
I may actually have been the only person at Gæstgiveren who had never knowingly heard an APHACA song before, let alone knew who they were. The rest of the audience certainly seemed considerably better informed.
There is something rather enjoyable about discovering music that way. No reviews, no Spotify recommendation, no algorithm telling you that because you listened to X, you will probably enjoy Y. You simply stand in a crowded garden on Bornholm while four young musicians start playing and discover for yourself why everybody else appears to know the words.
I liked them.
Perhaps ignorance is occasionally an underrated way of discovering things. (08/09/2026 21:08:41)
- Returning to Ribe after a few years also meant returning to some of the people who, in very different ways, have become part of the city.
One is Hans Adolph Brorson, one of the great Danish hymn writers. Brorson had deep ties to Ribe. He had attended Ribe Cathedral School as a young man, returned to the city in 1737 as cathedral provost, and became Bishop of Ribe in 1741, remaining so until his death in 1764.
During his years in Ribe he lived for a period at Taarnborg in Puggaardsgade, a remarkable Renaissance house that today serves as a centre for literature and cultural history.
Brorson belongs, with Kingo and Grundtvig, to that extraordinary Danish tradition in which theology, poetry and communal singing became almost inseparable. His hymns were deeply marked by Pietism, but many have long since escaped their original theological context and become part of a wider Danish cultural memory. He was not, strictly speaking, a professional poet. He was a clergyman who used poetry for preaching, contemplation and devotion.
When I was last in Ribe a couple of years ago, we visited several places connected with Brorson. This time Taarnborg had acquired another inhabitant.
In the courtyard now stands a two-metre-high bronze portrait of the writer and art historian Hans Edvard Nørregård-Nielsen, created by the sculptor Hein Heinsen, who also made the striking Ansgar monument beside Ribe Cathedral.
The statue has had a slightly complicated history, appropriately enough for a monument to Hans Edvard.
Nørregård-Nielsen himself was apparently far from enthusiastic when Hein Heinsen first proposed making a statue of him. He thought such things should be left to posterity and reportedly disliked the prospect of encountering a “stone-dead” version of himself in public. He did, however, see a preliminary version before his death in 2023 and seems to have become somewhat more reconciled to the idea.
There was another obstacle after his death. Esbjerg Municipality declined to erect the statue in public space. Taarnborg therefore took matters into its own hands and placed it in the courtyard, where Nørregård-Nielsen had often sat, smoked and thought. It was unveiled there in September 2024.
I rather like that solution.
Hans Edvard Nørregård-Nielsen was, of course, one of Denmark’s most important art historians, for many years the central figure at the Ny Carlsberg Foundation, and an enormously prolific writer on Danish art and cultural history. But that is not primarily how I remember him.
To me he was one of my parents’ friends.
And later, as I grew older, he also became the author of a series of books that I have greatly enjoyed reading: Mands minde (1999), Riber ret (2001), Noget nær (2004) and Som sagt (2008). He called them not so much memoirs as “portraits of a time”. They move between childhood and provincial Denmark, Ribe, family, education, friendship, art and the peculiar accidents through which a life takes shape.
Riber ret has a special connection to this place. It deals with his years at Ribe Cathedral School and helped bring him a much wider readership.
Perhaps that is why the statue seems particularly at home here.
Taarnborg now connects two writers separated by almost three centuries: Brorson, whose words became part of Denmark’s collective memory through hymns sung by generations, and Nørregård-Nielsen, who spent so much of his life recovering the people, places, paintings and memories from which Danish cultural history is made.
Monuments are strange things. They freeze people into bronze just as memory does almost the opposite: it keeps changing them.
For me, the bronze figure in Taarnborg will therefore never primarily be the former director of the Ny Carlsberg Foundation or the celebrated art historian.
It will still be Hans Edvard, my parents’ friend, whose books I later came to know in an entirely different way.
And perhaps that is not such a bad form of monument after all. (08/07/2026 18:49:46)
- I have a surprisingly close connection to Ribe, considering how rarely I have actually been there.
I think I have visited the city perhaps five or six times in my life. Yet part of my family history is quite literally buried there.
At the cemetery by Ribe Cathedral lie my grandparents, Esther and Martin Villiam Grønbæk, and my uncle Vilhelm Hincheli Grønbæk.
My grandfather, Martin Villiam Grønbæk, was a theologian and scholar of the psychology of religion. He served as stiftsprovst in Ribe from 1944 and as domprovst of Ribe Cathedral from 1958 until 1966.
