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 20th 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 70th 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.