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description Published in the Danish daily newspaper Politiken, Sunday June 1, 2003. (Read the original Danish version.) This is my favorite kind of assignment: to spend time in a community, ask lots of questions, use many sources and generally enjoy the local scene. If it’s a fun story like this one, I don’t complain. The Danish Town Market: 300 New Owners By Jack Jackson Residents of Nørager village were in shock when their market closed. So they bought it. Everyone knew that the market would soon close. But no one considered that it would really happen — at least so suddenly. That was the day Nørager stood still. “It was a Thursday. The twentieth of March,” says Bjarne “BK” Knudsen. This is the man Nørager townspeople affectionately call “Town King.” He is the chairman of Nørager Residents’ Association, and he was the first to hear the news. Bent and Anna Nyolm Jensen’s “Spar” grocery lies on Nørager’s small main street, down the hill and around the corner from the green ball fields, the whitewashed church tower and the cafeteria. The town is located on Denmark’s Djursland peninsula 45 kilometers northeast of Århus. Bent’s grocery was the one place in town where everyone met — from the families who have lived here for generations to the “hippies” who descended on the area and its surrounding farmland from the ’60s onward. The market sits at a junction for the six black tendrils of road that slither in toward the town — from the thick, leafy forests to the south and north, the peat bogs to the east and the light green patches of grain and dirty potato rows to the west. Many of Nørager’s 300 residents stopped by the market so frequently that if anyone missed a few days, Bent asked them if they’d been ill. The market had been part of town for more than 100 years, the last 46 with Bent and Anna as owners. But they were ready to retire, and Bent had looked after a buyer for two years. He had told his customers periodically that there were interested buyers, but nothing ever materialized. And then came that Thursday that changed everything. The plan Bjarne Knudsen owns BK Stål Teknik og Smedie (BK Steel Technique and Blacksmith), a small, modern, metal workshop on the edge of town. At work, he wears a blue cotton work shirt embroidered with “BJARNE” over the right breast pocket. The shirt is unbuttoned a good ways down his chest, where curly gray hair peeks out. A sliver ring dangles from a thin silver chain around his neck. “Anna told me that they would close two days later, so I contacted several people from the town,” he says. Two of them were Annette and Keld Pedersen, who sit on the board of the residents’ association. “I said, we’ve got to get f***ing moving. We needed to act, and we needed to act now. It was nearly a type of controlled self-defense,” he explains, peering over his glasses. “It wasn’t about taking too many days to look for a solution, and it wasn’t about starting a debate. It was about concrete action. Not about democracy and bureaucracy and that kind of s***.” Bjarne Knudsen and his team hung a banner over the main street, Munkhusevej: “The market is closing. Meeting in town hall Wednesday 7 pm.” On March 26, 140-150 people show up. “There aren’t even that many houses in town,” notes one of the locals. The plan was that Nørager Residents’ Association could buy the Spar market. They did something similar in 1990 when they financed a new pre-school/kindergarten, and that was a success, so why not try it again? Everyone at the meeting filled out a little form with what they expected to give in support — both financially and in volunteer work. Purchase and renovation of the market and its connected house would cost about 1.4 million kroner ($220,000), and a credit association’s mortgage could cover half of that. “We needed 700,000,” says Annette Pedersen. The bank could contribute with a loan, but as much as possible had to come from Nørager’s citizens. “With 300,000 it would have worked.” She winks. “We got five.” Or, more precisely, 526,000 kroner ($82,500) collected over four days from 121 homes. The arguments Frank Rasmussen had one of the most convincing arguments. Frank speaks like a sports announcer, which is convenient; he is president of the other most important organization in town, Nørager Boldklub (Nørager Ball Club). This is an organization so holy that the town’s older residents will money to it. Frank said that every town must have four ingredients to thrive: grocery market, preschool/kindergarten, ball club and residents association. “Thos four things are connected. If we don’t have a market, then people move away. And then there is no basis to have a kindergarten. And so on. It’s a downward spiral.” Another argument was that home values would fall. “I laughed a bit at that one,” says Gitte Buske, one of the so-called hippies who moved to the area in 1978. “It doesn’t matter one bit if our home values fall. There aren’t any of us who will ever move away from here anyway!” The town One story in Nørager says that if your child is going to celebrate a birthday and the whole family is invited, 42 kids from town will come. Several of the town’s residents point out that a very close network among townsfolk is one of the main reasons that something like the grocery project can happen. “It’s all family,” says Lillian Pedersen, who was born in Gjesing, a sleepy town 5 kilometers southwest, and moved to Nørager in 1953 when she married a Nøragerian. “And it’s family even though the hippies came to town.” Frank’s mother, Alice Rasmussen, says, “We liked the hippies. They were just different. Really different. There were a lot of them