We all recognise the unique architecture of Nordic House, but why is it there in the first place? Our Scandinavian tabernacle correspondent Phil Ascough has a skeg.

The mere existence of a Danish Church in Hull may surprise many. We’ve actually had one in Hull for a long time. We were the first place outside Denmark to get one, and thousands upon thousands of people drive past it every day – or will do once the A63 is up and running again. It’s that building on the corner of Ferensway and Osborne Street which still looks quite new even though it has been there for 71 years. But that isn’t the original. It was built to replace the first Skt Nikolaj Danish Seamen’s Church, which was consecrated in 1871 and would come to a violent and inconvenient end.

Their Scandinavian Christmas Market is the biggest day of their year and a significant event in the region’s festive calendar. But no one seems entirely sure how long it’s been going. They can tell you why they no longer sell their super-comfy chunky Scandinavian knitwear. They’ll also reveal what happened in the episode of the body – sorry, make that liver – in the bath tub. But if you go asking about something integral to the character of Hull and widely believed to be of Scandinavian origin, for example the word “skeg”, you’re simply left with another conundrum.

A booklet available at the church explains that “there was a large Danish community in Hull and many Danish ships docked in the port” for at least two centuries. It also reveals that may Danes had already joined the German Church, which had been founded in 1848. But it adds, ominously, that a meeting was held in 1866 to discuss establishing an independent Danish Church “as their community grew ever larger and political differences arose.”

Presumably on a day when the marketing guru was away, they set up the Danish Society for Propagating the Gospel among Scandinavian Seaman in Foreign Ports.  They bought the old Bethesda Chapel in Osborne Street in 1869 and hired a local architect, William Botterill, to come up with a design. Georg Ludvig Rasmussen Heden was appointed pastor and set about raising money for the building and furnishings. Archdeacon Rothe of Copenhagen visited Hull to consecrate the first overseas Danish Seamen’s Church on 10 May 1871.

The booklet notes that “the Finns got their own church in 1885 and the Swedes in 1910” but the Danish Church continued to serve resident Scandinavians as well as “the many Danish seamen and Scandinavian emigrants en route to the ‘Promised Land’ across the Atlantic”.

Docks traffic declined at the beginning of the 20^th century but as the fishing industry took off many Danish fishermen and their families moved across the North Sea. Then came the World Wars. Denmark was neutral during the First World War and its sailors were forbidden from going ashore in England. In the Second World War, Germany occupied Denmark and Norway, whose ships and crew then served the Allies.

The church worked throughout, with the community “in the midst of this misery” deciding to celebrate the 70^th anniversary of their building with an event on 10 May 1941. But on the night before, the church was destroyed with a direct hit by a German bomb, as were the Finnish and Swedish churches. The pastor moved to Newcastle with his family and continued his work. Danish services were occasionally held in the Seamen’s Mission in Posterngate, now The Mission pub.

In October 1947 a Finnish wooden hut, packed in boxes, was delivered from Copenhagen on the DFDS ship “Hebe”. The contents were assembled and a temporary church took shape close to St Matthew’s Church on Anlaby Road. It did the job until the Bishop of Copenhagen, H Fuglsang-Damgaard, consecrated the new Skt Nikolaj Danish Seamen’s Church on 9 May 1954 – one day short of 83 years since the opening of the first church. A seven-branched candelabra, retrieved from the rubble of the old church and then restored, now sits on the altar. Another relic is a small rosette of red glass which was also salvaged from the bomb site and took pride of place in a window in the new building.

They’re worth a skeg, as are model ships the Jylland from the temporary church at Anlaby Road and the Dronning Ingrid, which moved to Hull when the Danish Church in Newcastle closed in 1970. There’s also some classic Scandi design lampshades and an organ donated by Rind church in Herning, Jutland, and restored, installed and tuned by manufacturers Frobenius of Copenhagen in 1995. Not to mention a fine collection of flags of the Nordic nations.

