Your Custom Text Here
Join us for our annual Fastelavn Celebration! Festivities begin at 6:30 pm at St Mary, Star of the Sea Auditorium. Games, fun and prizes for kids and adults. Costumes are encouraged but not required. Finger foods will be served at intermission, bring a snack to share!
Denmark is consistently rated as one of the happiest countries on Earth. One might wonder - how it that even possible in a place that experiences such long, dark, and cold winters?
Our member Jen Zamon will give a presentation on the Danish public welfare system and its role in supporting that level of happiness and overall wellness - how it works, how it differs from those found in other countries, and, most importantly, why it works well.
We invite you to come learn something about this important part of Danish culture, and to offer your perspectives on how this compares to American culture.
ZOOM MEETING INFORMATION:
Meeting ID: 897 8962 1552
Passcode: 175534
Danish Society members Barb and Ove Rasmussen will share about Danish birthday traditions.
Birthday celebrations in Denmark have a protocol of customs and expectations, some that may be familiar to Americans, others that may be surprising but delightful. What about gifts? When do guests stand up? How long does the party last?
The Rasmussens will share a few highlights from their recent and past experiences. Share your own as well. And be ready to sing a (translated) typical Danish birthday party song! You are also welcome to have a glass of a favorite beverage—juice, water, or . . . to skål with!
Here is the ZOOM meeting information:
Meeting ID: 897 8962 1552
Meeting Passcode: 175534
Join us for our annual Jul Parti (Christmas Party) at the Star of the Sea Auditorium.
This is one of the most wonderful events the Danes host. It is completely family-friendly - everyone from infants to centenarians is welcome. Singles who don’t have family locally and families with multiple generations in the area come to join in the fun. We host a potluck so everyone is asked to bring a dish to share, with the Society also providing a core menu of traditional Danish Christmas foods like roast pork, red cabbage, frikadeller (Danish pork meatballs), and risalamande (Danish rice pudding). We have music, singing, and dancing around the Christmas tree, plus we expect a visit from Father Christmas himself!
Our venue is accessible for those with mobility issues - we will have a flat area for unloading right near the entrance doors, so folks can quickly get into the venue if the weather is bad. There is ramp access to the bathrooms and the stage (for our musicians!), and the hall floor is wheelchair-friendly.
Be part of this venerable Astoria and Danish tradition, and join in the joyful celebration of the Christmas Season. Glaedelig Jul to all!
PLEASE NOTE - this year we are starting our festivities a bit earlier in the day. Social hour begins at 5 pm, with dinner being served approximately 5:30 pm.
Many hands come together to decorate the hall, set up the dinner tables, prepare the place settings, and trim the Christmas tree with traditional Danish ornaments.
Please join us at the Auditorium the morning of the Jul Parti to ensure everything is in order for our guests and for Father Christmas. If you feel like you need a bit of holiday cheer in the dark winter months, there is no better way to get in the mood than putting up holiday decorations with friends and neighbors.
We usually finish up planning for our annual Jul Parti (Christmas Party) and then take time to make one of several traditional Danish Christmas decoration such as jul hjerte (woven paper hearts), kræmmerhuset (paper horns), or Danish paper stars.
This time we will learn to make beautiful Danish Stars. This traditional Danish Christmas decoration is lovely for decorating the tree or sprinkling amongst greenery !
Learn to say some numbers in Danish to play a fun game. The top prize will be a duck to be used for a proper Danish feast on St Martin’s Day! We will briefly share the story of St. Martin and then the gloves come off as the Bingo competition begins.
As always, there will be some nice refreshments to keep up energy for the games.
Don’t be afraid to try, even if you have never attempted to speak or listen to Danish before.
Our vice president , Jen Zamon with share a presentation on that wonderful Danish invention, LEGOs! Come to learn the “origin story” of this childhood toy known around the world. You will learn some other interesting facts. We will have a PowerPoint style presentation and some hands-on LEGO activity, because play is just as important for adults as it is for children.
BONUS: a surprise LEGO-themed Door Prize will be awarded to a lucky someone. LEGOs aren’t just for kids!
