Johanne Hansen interviewed by H.B. Simonsen
Corrected by H.B. Simonsen
[SPEAKER_00]: Will you please tell me your full name?
[SPEAKER_00]: Johanne Johansen Hansen.
[SPEAKER_01]: And where and when were you born?
[SPEAKER_00]: March 31st, 1925, in a rural area close to Luck, Wisconsin.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what was the area, the name of the village?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I was born on a farm west of Luck, Wisconsin.
[SPEAKER_01]: And your parents, their names, and where did they come from?
[SPEAKER_00]: My mother was Frederikke Henriksen, and she grew up right there close by, close to West Denmark.
[SPEAKER_00]: When was she born?
[SPEAKER_00]: About a mile from Luck.
[SPEAKER_00]: My father was Ansgar Johansen.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he grew up in Tyler, Minnesota.
[SPEAKER_01]: When were they born, your parents?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, my mother was born in 1888, October 8th.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my father was born August 10th in 1889.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they were born in this country.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: But they had a Danish background.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Both sets of grandparents came from Denmark.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you know whereabouts?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: My grandmother, Henriksen, came from Tuesland. (? she probably means Thy or Thyland; hbs)
[SPEAKER_00]: I should know the name of the town.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't think of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you think of it?
[SPEAKER_00]: And my grandfather, Henriksen, came from Northwest Sjælland.
[SPEAKER_00]: There again, I can't remember the name of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have it all, but I can't remember it.
[SPEAKER_00]: My Johansen grandparents came from that same general area of Northwest Sjælland.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they immigrated to America about what year?
[SPEAKER_00]: The Henriksens's ones came in 1880 and the Johansen's in 1882.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the Henriksen's came right to the West Denmark area.
[SPEAKER_00]: My grandmother already had a sister and her husband that were here, that were living there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my
[SPEAKER_00]: Johansen grandparents first came to Opaka, Wisconsin.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think there were some Danes there.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, my grandfather had a brother that was already there.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then they only stayed there a couple of years, and then they moved to Tyler, which was then a young
[SPEAKER_00]: congregation settlement.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just founded, actually.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just founded shortly, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: They went to Tyler, which was a kind of Grundtvigian settlement set up by the Danish church.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you have any knowledge that they went there because they wanted to be specific in that?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think probably because they knew there were other Danes there, but I don't know just what
[SPEAKER_00]: what the drawing card was there.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I know my grandfather was very active in the early years of the congregation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he became the, I suppose you would call it a degn in Danish, the one who read the opening prayer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he did that for many years.
[SPEAKER_01]: Where did you go to school?
[SPEAKER_00]: Where did I go to school?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I first went to two different ones, two little country schools, eight grades.
[SPEAKER_00]: We moved, so I went to two different ones up until I was through eighth grade.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I went to Luck High School.
[SPEAKER_01]: Up in West Denmark, you have a school building.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's where we had our ferieskole.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and we had four weeks of, we had some Danish history, and we read, learned a little bit of Danish grammar, but we learned to read Danish.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we had storytelling time and some Bible study.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we had plenty of time to play in a big area around the school and down by the lake and all over.
[SPEAKER_00]: And every day we went swimming and we had gymnastik and folk dancing and just a full day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think we all enjoyed it very much.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when we talk about it later with the other people that we know that went there, we know that that was a good experience.
[SPEAKER_01]: At what age did you start in Ferieskole?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think we probably, most of them started at the same time as they started school, which would have been six.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I was there.
[SPEAKER_00]: when I was about four, because my mother helped with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So she had to take me along.
[SPEAKER_00]: Couldn't leave me alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I probably learned to read Danish before I learned to read English.
[SPEAKER_01]: For how many years were you there?
[SPEAKER_01]: Pardon?
[SPEAKER_01]: For how many years did you go to this school?
[SPEAKER_00]: Until, I'm not sure, 12 or 13, something like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's quite a bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you speak Danish at home?
[SPEAKER_01]: Before you went to school?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your parents spoke Danish?
[SPEAKER_00]: The whole family spoke Danish?
[SPEAKER_00]: They spoke Danish to one another, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when you started American school at six, how was your English?
[SPEAKER_00]: Not very much.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not very much.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember it was a problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think the teacher I had then
[SPEAKER_00]: but did not know Danish.
[SPEAKER_00]: We had some teachers in that school now and then that did know some Danish, but she didn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there were other classmates that knew Danish, too.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if somebody made a mistake, they could correct.
[SPEAKER_00]: There were a number of us in the school that were Danish back then.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was no problem to get into an English-speaking school?
