The next time you find yourself in the village of Solvang, look up. “Nesting” on rooftops of many of the Danish-style buildings that line downtown Solvang’s main streets are placid wooden storks, life-size replicas of the European White Stork. Why are they “roosting” up there?
They’re bringing good luck! In Denmark the long-legged birds—which make an astounding migration from Europe to India and southern Africa each year—are believed to bring good luck and protection to any household they nest upon. European White Storks have nested on man-made structures such as towers, chimneys and rooftops in Denmark and around Europe since the Middle Ages.
People would go to great lengths to attract them to their rooftops, putting up stick nests and, traditionally, wheels and hoping a stork would come. The arrival of migratory storks always meant the beginning of warm weather. Bent Olsen, of Olsen’s Bakery remembers, “When you see the stork you know that summer has arrived—people come from everywhere to see them. They are beautiful birds.”
A native of southern Denmark, Olsen remembers growing up at a time when storks were still prolific. He adds regretfully that he can’t recall the last time he saw a stork when he has returned to Denmark. In 1890 there were 4,000 pairs of European White Storks in Denmark. In 1989 there were only 12 pairs, and in 1995 the Danish Ornithologist Society recorded only five pairs of wild storks. In 2008 the white stork was declared extinct in the wild in Denmark. The diminishing of the storks in Denmark has been linked to the drainage of wetlands, the use of pesticides to combat locusts in Africa, illegal hunting on their wintering grounds and collisions with overhead power lines.
The European White Stork may be officially extinct in the wild in Denmark, but their wooden replicas have a firm foothold on Solvang’s rooftops. Denmark’s storks captured the imagination of Solvang artisan Ferd Sorensen on his first visit there in the 1940s. A third-generation Danish-American, Sorensen was born in the Midwest. After graduating from Grand View College, he moved to Solvang. A man of many talents, he helped pioneer the early movement to bring an Old World “Danish look” to Solvang.
He designed the town’s first Danish-style commercial building, which was built in 1948 at the corner of Copenhagen and Alisal. An early photo of the newly completed building shows a nesting wooden stork on the rooftop. A talented woodworker and metal artist, it’s likely Sorensen created that first stork as a part of bringing a Danish feel to the new building.
More recently Allan Laugesen, a Solvang carpenter, who apprenticed as a carpenter in Copenhagen, learning the old school carpentry before being taught the modern methods, has been making wooden storks. Laugesen began carving storks out of spare pieces of lumber after coming across one of Sorensen’s storks in the backyard of a friend. The stork was weather-beaten and the metal beak was rusted and cracked, but when the owner was moving house and couldn’t take the sculpture, Laugesen decided to bring it home. He set it up as a prototype and began creating.
Fifteen hours of labor later, Laugesen was blowing the sawdust off his first stork. Bent Olsen was one of Laugesen’s first buyers. Olsen didn’t hesitate to install the stork on the rooftop of his house, where, he says, it’s probably the most prominent stork in Solvang. “It turned out to be very, very visible,” Olsen laughs.
He adds that his mail carrier tells him the sight of the stork on his rooftop always brightens her day; Olsen says he’s glad the sculpture has that effect. As stork sightings have grown so rare in Denmark, Solvang’s wooden carvings have become an even more poignant reminder of childhood memories for Danish immigrants. Laugesen has received orders from Danish households in Orange County, Iowa and Wisconsin. No orders have yet been received from Denmark. Olsen says that he’s suggested putting a wooden stork on the roof of his home in Denmark, but the idea wasn’t met with the neighborhood excitement he had hoped for. “It’s like Americans eating aebleskiver with sausage,” he says with a laugh. “It’s just not done in Denmark.” “I think the storks are a great addition to Solvang,” he says. “It’s a nice tradition to keep going in this town, a Solvang tradition.”
-Photos by Connie Cody
INFORMATION: Allan Laugesen lives in Solvang and may be reached at 805.350.0248
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