I was named after him.
Beside my grandparents lies their son, my uncle Vilhelm Hincheli Grønbæk. Born in 1928, he entered military aviation and died in Canada in August 1952 during flight training. He was only 24 years old.
My eldest son is named Vilhelm after him.
There is something peculiar about names passed down through a family. As a child, a name is simply your name. Only much later do you begin to understand that it may carry stories, expectations, losses and people you never had the chance to know.
Standing at these graves in Ribe, I was therefore looking at more than family history. There was a line running from Martin to Martin, and from Vilhelm to Vilhelm, across generations that almost never met.
The inscriptions on the graves make the people behind the names feel strangely present.
On my grandfather’s grave is a verse from Isaiah 54:10:
“Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken.”
The Danish inscription reads:
“Om også bjergene viger, om også højene rokkes, min kærlighed viger ej fra dig.”
It is a striking choice for a grave. The verse speaks of constancy precisely in the face of what seems impossible: even mountains may move, but love remains.
On Vilhelm’s grave are words spoken by Jesus before Pontius Pilate in John 18:37:
“Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.”
In Danish:
“Hver den, som er af sandheden, hører min røst.”
Standing there, the two verses almost seem to speak across the graves. One is about love surviving what appears immovable; the other about truth and the obligation to listen for it.
Whether they were chosen deliberately to sum up something about the lives of the two men, or simply as expressions of faith, they have now become part of how they are remembered.
And perhaps that is also what names do.
We tend to think of identity as something we create ourselves. Much of it undoubtedly is. But we also inherit names, places, stories and losses long before we are old enough to understand them.
Martin to Martin. Vilhelm to Vilhelm.
I rarely come to Ribe. Yet perhaps this is one of those places to which one belongs without ever really having lived there.
Sometimes geography, like names, is inherited. (08/07/2026 18:12:28)
- A long weekend can contain more geography than the calendar suggests.
Jeanne and I took a short trip to Southern Jutland and the south-western corner of Denmark. We went to look at a property in Ribe, visit some friends at their summer house on Fanø, and along the way managed to spend time in both Tønder and Sønderborg.
I also got to do something that has increasingly become one of my favourite ways of getting to know a place: running through it.
In Sønderborg, I ran 8.19 kilometres, much of it along the water. In Tønder, almost exactly eight kilometres through the town and out towards the open landscape around it.
Runkeeper can tell me the distance, the time, the pace and the exact route. What it cannot record is the sea air, the silence, the transition from town to countryside, or the particular sense of place that only emerges when you are not looking at it through a car window, but moving through it step by step.
Tønder, Ribe, Sønderborg and Fanø are very different places. Yet they share a strong sense of geography. The water, the wind, the open spaces, the old town centres and the proximity to the border are not just background. They have helped shape these places and the rhythm of life in them.
Seen from Copenhagen, Denmark can sometimes feel like a very small country. But once you move through it, you are reminded how large the differences really are. Not necessarily in kilometres, but in history, architecture, landscape and pace.
We went there to look at a property and visit friends. But as so often with small journeys, the places in between gave the trip much of its character: an old street, a ferry, a conversation, a view across the water and a couple of good runs.
The digital map shows where I have been. But it is only when you run the route that the place really begins to reveal itself. (08/07/2026 17:49:56)
- From Copenhagen to Berlin.
The other day, Jeanne, Vilhelm and I said goodbye to Jens before he left Copenhagen for Berlin.
He moved away from home about six months ago, so this is not quite the classic parental moment of a child leaving the nest. That particular transition has already happened. This time, the move is from one city and one independent life to another.
Jens will spend the autumn and spring semesters at Bard College Berlin, where he is starting the first year of their BA in Economics, Politics and Social Thought.
It sounds like a fascinating combination of subjects, and Berlin is surely one of the better European cities in which to study the complicated relationship between economics, politics, ideas and society.
It will be exciting to follow his life there from Copenhagen. Although perhaps not entirely from Copenhagen: Berlin is conveniently close, so Jeanne, Vilhelm and I will obviously have to visit him a couple of times before next summer. Purely to monitor his academic progress, naturally. :-) (08/07/2026 17:36:08)
- Hvem er vor tids Hegel?
Jeg har netop læst en bog, der er omkring 175 år gammel, og som på en næsten irriterende måde bliver ved med at føles aktuel.
