Jottings from 5th & G: Where two seas meet
Published 12:00 pm Friday, April 17, 2026
Picture a 7-month-old boy splashing his feet in two different seas. It sounds like an AI‑generated image, but it happened 38 years ago in Grenen, Denmark.
This is how he arrived there. My husband was born in Denmark, in the middle of World War II, during nightly blackouts and air-raid warnings. His father was an art dealer who volunteered with the Danish resistance, helping Jews flee to neutral Sweden. When his mother went into labor, his father was away from home, so her sister-in-law took her to the hospital — on a bicycle, through the darkened streets!
Soon after the war ended, his parents moved to Brazil. Years later, my husband returned to Denmark for two years of schooling, the equivalent of junior high, in a boarding school. He later graduated as an architect from a Brazilian university.
We kept close ties with the Danish family, visiting as often as possible and welcoming them to our home in Brazil. When my husband and I were still dating, I decided to learn Danish so I could communicate with his relatives in both Brazil and Denmark.
Our son was only 2-months-old when his paternal aunts came to Brazil and stayed with us for a month. That was his first immersion in the Danish language — and my first chance to practice around the clock with two very patient teachers.
When our son was 7-months-old, my husband had to travel to Denmark on business. It was the perfect opportunity for the rest of his family to meet our baby and for our son to begin experiencing wonderful Denmark from an early age.
After my husband’s work was finished, we spent days exploring the beautifully maintained Danish countryside. We stayed in warm, welcoming inns and savored their homemade meals. I was still nursing our son, but he never turned down a bite of salmon or a spoonful of soft ice cream.
One day, we stopped at a fishery where the day’s catch was being smoked right beside the pier. Wooden tables and benches sat in the shade of old trees, and plates of delicious smoked fish were brought out from the kitchen.
We soon learned that bees also enjoyed the aroma of fish. As I was settling my son into his car seat, I felt a sharp sting on my thumb. How fortunate it was my thumb — and not my baby’s face or head! Before I could even say “Ouch” a second time, my aunt was already chewing tobacco from her cigarette and applying it to the sting. It worked instantly; the pain vanished.
From Zealand, we drove to Funen and then to Jutland, crossing the peninsula from east to west and from south to north until we reached its northernmost town — Skagen — and the very tip of Denmark, known as Grenen. This is where the Kattegat (the waters between Denmark and Sweden) meets the Skagerrak (part of the North Sea).
The name Grenen means “the branch” in Danish, a fitting name since the sandbar is shaped like one. After a long walk along the windy shore, we arrived at the junction of the two seas. Our aunts had told us to bring a map and use it as we faced the vast bodies of water colliding before us. No close‑up photograph could ever capture the magnitude of that meeting point.
True to his origins, our son loved the water — splashing in the bathtub or the wading pool — his feet wiggled eagerly as we removed his booties. We held him upright with one tiny foot in the Kattegat and the other in the Skagerrak.
It was an emotional moment for my husband, standing on his ancestral land, thinking of his Viking forebears. For me, it was a deep immersion in the culture I had so lovingly embraced — and a moment I was thrilled to share with our son.
Ines Bojlesen is a member of the Jottings Group ([email protected]) at the Lake Oswego Adult Community Center.