In recent years, with the church no longer having its own pastor, the number of services has reduced to a handful and the focus has move more towards community, cultural and corporate use under the name Nordic House. Charities use it for meetings and workshops. The Viola Trust presented an exhibition as part of Heritage Open Days. Music events have included a maritime folk event featuring Wolfy O’Hare, Sam Martyn and the London Sea Shanty Collective. There has even been a radical book fair.

But the highlight is the Christmas Market, which this year will take place on Saturday 29 November. Recent research has found photographs which indicate the event may date back as far as the 1930s. They show that a bazaar was held in 1933 in the original church. Plumrose, which operated in the Old Town in the 1960s and was a subsidiary of the Danish Crown meat processing company, used to donate products for sale at the market.

Hanne Hamilton, a Dane who lives in Beverley and has been attending the church since the mid-1960s, said the market in its current form was launched in 1969. Pre-Covid it used to attract more than 800 people over two days. Now it welcomes almost the same number in just one day.

Charlotte Theill, manager of the church, said: “People come from far and wide – the Scandinavian community from west of the Pennines and south of the Humber and a lot of people from in and around Hull. Some of them have been coming here for years and they tell us that they see it as the start of their Christmas.”

The crowds flock to the church to buy festive delicacies and stylish gifts that they can’t find anywhere else. They also pack out a pop-up café serving open sandwiches of salmon, prawns and herring as well as home-made fishcakes, gravlax and rye bread. Dorthe Hostick, chair of the church social fund and a volunteer at the market since the 1970s, makes fingers of Kransekage – a Danish festive cake which uses marzipan imported from Odense.

Hanne said: “Everything is made from recipes we have been using for many years. In the early 1970s I helped the pastor’s wife make pate. We got minced liver and fat  from a local butcher. We mixed it in a tin bath, baked it and sold it in foil trays.” Health and safety considerations put an end to the tin bath technique. Traditional knitwear from Iceland was dropped because of problems getting the right sizes.

But what about “skeg”? An online search suggests links with a headland, a projection on the bottom of a ship, or a beard. But nothing that would lead us to the Hull term. Charlotte said: “The Danish word for beard is skæg so you’re spot on there but I don’t think it’s connected to ‘quick look’. It seems to be a bit of a mystery.”

I’ll ask around when I go for a skeg at the Christmas market.

Phil Ascough

Steve is a tanker driver for Rix and here is is explaining what his job entails and why he loves it.

From the Big Malarkey with a question guaranteed to cause a row, author Simon James Green selects his hits from the selection box.

A question resulting from a recent BBC TV programme is tackled by our esturium underpass correspondent Angus Young.

The restoration of a 1930 pencil drawing of a proposed cantilever bridge across the Humber which was never built featured recently on BBC1’s The Repair Shop. We all know an updated design for a suspension bridge was eventually turned into reality when the current crossing opened to road traffic in 1981. At the time, it was the world’s longest single-span suspension bridge. But did you know there were much earlier plans to run trains across the estuary – in a tunnel?

As you might expect, it was those ingenious Victorians who believed they could send steam locomotives underground on one side of the Humber to emerge unscathed on the other. After all, it was the age of the Industrial Revolution and anything, it seemed, was possible.

In 1872 the first proposals for a rail tunnel under the estuary emerged. The estimated cost of the ambitious project was put at £960,000 and it appears finding that amount of money proved to be a major obstacle in progressing this particular initiative any further. However, other proposed tunnel schemes would follow.

One envisaged a railway tunnel connecting Welton and South Ferriby. Another suggested rail link floated in 1914 proposed a tunnel running from Paull on the North Bank across to the South Bank.

While some Victorian engineers favoured going underground, others looked above the water for a solution to transporting folk from one bank to another. The first ideas for a bridge were proposed in 1883 but it would take nearly a century before one finally opened after a ten-year construction project. Until then, the main form of transportation across the Humber was by ferry.

