My Danish Fulbright Experience 1961-62: A Love Story

By Joan Gluckauf Haahr (Fulbright Denmark alum July 1961-August 1962).

I learned about Fulbright grants in high school, when a favorite teacher told me of hers. Like me, a girl from a poor New York City family, she had realized that the Fulbright represented her only chance of going to Europe in those days when travel was beyond the means of folks such as we were. An art student, she applied to Italy and, as she often told me, that experience changed her life. So, in 1961, when I reached my senior year of college and it was time to apply, I did so without hesitation.

But where to apply was a question. As an English major, the natural place for me to study was England. However, I knew that of all Fulbright grants the one to England was the most difficult to get, as people in all fields who lacked the requisite language facility applied there. And while I knew some German from home, my major foreign language was Spanish, of little use to me as an English major.

Filling out the extensive application (six carbon copies required of each page), I hesitated to enter a country name and then – like a flash – the idea came to me: apply to Denmark! The Scandinavian countries required no knowledge of the native languages, which were seldom taught in the United States.

Could I justify that application? Well, I was a medieval studies major and was writing my honors thesis on the eighth century epic poem Beowulf, which not only took place in Denmark but had been the subject of much Danish scholarship – albeit in the somewhat distant past. So, apply I did, and to my great joy I was awarded the grant.

My location was to be the University of Copenhagen, so I tried to learn as much as possible before our mid-July departure. And soon there we were, twelve American Fulbright new grantees (11 male students and me, the only female in the group) along with Danish and Swedish students returning from a year in the US, boarding the MS Kungsholm for an eight-day cruise to Scandinavia.

We slept, we enjoyed the Kungsholm’s lavish meals, and most importantly we got to know each other – Americans, Danes, and Swedes. It was a welcome interlude before our landing in Göteborg, where we were met by the Danish representative, Poul Møller, who accompanied us on the train ride to Copenhagen.

Our destination was Hagemanns Kollegium on Kristianiagade 10, where we were welcomed by two Danish students (Jorn Haahr and Annette Hartung) who were in charge of the summer rentals to foreign students, an important source of income for the “kollegium”.

We were shown our rooms, made ourselves comfortable, and joined the others – both Danes and Americans – for our first Danish dinner. What we ate I cannot remember, but what most impressed me was the amount of øl drunk by the Danish students, something we soon got used to.

Hagemanns Kollegium had been founded in 1908 by a Danish engineer, and it still housed primarily engineering students though there were other specializations – and always an artist occupying the atelier on the top floor. However, what surprised me most was the fact that it was coed, with men and women’s rooms intermixed on each floor, even the toilets and showers serving both.

I came from the USA of the 1950s, a world of strict separation of the sexes and strict parietals, i.e. curfews enforced in all dormitories. I was particularly shy about the showers, which, though individual, shared a common dressing room. This in itself was an education in the difference between the severe American Puritanism of those days and Danish greater sexual casualness, and it was something that took a while to get used to.

The month of August was taken up largely by daily Danish language classes in the mornings and casual exploration of the city in the afternoons. Because we ate most meals at the kollegium, we became acquainted with many of the Danish students, who welcomed us warmly and invited us to join the lively parties held on many evenings throughout the month. They too were on vacation, although many were beginning to study for their forthcoming exams.

The parties were great fun, loud and raucous affairs, with beer flowing and always good food prepared by the kollegium’s økonoma (a wonderful cook and manager of the kitchen) and her staff.

However, the month soon passed and our departure became necessary. It was understood that, with the help of the Fulbright office and Danish students, we were to find local housing (generally spare rooms in the large apartments characteristic of our upscale Østerport neighborhood), although we could continue to take our meals at the kollegium.

Unlike the rest of the group, however, I was privileged to continue living at the kollegium for the entire fall term. The reason was twofold: a student had fallen ill and would miss the term, so his room was available. And Jorn Haahr, who had run the summer rentals, was becoming something more to me than just a fellow resident.

After our arrival the previous month, I had not seen him until we met again at a party a couple of weeks later. Our attraction was immediate, and he soon introduced me to his brother, who lived with his young family in a nearby suburb.