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_01]: So after you went to school and when you graduated from high school, what did you do then?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, for about a year I worked in Minneapolis in a grocery store, a checkout girl from a grocery store, just to earn some money.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I came to Grand View the next two years.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I worked another year in Minneapolis at Honeywell, which was a plant that made thermostats and position instruments.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of it was government contracts at that time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I worked there for almost a year.
[SPEAKER_01]: How old were you when you went to Grandview?
[SPEAKER_00]: To Grandview?
[SPEAKER_00]: I was 20.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is about when the Second World War ended.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: 45, 46, 47, I was at Grandview.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you got married?
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I got married.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Had met Thorvald at Grandview.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was in a seminary then.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was actually only there about a semester while I was there, because then he was done.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you started a family.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, your husband, Thorvald, was a minister.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you went... To Alden, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Alden, Minnesota.
[SPEAKER_00]: Minnesota, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Southern part of Minnesota.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that was the first congregation you went to.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he had been there for a year and a half, or two years and a half, I guess, by that time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you were there for a number of years?
[SPEAKER_00]: Our oldest daughter was born there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ellen was born there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you served a number of other congregations.
[SPEAKER_00]: Brayton, Iowa, Oak Hill and St.
[SPEAKER_00]: John's congregations by Brayton.
[SPEAKER_00]: There our second daughter, Barbara, was born.
[SPEAKER_00]: We went from there to Esterville, where Thorvald worked for the state.
[SPEAKER_00]: welfare at that time, what we call human services now, for about a year and a half.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we went to Cozad, Nebraska.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Nancy was born there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we went from there to Viborg, South Dakota.
[SPEAKER_00]: And while we were at Oak Hill, well, while we were at Alden, Thorvald went to
[SPEAKER_00]: University of Minnesota and finished, so he got his, no, took one year at University of Minnesota.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then when we moved to Iowa, then he came in here to Drake in Des Moines and got one more year so that he got his bachelor's degree.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then when we got to South Dakota, he asked permission from the congregation to go to University of South Dakota part-time, which was
[SPEAKER_00]: about 30 miles away.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so there we both took classes, and he finished his master's degree while we were there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he got the job at Grandview College after that in 1965.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the first two years we were here, I took some classes at Drake, but I wasn't
[SPEAKER_00]: We had had such a good experience at South Dakota, and so I was not very pleased with Drake.
[SPEAKER_00]: So then I heard that Grandview was looking for some help in the library.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I decided that I would apply for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that was the end of my schooling.
[SPEAKER_00]: So then I worked there for 20 years.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you retired?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we retired, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then after we retired, well no, before we retired, in 1980 we took the first trip to Denmark, Thorvald was asked to come and be part of a conference
[SPEAKER_00]: dealing with immigration, Danish immigration to the United States, what happened to the ... (? the word is hard to understand; hbs) and so on.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was in 80.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then in 83 there was another conference.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I think in 87 we just decided we were going to go on our own.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's when we went, we spent part of the time
[SPEAKER_00]: at some folk schools, Askov, and that one north of Copenhagen.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't remember the name of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The folk school north of Copenhagen that we went to.
[SPEAKER_00]: Krogerup.
[SPEAKER_00]: Krogerup, yeah, Krogerup.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then in...
[SPEAKER_00]: And then in 90, we went again for a conference.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then in 92, Grandview planned a tour, and there were a number of alumni that went.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were quite a group that went, and there we spent some time
[SPEAKER_00]: first at Copenhagen, and then at Askov, and then at Aarhus as a group.
[SPEAKER_00]: We had lectures and took tours to see different things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then in 97 we decided to go again on our own, and that's the last time we were there.
[SPEAKER_01]: While you were at these Danish congregations in the Midwest, I would like to hear some of the specific of the kind of environment, traditions that you would be having in those congregations that you wouldn't find in the neighborhood congregations, sort of specific belonging to this Danish church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, we tried to put
[SPEAKER_00]: some emphasis on what we called Vacation Church School, which would have been like our Ferieskole.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we had that.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were still having Ferieskole.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but it wasn't in Danish.
[SPEAKER_01]: They called it Vacation School.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, Vacation School for the kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: Partly because sometimes the kids in the congregation didn't go to the same school.
[SPEAKER_00]: The only contact they had with one another was maybe Sunday school and church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by having some weeks of vacation school, they got to know one another better.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we had some Bible study and we had some crafts.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there we usually had some folk dancing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And some storytelling.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thorvald told some stories like
[SPEAKER_00]: some of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales and so on.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we did get some students that were at Grandview that came out to the different congregations.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we had them for several places.
[SPEAKER_01]: Was that something they had before you came, or did you
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they had it before we came, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you kept on with it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I did.