Please join us for our monthly in-person meeting this month. Each meeting has a short Business Meeting, a themed presentation or activity, and delicious refreshments to share.
Danish members of the 2024 Scandinavian Festival Court will join us to share about their year on the court.
The weather is so fine and we want to enjoy it outdoors, so the Lower Columbia Danes forego holding meetings during the months of July and August so we can spend time with friends and family.
Our next meeting will be on Thursday 05 September - see you there!
This is one of our most exciting events of the year!
The Danes host one of the most popular, most affordable food booths at Festival. We serve traditional Danish foods - frikadeller, rødkål , and rugbrød (Danish lean pork meatballs, red cabbage, and rye bread), aebleskiver (sweet, round Danish treats made from a pancake-like batter), marinerede sild (pickled herring), coffee, water, and punch. We make all our own food from scratch, and the results are delicious.
There is still time to sign up to assist in our food booth for a 2-hour shift. Volunteering is a great way to make friends with other Society members and learn how to prepare and serve traditional Danish food.
Before and after your Danish Booth shift, join in the fun at the festival. There is entertainment for the whole family - music, dancing, traditional foods, vendors, games, the raising of the midsummer pole, a fun run, community meals, and more!
Admission is a total bargain - adult wristbands are $10 for all three days of the festival, child wristbands are $4, and kids under 5 get in free of charge. Parking within walking or tractor ride of the fairgrounds is $5 for the entire festival. Both wristbands and parking allow you to come and go as you please.
DON’T MISS OUT ON THE FUN!
Set up for the Dane’s booth at festival will be at 6:30 pm at the Clatsop County Fairgrounds. We will be stetting up the booth structure , electricty and the back up kitchen . Join us for a fun work party !
All our regional Nordic lodges will assemble to wave flags and show off traditional costumes in a “stationary optog”, where instead of parading on foot by people lining the sidewalks to watch, we stay in one place on the sidewalk and people driving or walking by can share in our Nordic spirit.
If you would like to join the Danes, then feel free to assemble 5 or 10 minutes before noon on the sidewalk outside the Columbia River Maritime Museum between 16th and 17th streets. To find the Danes, just look for the people waving the Dannebrog (Danish flag).
This event helps raise awareness of the Astoria Scandinavian Midsummer Festival taking place on the following weekend, and it serves as good publicity for recruiting new members to the Danish Society.
This meeting we will be finalizing the plans for our Festival Booth. It is a great time to get involved with Festival, so if you haven’t volunteered with the Danes yet, then please don’t be shy! Here is your chance to try out booth setup, greeting Festival-goers manning the booth, or cooking and running our delicious foods to the front of the house.
As usual, we will have snacks to share at the meeting - and Danes have the BEST snacks!
Be part of the fun! Learn to make frikadeller and aebleskiver. And get first dibs on Danish Booth shifts at Midsummer Festival.
Instead of holding a regular May meeting, we traditionally host our annual Frikadeller and Aebleskiver mixing party to prepare our sought-after Danish foods for the Midsummer Festival. At this event, we also have people sign up for 2-hour shifts to volunteer at the Danish Booth during the Astoria Scandinavian Midsummer Festival 2024).
Please join us to help mix the dry ingredients for aebleskiver and shape the delicious frikadeller into our signature meatball shapes. This is a great time to catch up with folks from the Danish Society you may not have seen for a while.
**** We will provide drinks and snacks to keep you hydrated and energized! ****
OSU Seafood Kitchen & /Meeting Space, 2021 West Marine Drive, Astoria, OR
Look for the Danish vimpel (pennant) flying proudly by the rear entrance.
After three years of being unable to come together for Fastelavn, we are finally back to an in-person gathering! Please consider helping us set up for the celebration between 11 am and 12 pm on Saturday morning 10 February 2024.
Join us for this Danish version of Mardis Gras, complete with a costume contest for everyone, games for kids such as ring-riding and barrel-bashing, and dancing. Sweet cardamon rolls called boller and hot chocolate will be served for snacks.