compared to the size of the town. You were either a hippie or a local. It wasn’t meant in a bad way.” Gitte Busck takes out a brown, contoured wooden pipe, stuffs it with a wad of Watsons Red, lights it. She puffs out a stream of smoke. “In Nørager it’s okay to be a bit different. You are accepted — and looked over, of course — but there is room to be different.” The gambling den Nørager has been known for years by some neighboring communities as The Black Parish — not nearly as fine as neighboring Vivild, for instance. It lies only four kilometers away, but there is a world of difference; Vivild sits high and open with a good view on all sides and a geometric pattern of streets and houses, precision-trimmed hedges, several businesses and a strong, conservative church community. “Vivild is just a little ... nicer,” says Lillian, choosing her words carefully. “We’re more down to earth. That’s what we’ve lived off of, after all.” There used to be paths from town out to the peat bogs, where many residents worked hard for terrible pay in the summers. Others worked in Løvenholm forest or tried to grow crops on the sandy, terrible soil. “It has been a very poor area,” says Gitte Busck. “It really makes its mark on the culture — especially in a community where people don’t traditionally move away. There is always room for originals here. So it was easier for the hippies to thrive here than so many other areas.” Nørager is also infamous as a place to gamble. Some have lost their cars, their semis, their farms — or, the story goes, even their wives — in a cardgame called “Colors” or a game of dice called Seks’eren (The Sixer). “You could see people playing Colors in the evenings at the cafeteria. They sat on benches in long rows,” says Alice Rasmussen, and it happened every week after people had received their dole payment. Some say that locals still play, and that even the kids in town know all the games. Others say that it’s history, and they prefer not to discuss the matter. Bent og Anna are among the few who cringe at the mention of gambling. “No, no, no — that was 30 years ago!” says Bent. “That was in the old days,” adds Anna. “Nørager is just like other towns today. Those people who played died many years ago!” “Many years ago,” repeats Bent. The shop Bent and Anna, along with their four now-grown children, ran their market on the principle of good service. They carried groceries and cases of beer to one’s car or delivered goods directly to one’s home. Bent did not use a calculator or computer but had a book where he kept a tab for customers who couldn’t pay. He then rewarded them with bags of candy or cigarettes when they settled their bills. Kids got candy on their birthday — until they turned 14, Bent points out — and their parents got something every Christmas from the local potter, which as the years went by was enough to make up whole series of coffee sets and ash trays. And then there are the stories. The one about how Bent out-competed a larger grocer that was just around the corner. The one about how when they started to sell organic goods to the hippies in the 1990s, the shop’s turnover shot up 20%. The one about the guy who took a flask of whiskey and hid it in his jacket. After he paid for a few small items, Bent said, “And that flask of whiskey in your coat pocket - you can just have it as a gift since it’s so close to Christmas.” Nørager gave Bent and Anna the possibility to live in the market's connected house for as long as they wish for a low rent. The market itself got new ceilings, fresh paint, new wallpaper, a good polishing, new appliances and an overall cleaning. A crew of about 30 local volunteers worked around the clock for days on end. Others, like Alice Rasmussen, cooked meals for them. Grocery chain Spar restocked the shelves and offered consulting to the two local women who are running the market today, Bettina Hansen og Helle Jensen. Neither has grocer experience - Bettina was a home nurse and Helle was an out-of-work day care mother. Bettina says there is no doubt that the shop’s owners, Nørager, will help them out. The reopening It is Saturday, May 10. Fifty days since that Thursday when Anna told Bjarne Knudsen that the market would close two days later. Today Nørager’s market reopens and there’s a party from daybreak. Already by 10 am, there are already as many cups of beer as coffee on the tables, and in a corner of the party tent, a man is playing the soft melody of “Se Hvilket Morgenstund” on the electric keyboard. Bjarne Knudsen is on the way to the microphone to give one of many speeches. Before he speaks, the crowd starts chanting and clapping, “Here comes Bjarne Knudsen, with big cigar and ass ajar!” And then there’s a rat-a-tat-tat of drums and a buzz of kazoos, guitars, horns and whistles from down Munkhusevej, led by the town’s music-loving hippies. A trumpet starts playing the tune to “When the Saints Go Marching In,” and many spill out from the tent and begin to clap to the flock of kids marching up the street while singing: Let’s have a fest Let’s have a fest Let’s have a fest in our small town For we have again a market Let’s have a fest in our small town. They all crowd into the tent, instruments buzzing and tooting, ending to huge applause. As if on cue — to prove that there really is room for all types in Nørager — a woman with long black and gray hair walks up to the edge of the tent from a nearby home, peering inside. She moves as if she has a terrible hangover. “What the hell was that all about?” she mumbles. She slinks over to the bar and gets a beer. Copyright 2003 Jack Jackson. All Rights Reserved. |
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