[SPEAKER_00]: But outside of that, well, because we had something that probably other congregations wouldn't have, like our Christmas party.
[SPEAKER_00]: We danced around the Christmas tree, and that was the Danish costume...
[SPEAKER_00]: Other, I don't know, I don't remember so much other things that were not just part of what was already, I mean that was already there, I'm sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: We just carried on with what was there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember so much of any other customs.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, well, there might not have been any sort of specific thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: It would be in the individual homes.
[SPEAKER_00]: In Nebraska, we had something called
[SPEAKER_00]: Fellowship Weekend, I think we called it, to begin with.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was already going when we came there.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that was a lecture series and singing and folk dancing for a couple of days.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we first moved there, it was weekends.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or maybe it was the other way around.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we first came there, it was during the week.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we found that people just couldn't get there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So then we changed it to a weekend.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it was the ministers of the district that planned it and helped carry it through.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the whole district that met?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: In Nebraska, that district was Nebraska and one congregation in Kansas. And Dannevang, Texas,
[SPEAKER_00]: One in Colorado.
[SPEAKER_00]: In Brush, Colorado.
[SPEAKER_02]: And one in Texas.
[SPEAKER_00]: In what?
[SPEAKER_01]: Texas.
[SPEAKER_00]: In Texas, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you would have sort of a small Tyler meeting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because what you're telling is very much like the Tyler meeting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was a fellowship meeting, a folk school type of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, while we were in Minnesota, at Alden, they had already started the Tyler meetings.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Tyler meetings started in 47, 46, I guess.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we did get to parts of that while we were in Alden.
[SPEAKER_00]: We could never be there for the whole weekend, but we'd get up there for a day or two.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, when we were in Iowa, we were close to Grand View.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when there was special things going on here, we'd come in here.
[SPEAKER_00]: And during all of that time at Grand View, they had what they called Pastors Institute.
[SPEAKER_00]: The week after Easter, they'd have several days of the ministers from all over our Synod.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'd come to Grandview for meetings, and Thorvald always tried to get to that and very much enjoyed that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes I'd go along, depending upon where the kids were at school and so on.
[SPEAKER_01]: And after you retired, you've been taking part in the Tyler?
[SPEAKER_00]: In Tyler and Solvang.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Solvang.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we went to Manuka one year.
[SPEAKER_00]: Manuka is up in Oregon and that's similar.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we went to Solvang many times, and Tyler almost every time I think since we retired in 87, until the last couple of years.
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you enjoy most at the Tyler meeting?
[SPEAKER_00]: I suppose the singing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the fellowship, just to see some people that we, many of us went to Grand View together.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or in some cases we knew the parents of some of those younger ones that are there now.
[SPEAKER_01]: You would know a good, well, the main part of them, the majority of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, most of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: From other places, from other.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: The last couple of years there were probably more that we didn't know that were people that had gotten interested and were not necessarily from our old Danish congregations.
[SPEAKER_00]: Outside of them, I'd say we knew just about everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: We had some connection with them.
[SPEAKER_02]: There were three meetings.
[SPEAKER_00]: Solvang was theological.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, theological, yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Manuka was more Danish.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Tyler was sociological.
[SPEAKER_01]: Tyler was sociological.
[SPEAKER_01]: In what way sociological?
[SPEAKER_01]: The lectures.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the group?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know that was not a cut and dried thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean there could be both at Tyler and Solvang
[SPEAKER_00]: There could be either religious or sociological things, but more dominantly.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the group of people is more or less the same, isn't it?
[SPEAKER_00]: More or less the same, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you have these two meeting places during the year, which many of you cherish and enjoy quite understandably.
[SPEAKER_01]: How would you describe sort of the tradition that you have been living, grown up with and been living with during the whole lifetime, your whole lifetime?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like what?
[SPEAKER_01]: been living in these congregations in the Midwest, you would have neighbors, you would have other congregations close by, maybe of Danish background, of the other church.
[SPEAKER_01]: What kind of difference would you have noticed in your life of the congregation, in your
[SPEAKER_01]: sort of in the values that you had in your church as compared with the neighboring churches.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think in Viborg we had a church that was of the other Danish synods, of the Inder Missions.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there that was, it was more pietistic.
[SPEAKER_00]: One example was that the ministers, the town, planned some Lenten services.
[SPEAKER_00]: So during Lent, they'd have like maybe a Wednesday night service, and they alternated between the churches.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, the minister, or the, I don't think it was just the minister, but the church, the church,
[SPEAKER_00]: would let Thorvald preach there because he was Lutheran.
