If the traffic was any busier, there'd be accidents at the Old Danish Church. Honestly, the place looks make-believe. You will take your eyes off the road--trust me. If you stop the car and stand there for a second, you can't help but expect a gaggle of heavyset men in vests and women in long dresses to step out for a potluck. Kids tear around, playing leap frog over the cemetery stones. Women gather. Men smoke hand-rolled cigarettes or fat, black cigars.
The churchyard spreads out neatly over the long side of the hill. It's manicured so tidily that even the bushes are restrained. The whole scene is perfectly bucolic--rustic, pastoral, darling-ly 19th century Americana.
Which it is. Then again, not. The Old Danish Church is old and ethnically Danish; but its perfectly fitting name derives not from its age but a bloody fight few remember or wish to. That fight began with a revival in the old country, a religious rumble immigrants lugged along way out here. Two visions of the Christian life went to war, as they often do, the "Happy Danes vs. Sad Danes." Their words, not mine.
You're welcome to swim into the theological weeds yourself if it moves you, but let me summarize, beginning with the eye of the storm, the headmaster "Happy Dane," Bishop N. F. S. Grundtvig, who loved his country and his good times.
The "Sad Danes" spent their time pointing out iniquity and keeping their noses in the scriptures. We might call them 19th century Danish fundamentalists. Once the powers-that-be right here in this Old Danish Church, rural route Moorhead, went along with Grundtvig and the happys, the other half left and climbed the hill behind the church and proceeded spiffily to build their own.
All of explains, sort of, why the one in front of you is called the Old Danish Church, the original, not the hypers' hilltop fortification.
Still, this Old Danish Church is beautiful. Ought to be on a calendar. Probably has been. Neat as a pin.
An odd stone in the cemetery lists the names of eight children buried beneath one site, a mass grave that commemorates the Johnson kids, taken by a wave of diphtheria that ravaged the community that once existed in the neighborhood of the church.
Peter and Mary Johnson were married here in 1879. They lived in a log cabin up on the hill. Tragedy struck the two of them early, when their little daughter Maggie died, scalded in an accident at home.
Then came diphtheria. No phones, of course. People practiced strict quarantining to stifle the outbreak, but seven Johnson children fell into sickness, one by one. With each death, Father Johnson would ride his horse up on the hill up above the church where he lived to signal to relatives building a barn down below that another and yet another child had died at home. The relatives would build another casket and dig another grave.
Mother Johnson, in the Old Danish church, sang a hymn for each of her children, a testimony of the depth of her faith. When the seventh died, or so the story goes, the music would no longer come.
No one worships at the Old Danish Church anymore. It's beautiful but not particularly accommodating; once a year, sometime around Memorial Day, people gather to remember the place and the stories and heritage of a community long gone. It might interest you to know that Memorial Day is not chosen because of the holiday weekend, but because of a very special moment in the old church's history.
Really, you got to love this. After the internal strife, the "Sad Danes" church fell into disrepair and eventually disappeared. Then, in a series of mergers within the Lutheran family, the "Sad Dances"--some of them anyway--moved back in with the "Happy Danes" right here, in the church along County Trunk E54.
Just thought I'd mention it.
If you're up in the Loess Hills sometime, and you're coming up from Moorhead along E54, be warned: don't be surprised if the car in front of you suddenly veers off the highway and someone jumps out with a smartphone to snap a picture. Pull up behind them. You'll get your turn.
There ought to be a turnout. That Old Danish Church is just plain beautiful. It ought to be on a calendar. It's just a little place, off the beaten track. Just thought you'd like to know.
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