Though Jorn was mostly occupied with his engineering studies, he managed to find time to take me out occasionally: to Tivoli, to Bakken, and often to his brother’s home to help him babysit his two-year-old twin nephews. And so, we began developing our relationship (which ultimately resulted in a long and happy marriage – but more of that later).

I was determined to learn Danish, and to that end I voluntarily continued my Danish language classes for the entire year. But what helped much more was the fact that I now was living only among Danes, and while they all spoke excellent English, they quite naturally spoke Danish when with each other. If I were to become accepted, I would have to speak Danish too.

It helped that, coming from a German speaking family, I understood some German. It also helped that I had a facility with languages. And I did learn, not enough to take courses given in Danish at the university, but enough (gradually) to participate in the life of the kollegium and to make my way around the city as needed.

When Thanksgiving came around, we Americans wanted to give our Danish friends a real Thanksgiving celebration. Mike procured the Helsingør laboratory as a venue and the Fulbright office was kind enough to get us a turkey and necessary trimmings from an American military base in Germany.

As the laboratory’s oven was not large enough for the huge turkey, Mike arranged for a local bakery to roast it. The celebration was a huge success, with turkey, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce (though only canned was available) and several pies for dessert. In addition, we taught them the American custom of “bobbing for apples,” which all enjoyed.

After the winter vacation, my time living at the kollegium came to an end, as my room’s assigned resident was returning from his sick leave. Fortunately, I was able to rent a room in a nearby apartment and (now a spiser) to continue eating at the kollegium and participating in much of the life there. Once classes began again, I continued with my Danish lessons at the Handelshøjskole. Our instructor, Hr. Sorgenfri, was a fun and enthusiastic teacher, and we read Danish classics and discussed them in the best Danish we could muster.  Our classmates came from many different countries, and the variety of accents sometimes made them hard to understand, but the three-hour daily class was always enjoyable.

Jorn and I continued our relationship. We made several visits to his hometown of Skive, and I met and got to know his parents. Jorn’s father was Skive’s Sognepræst (vicar), so we were able to have some good conversations about religion and American politics. Over the many years of our marriage, I came to know well both the town and many of the family’s friends.

However, as my Fulbright year would eventually come to an end, Jorn and I had to decide if we had a future together. Marriage was a possibility, but it was too soon to make that difficult decision.

So, having learned from my travels with another Fulbright scholar during the winter vacation that traveling provided an excellent test of a relationship, I suggested that we go to Paris together. And so, we did for two wonderful weeks, which led us to conclude that we did want to marry.

We made the decision while sitting in the Parc des Butte Chaumont, the same park where my parents had made their commitment twenty-seven years earlier.

Our eventual decision to live in the U.S was made for two reasons: 1) Jorn, as an engineer, could more easily get a job there than I could find one in Denmark, and 2) my mother was widowed and alone and Jorn’s parents had each other as well as two other sons.

I kept reading as much as I could in Danish, familiarizing myself with many of the Danish literary classics. I was also asked to give a couple of talks at the American Embassy to Danish students about to start their Fulbright years in the U.S.

Fortunately, I was able to extend my Fulbright to August, continuing the Danish immersion that had governed most of my year, and returned to the U.S. (sailing on the MS Gripsholm) just in time to begin graduate studies at Harvard University in September 1962.

Jorn still had seven months of classes at the Polytechnical University as well as a thesis to write, but in March 1963, I picked him up at the Boston airport, where he greeted me by waving the required chest X-ray that no one had ever looked at.

Jorn, as expected, easily found an engineering job, I completed my first year of graduate classes, and we were married in New York in June 1963. A few years later, after the birth of our first child, we moved from Cambridge to New York City, where we have lived ever since. I completed my Ph.D. and began a career teaching at Yeshiva University that was to last for forty-two years, twenty-three of them as Chair of the Yeshiva College English Department.

Needless to say, I am (as the button on my refrigerator proclaims) “Danish by marriage”: fluent in the language, close to all the wonderful members of our Danish family, and still in touch with those of our Danish friends who are still alive. Sadly, Jorn died six years ago, and I no longer am able to travel. But Danish identity is part of me and has been passed down to our three children and six grandchildren, all of whom have visited Denmark, both as children and adults – and our Danish family always is welcomed at our home in Riverdale when visiting New York.

And that was “My Fulbright Year.”