We are meeting at our new event location, which has level access to the hall and wheel-chair accessible restrooms:
Date: Saturday 10 February 2024
Time: 6 pm to 9 pm ish
Location: St. Mary, Star of the Sea Auditorium (and the corner of 14th and Grand), Astoria, Oregon
Looking for a very simple volunteer opportunity? Help us set up for the Fastelavn Parti!
We haven’t been able to gather for Fastelavn for 3 years, and we will be in a different location from past celebrations. You are just the kind of helpful person we need to figure out how to best set up the room for tables and games! This is a very low-key set up and a great way to meet new friends.
Our February Meeting will be held on Zoom, and Marie Yost is preparing a game of Danish Trivia for the evening after we finish our business portion of the meeting. Join us to test your knowledge of Danish culture and history and earn the opportunity to win fun prizes. Brush up on your current events in Denmark and you might just get a leg up!
Zoom Meeting ID: 897 8962 1552
Zoom password for this meeting: 175534
Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89789621552?pwd=OEF3alkySCtWSUdHZlZZeGViUnhIZz09
In the dead of winter, we hold two virtual meetings so folks who are out of town or don’t want to travel in the dark with possible hazardous weather can join us.
January will be our first virtual meeting. Our own member Doreen Simonsen will lead a program discussing our families’ immigrant stories - where they came from in Denmark, and how and when they made their way to the Lower Columbia region…
The holidays are the perfect time for gathering with family and telling families stories, so take advantage of that and strike up some conversations with your relatives about your Danish heritage. And if you don’t have Danish heritage in your family, just come to learn more about your friends and neighbours!
Here is the Zoom Link to get to the meeting.
*** Please note - NEW LOCATION THIS YEAR! ***
Every year we gather together for a wonderful, family-oriented pot-luck dinner, music, singing, story-time, and dancing to prepare for the Christmas holiday season. Please join us to be with old friends and new.
The Danish Society provides some traditional holiday foods - medisterpølse (a pork and onion sausage), frikadeller (Danish pork meatballs), flæskesteg (roast pork loin) mashed potatoes, rødkål (red cabbage), coffee, non-alcoholic punch, and risalamande (Danish rice pudding) - and we ask families bring their own special recipes and treats to share.
In the past we’ve received a visit from Santa Claus, too, so let’s keep our fingers crossed Santa will come to visit again!
Access is available from the ground floor with no stairs, and there are ADA-friendly restrooms that are ramp-accessible. We ask that folks avoid parking in the “drop-off” zone at the front entrance, so party-goers who need a little extra assistance with mobility have plenty of room to maneuver.
All good parties require decorations and setting tables for guests, and our annual Jul Parti (Christmas Party) is no different.
Please consider helping out by showing up at the Auditorium the morning before our party. We decorate the hall and the Christmas tree, set up the dining tables and buffet, and generally get things looking festive. Because we are in a new venue for this year’s party, we’ll be thinking about how best to do things as we do, so good ideas will be welcome for set up.
We could use some strong backs to help move tables and chairs into place. The more, the merrier!
Contact us by email if you have any questions: lowercolumbiadanes@gmail.com
Traditionally we make some type of traditional Christmas craft at our December meeting, in addition to any final preparations for our annual jul parti.
This year we will be making kræmmerhuse Christmas ornaments. These traditional crafts are colourful paper baskets, hung on a tree, and filled with goodies like nuts, chocolates, or little pebernødder (one of several traditional holiday cookies).
Please bring pencil and a pair of scissors - everything else will be provided.
Our Society typically honors the Danish tradition of Mortensaften by holding games of Danish bingo after our November business meeting, with the grand prize being a frozen duck!
If you want to know more about WHY the duck is a big deal, then stay tuned, or better yet, come to our November meeting and find out for yourself. You may just go home with a special treat to cook for dinner!
While visiting Ove’s family in Denmark, Barbara and Ove Rasmussen spent several months living during the winter of 2022-2023. This included being there for Jul. They are going to be sharing a slideshow with us and telling us stories about their time there - apparently it was so enjoyable they weren’t really sure they were coming back to us!!!
They will also supplement their program with a Syd Fyn treat of brunsvikager.
Please join us as they share stories about their wonderful time in Denmark. We hope it will inspire you to want to make a trip.
