The next day we started out for Halkaer stopping for lunch at Anna’s home in Haarksbergen, checking in with the girls who had made themselves right at home in Anna and Seb’s childhood bedrooms. It’s a beautiful little house with a glorious garden and fishpond. It was a very emotional homecoming for Anna, who left when she was 18 and was back last six years ago. It was neat seeing the place where she grew up – not least the huge oil-painting of Anna, age nine, busking, playing her violin. The painting was done spontaneously by a famous Dutch artist and then given to the family – it’s remarkable, it’s clearly a young Anna! The home has a fantastic back yard with a large lily pond and beautifully manicured gardens. Walls of books in the lounge and a piano with music, ready to go. It was a two-hour visit but we’ll be back here in a few weeks for a “homecoming” concert for Anna.
We pushed on into the north of Germany where we stayed in a German country-style pub. To date this is the one of only two nights’ accommodation we’ve had to pay for, every other night has been with friends. Our first dismaying thing was that we found the petrol card cannot be read by any of the service station swipe machines. So onto the credit card it goes: ouch.
Arriving at Eskil Romme’s place in Halkaer was just the tonic. Big, long table, alfresco lunch, meeting the guests, the babble and chatter of many languages going back and forth, catching up with old friends and acquaintances, napping on the lawn in the wind and sun. And what a lovely festival again. I’m feeling a bit of a veteran now! Oh, and Sigurd turned up there as a sort of surprise guest in the Saturday concert. We played well enough, sold six or so CD’s (which was a surprise). We taught the young Danish folk orchestra the Karikari Kirikiri waiata which they carried off well with us in the Saturday concert.
There was a myriad of great guests including Scottish group Malinky and an African trio (kora, bass guitar and percussion) but the highlight for us was the seven-piece Swedish fiddle orchestra, Spelstina, featuring Carina Normansson who was in Faerd and Swap – what a delight to see her again. We formed a plan to follow them (reduced to four fiddle players after the festival) to their next two concerts – on the island of Fanø and at Cafe Ellegaard in the centre of Jutland – both places I had played previously with the Chaps.
We convoyed with them to Fanø, checked out some accommodation options, but in the end Peter Uhrbrand put us up at his place. The thing about the houses on Fano is that they are centuries old, thatched in a unique style and very low and compact. I’m not the tallest of people but I had to walk around at a stoop, and from there duck under the various beams and door lintels. The best procedure is, bend double and head for a chair. Fantastic hospitality from Peter and his wife. And we played a set at the Cafe (Nana’s Stue) after the Swedes and Peter’s ensemble.
The next day, after a guided tour of the southern village of the island from Peter (who is a thatcher by trade), we ferried back to the mainland and followed the Swedes to Ribe, the historic Viking port town where Rod Sinclair lives. Rod is the Scottish singer that was in the band with Eskil that came to the Wellington folk festival all those years ago where we made the initial contact and Rod is at every Halkaer festival as the host/compere for concerts. We all had lunch at his lovely flat and then he gave us a tour of the town. The point of coming here was to pick him up and bring him with us for the women’s concert at Cafe Ellegaard in Sommersted. That meant we had to take him back to Ribe before we could go to Copenhagen (in the opposite direction). We played a supporting set here too in a trio with Rod. It was great fun, we chucked some great harmonies together.
We all stayed the night at Cafe Ellegaard: this is a cow byre that has been converted into a once-a-week cafe/entertainment venue. It’s very hard to describe the arrangement here, I don’t fully understand it myself. It’s almost as though Børge and Mette are leaders of a benign sect. Børge is the most understated and charismatic of people who can turn a crowd into an audience in a second. This was my only night to date of staying up drinking. We settled in with the Swedes and Rod and our hosts and gave the red wine stock a terrific thump. But this, or rather in the morning, was goodbye to the women fiddlers: Carina, Hanna, Karin and Maria, four fantastic musicians – Carina and Hanna have special national status that Sweden bestows on its greatest folk musicians. You wouldn’t believe the big sound that these women got from four violins, it was amazing. And now they were returning to Sweden saying that didn’t know how they were going to do their concerts without Mike and Anna in support! We were just a little bit chuffed, to say the least.
We took Rod back to Ribe and he gave us lunch – and an extra microphone stand which, apparently, we’re going to need in Aalborg and Kolding. We spent the early afternoon in the Viking Museum there learning about the fascinating history of Denmark’s oldest Kommune (district). Then we headed to Copenhagen; a 3 hour trip.
Mike
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