[SPEAKER_00]: But they wouldn't let the others, the Methodists and the Baptists preachers there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So of course, Thorvald refused.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't going to do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that was some of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were very rigid, some things like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: In Cozad, the minister from one of the churches, and I can't
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was a Baptist maybe.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, oh, you are the people that build your halls first, your first, your forsamlingshus first,
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that was the most important thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, we didn't argue with him.
[SPEAKER_00]: But those were just little stances of the type of attitude that, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were known as being the more liberal churches.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you were.
[SPEAKER_01]: We were, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because if you take some specifics in things like dancing, you would have neighboring churches who wouldn't approve.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: Alcohol?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well I don't remember that that was much of a, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: playing cards I suppose would have been taboo by some of them too.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the whole attitude sort of I think was different.
[SPEAKER_01]: Would there have been a specific leaning to one of the main political parties?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you've been more to the Democratic side than Republican.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know that you and your husband are.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not safe to say that more of our Synod people were Democrats, but maybe they were.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: They weren't all.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think they probably lean more that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a pretty tricky question, I think.
[SPEAKER_02]: The Danish church was not entirely liberal.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I think our church, our synod.
[SPEAKER_02]: There were all kinds of politics.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think that's the difference.
[SPEAKER_00]: The UELC was pietistic to the core.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our church was more an umbrella church that had the liberal, but then there were also some pietists mixed in between.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we were more
[SPEAKER_00]: the church that would accept everybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you would have newcomers, you would have outsiders who came and became part of this church with a non-Danish background.
[SPEAKER_00]: Eventually, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: The church itself was outspoken Grundtvigian.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or how would you say that?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, in the way the church viewed, for instance, the Bible, the status of the Bible.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wouldn't you say it was specifically Grundtvigian?
[SPEAKER_01]: It depends on the ministry.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, you would have quite a variety of views.
[SPEAKER_01]: I suppose that the leaders... I suppose some were Grundtvigian, and others were not.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some would call themselves Grundtvigian or have that outlook and others would... I suppose that you could say that the leadership was pretty much Grundtvigian.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there were some that came that became part of the church that were not.
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't quite
[SPEAKER_01]: In many congregations you would have people, I would suppose the leading members of congregations, that would be very much into the Grundtvigian tradition because they would have been maybe at a folk high school,
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, pretty much so.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Grand View. Would there sometimes be a dissatisfaction with the new minister who is not sort of Grundtvigian?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Have you had a recollection of that?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I suppose in our case, we were more, we probably leaned more that way than most of our members.
[SPEAKER_00]: In our case.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there was a nucleus of old Danes in each congregation that had either been at Grandview or at folk school.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then of course there were some that
[SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't have had any idea what that was all about.
[SPEAKER_01]: To yourself personally, what has it meant for you that you had this sort of background in the Grundtvigian Church tradition and folk high school tradition?
[SPEAKER_00]: What has it meant?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's a hard question to answer, isn't it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think so.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think it has meant a kind of freedom that... I think the emphasis on that this life is important,
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean that we aren't, we shouldn't be sitting here waiting for paradise and so on.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I get so exacerbated with some of these songs that, and we do it here too.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's, you know, they want to sing all the time, which is, you know, we're going down the river one by one and, or, uh, uh, you know, it's so we can't wait to die because
[SPEAKER_00]: because that would be better.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that our emphasis has been that you have to make this life the important life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's been important to me anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the, you know, appreciating nature and so many of the
[SPEAKER_00]: Danish songs that we have emphasizes nature and God's gift is nature.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's always been important to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I suppose you can
[SPEAKER_00]: I suppose if you ask specific things, but just in general, what's been important?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think fellowship.
[SPEAKER_01]: For instance, I have the impression that if you were in the other Danish congregation, the other Danish church, the United Church, the Bible.
[SPEAKER_01]: study of the Bible, knowledge of the Bible, would have a major importance.
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you do much study of the Bible?
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you put much importance into study of the Bible?
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_01]: No?
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was part of the tradition?
[SPEAKER_00]: It was not something that was emphasized a lot in my home.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was probably a Bible there if we wanted to look up something, but it wasn't something that... And it's never been... Sure, we went to church and we heard the Bible verses and so on, but I...
[SPEAKER_00]: Not for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not a Bible student.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you ask about inspiration, the Christian inspiration in your life, where would you have found that?
Where would I have found that?
[SPEAKER_01]: In church I suppose.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the songs probably.
[SPEAKER_01]: and in your daily life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Would you put it that way?
[SPEAKER_00]: And probably reading other things, not through just the Bible, but other things that people have written.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well I can ask more, but I think this sort of covers it quite well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Would that be your final point that you maybe before I shut up?
[SPEAKER_01]: Then I'll say thanks very much.