Arthur Schopenhauers Imod universitetsfilosofien udkom oprindeligt i 1851. Det er ikke en rolig akademisk afhandling. Det er et kampskrift, skrevet med en blanding af filosofisk alvor, personlig bitterhed, grov humor og et til tider næste... (07/21/2026 14:32:55)
- Some evenings become more than concerts. They become small acts of cultural remembrance.
On 16 June, Jeanne, Jens, Vilhelm, Benjamin and I spent the evening at Jazzhus Montmartre for Jørgen Leth og polsk jazz — a memorial event celebrating Jørgen Leth’s lifelong fascination with Poland and, in particular, Polish jazz. The evening combined conversation, archival film, poetry and, finally, a remarkable concert.
The event had an additional personal dimension for me. A few years ago, I had the pleasure of moderating a conversation with Jacob Dammas and Józefina Jarmużewska when their wonderful book Jørgen Leth og Polen – reportager, digte, essays was published. Seeing the story return to Montmartre in this form felt like a fitting continuation.
The musical highlight of the evening was undoubtedly hearing three outstanding musicians perform works by Krzysztof Komeda and Tomasz Stańko.
The trio consisted of Anders “AC” Christensen on double bass, Sebastian Zawadzki on piano and Anne “Efternøler” Andersson on trumpet.
For me, the concert was also a reminder of just how distinctive Polish jazz has always been. It occupies its own place somewhere between lyricism and melancholy, between structure and freedom. Komeda’s music still sounds unmistakably European, while Stańko’s trumpet transformed that tradition into something deeply personal and immediately recognisable.
Perhaps the strongest moment came when I recognised passages from Litania – Music of Krzysztof Komeda, the magnificent recording by the Tomasz Stańko Septet that has accompanied me for many years. It is one of those rare albums that never seems to age. Hearing this music live again reminded me why.
Jørgen Leth understood that Poland was never merely a country to visit. For him it became a cultural landscape populated by filmmakers, poets and jazz musicians. The evening demonstrated how naturally those worlds belong together.
Sometimes a concert is less about discovering new music than rediscovering music that has quietly accompanied one’s life for decades. (07/21/2026 10:11:36)
- One of the pleasures of the Danish summer is that it becomes possible to move almost seamlessly from one musical universe to another.
Jeanne and I had barely returned from a week at Hindsgavl Festival before we spent the final days of Copenhagen Jazz Festival in DR Koncerthuset. Within a few days we had travelled from Schubert, Pärt and contemporary chamber music to Música Popular Brasileira. It never feels like a contradiction. Quite the opposite. Good music tends to illuminate other kinds of good music.
One of the concerts we had been looking forward to most was Gilsons.
I have been listening to Brazilian popular music for decades. When I was younger, Milton Nascimento became one of those artists who permanently changed my musical landscape. His music still does. Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, João Gilberto and Milton Nascimento remain among the musicians I return to again and again.
Gilsons feels like a natural continuation of that tradition. Their music carries the same warmth, rhythmic sophistication and effortless musicality while remaining unmistakably contemporary. Their albums have become regular companions at home.
So there was never much doubt that we had to hear them live.
What surprised me most was not the music, but the audience.
I had never realised quite how large the Brazilian community in Denmark is. The hall was filled with Portuguese voices before the concert, and the entire performance unfolded in Portuguese without any apparent need for translation. It was less like attending an international concert than briefly finding oneself transported to Brazil.
Unfortunately, the sound where we were seated was not ideal. Some of the details disappeared in the acoustics.
But some concerts transcend technical imperfections.
Gilsons radiate an infectious joy in making music together, and that energy spread effortlessly throughout the audience. Sometimes the atmosphere itself becomes part of the performance.
One particularly delightful moment came when they played “Palco”, written by Gilberto Gil and known from the album A Gente Precisa Ver o Luar. It is one of those recordings that still finds its way onto my turntable from time to time. Hearing it performed by the next generation created a beautiful sense of continuity—not only between musicians, but between generations of listeners.
Music travels surprisingly well across both time and geography.
Sometimes all it takes is one evening in Copenhagen to be reminded of that. (07/21/2026 09:47:45)
- Cooling Is Becoming Critical Infrastructure. Europe Needs an Industrial Strategy for It.
Preliminary thoughts — comments, corrections and examples are very welcome.
Europe has traditionally regarded air conditioning with a mixture of suspicion and cultural superiority.
It was something associated with American offices, shopping centres and excessively cold hotel rooms. European buildings, ... (07/19/2026 12:46:03)