Ironically, after all those abandoned rail tunnel projects, the ferry service between Hull and New Holland was operated by a series of railway companies. In its heyday, the former Pier Station building in Nelson Street  in Hull was one of the few British Rail stations never to have sold a ticket for a train. Instead, the only tickets were for passenger ferry crossings. It was also a rare British Rail station without any railway tracks.

A giant tunnel under the Humber was finally built and completed in 2020, following a similar route between Paull and Goxhill once earmarked for steam trains a century earlier. However, this £100m project is all about transporting energy rather than people. Known simply as the Humber Tunnel, it was constructed by the National Grid to carry a gas pipeline 30.6 metres below the riverbed at its deepest point. The tunnel measures 4,036 metres in length and has replaced an existing eroding one which sat in the riverbed.

Like its lofty cousin linking Hesse and Barton, it also made the record books by featuring the longest hydraulically inserted pipeline in the world.  With a diameter of 3.6 metres, it’s big enough to walk in although access, as you might imagine, is strictly limited to essential personnel.

Angus Young

Actress Alyce Liburd – soon to be seen at Hull Truck in Oliver Twist – takes us through some of her current cultural picks.

We bumped into musician and child whisperer Sarah at a recent Mini-Malarkey and she let us into her secrets for awakening the musician in kids.

For those who find Enid a bit old hat these days, Caitlin and Ally-mai have some options for new hats.

The ‘luxurious escape’ restaurant in Hull’s Prices Quay opened thanks to a huge council grant and shut soon after. But what – our ephemeral eatery correspondent Angus Young asks – is happening next?

Among the many units currently empty in Princes Quay there’s one which has attracted more headlines than any other. When Iron Lilies restaurant opened in the space once occupied by the Virgin Megastore in July 2024 it was hailed as a potential gamechanger for Hull’s night-time economy.

The Quay’s owners Tokyo Industries (Yorkshire) Ltd. reportedly spent around £1.5m on creating the 200-seat botanical-themed venue which included water features, plants and an outdoor terrace. It certainly looked the part but actually getting to taste the food on offer often proved to be a bit of a problem.

One well-known local restaurant reviewer tried to eat there three times without success. He said: “The first time I walked up on foot and they said they weren’t doing walk-ups even though it was empty and there was no-one in. They just said they were expecting reservations. The second time I tried to book online for one person. I was just going to try it out but the minimum booking was two people. It was very odd. I can’t remember why I couldn’t get in the third time I tried but it did seem the booking system didn’t work very well when all I wanted to do was eat there.”

In July this year Iron Lilies closed. At the time, Tokyo Industries said trading losses had made it impossible to continue while promising the restaurant would re-open later this year in a new format. Since then, a political row has blown up over a £750,000 Levelling Up Fund grant awarded to Tokyo Industries by Hull City Council to support the initial cost of converting the unused space.

Should the grant be re-paid? Should it have been awarded in the first place?

While the Quay’s owners continue to say a re-opening will happen before the end of the year, a new council report clarifies the issues around the grant. It says a “standard clawback clause” in the LUF agreement covering grant-funded buildings being sold or a lease terminated is being “temporarily paused” because of Tokyo Industries’ commitment to re-open the restaurant.

The report adds: “The (council) LUF grants team has a monthly check-in with Tokyo Industries to ensure their plan to reopen is on track. The latest check in early October included a visit to the premises. Dialogue between the owners of the LUF grants team will continue over the next few months with a view to ensuring that progress is being made to reopen as planned.”

When Curiosity popped into the Quay recently there was no sign of activity at the venue while the old Iron Lilies logos were still in place. Meanwhile, our local restaurant reviewer is eagerly looking forward to finally setting foot in the place for the first time.

Angus Young

Massive bridge, bit of the moon – Dr Robb Robinson of the University of Hull explains Hessle’s ongoing plans for interplanetary domination.

Jaz, from Rewilding Youth outlines the best ways to get kids out in nature and doing stuff.