It is customary for us to have a visit from the young people who are members of the Scandinavian Midsummer Festival Court, where each Nordic society has Junior and Senior Princesses, and a Crownbearer for all of the Princesses, who act as ambassadors for the Festival and their respective lodges with a variety of community groups.
They will share their experiences being on the court with us and afterwards are welcome to join us for light snacks and informal conversation.
We don’t hold any meetings in July or August so everyone can enjoy the warm weather and long days.
But that shouldn’t prevent you from meeting up with Danish Society friends over the summer for a beach walk, a barbecue, or a beverage.
This is the crowning event of all Nordic activities in the lower Columbia River region, and one of the best-loved activities in which Danes participate! Don’t miss out on one of the most family-friendly, fun, and affordable summer events of the year.
Danes prepare traditional Danish fare to serve at our food booth at Festival - it is one of the most popular booths for home-made, delicious Danish snacks, meals, desserts, and beverages.
For more information on getting involved with the Festival food booth activities, check out our Festival Preparation webpage. There are many ways to help out - food preparation, booth set-up, food serving, food cooking, and after-festival clean up. This is a great way to meet people in your community and make new friends.
For more information on the Midsummer Festival schedule and events, see the official Festival website at astoriascanfest.com
To raise awareness of Nordic heritage and culture in Astoria, and to shamelessly advertise our own most awesome Danish Booth at the upcoming Astoria Scandinavian Midsummer Festival, we will be participating in the 4th Annual Stationary Optog. “Optog” means “parade” in Danish, but in this case we flip the script on a traditional parade - instead of us parading in the streets and spectators lining the sidewalk as we go by, we stand on the sidewalk and the spectators in cars drive by us on the street.
Danish Society members will hold and wave Danish flags and be encouraged to show their Danish pride in by wearing Danish-themed clothing or costumes. Members of all the other Nordic Lodgest from the Lower Columbia area will also participate - Finns, Norwegians, Swedes, and Icelanders. Dress for whatever weather Astoria chooses to have that weekend!!!
Assemble between 16th and 17th Streets on Marine Drive (in front of the Columbia River Maritime Museum).
PARKING: please park somewhere above Commercial or Duane Streets on the side roads; we are asking people to avoid parking in the Museum parking lot, because we’d like to ensure the Museum has parking for its own visitors and continues to support the Optog in the future.
We’ll be going over final Festival preparations at this meeting - and one of them is practicing cooking aebleskiver, the delicious Danish “donut holes” that are one of the most popular items at Festival.
The batter for making these will be prepared ahead of time, but if you have an aebleskiver pan (cast iron or electric) that you would like to try out, then feel free to bring it to the meeting. We will learn the techniques for greasing the pan, pouring the batter, and turning the individual aebleskiver with wooden picks so they come out as perfectly golden-brown spheres. Of course, we will have to taste-test our creations - plain, with powdered sugar, or jam. The dough is light and slightly sweet, but resembling the mouthfeel of a slightly chewy pancake more than that of a donut.
If you are interested in finding a way to help with the Danish Food Booth this is a great time to introduce yourself and learn more. Commitments are as modest as 2 hours for a shift or assisting with set-up or break-down of the booth.
Instead of holding a regular May meeting, we hold this late-May event to begin preparations for Festival and encourage everyone to come out for part or all of the day.
Festival 2023 is on its way, so we are going to be busy preparing both the aebleskiver dry mix for our very popular Danish “spherical miracles” (puffy fried batter) and frikadeller (Danish meat balls).
We do need helpers for all or part of the day; it’s a fun way to socialize while getting some really important things prepared for Festival. We mix the dry ingredients for the aebleskiver, as well as mix, form, and cook the frikadeller. If you don’t like playing with food, then dishwashing duty is also available!
Snacks and beverages will be provided to keep the cooks and cooks’ helpers fueled up throughout the day.
Again, we respect everyone’s wishes to remain safe and healthy, so in addition to food-service protocols that we always follow when preparing the food (gloves, hairnets/hats, frequent hand washing between tasks, physically separate break room), masks will be available for those who wish to have them.
