Christian and Ellen Corydon and

Family:
A History
Foreword

“We are all ruled by the past, although no one understands it. No one
recognizes the power of the past. But if you think about it the past is more
important than the present. The present is like a coral that sticks above the
water; but is built upon millions of dead corals under the surface that no one
sees. In the same way our everyday world is built upon millions and millions of
events and decisions that occurred in the past. And, what we add in the present
is trivial. A teenager has breakfast and then goes to the store to buy the latest
CD and a new band. The kid thinks he lives in a modern moment. But who has
defined what a band is? Who defined a store? Who defined a teenager? Or
breakfast? To say nothing of all the rest. The kid’s entire social setting: family,
school clothing, transportation, legal and government. None of this was decided
in the present. Most of it was decided hundreds of years ago. Five hundred
years, a thousand. This kid is sitting on top of a mountain that is the past. And
he never notices it. He is ruled by what he never sees, never thinks about,
doesn’t know.”

Michael Crichton
Timeline

Chapter One

It was a breach birth and Mor’s pain was unbearable. She screamed at the top
of her lungs.
.
Far was embarrassed by her screams. He demanded that she stop. Mor
screamed again now even louder. With each subsequent scream Far got more
frustrated with her. He demanded she stop.

When Birgith emerged she blood streaked and her skin was blue. She was not
breathing. The midwife smacked her a lot on the butt and back and swung her
around and around by her feet. Finally she vomited a sausage-like red mess and
cried.

She was alive. Far’s anger evaporated and turned to wonder as he witnessed
the miracle of the birth of his first child.

Mor and Far’s little family had begun.

Birgith Corydon was born at home, the home of her Far (father) Christian
Thompson Corydon and her Mor (mother) Ellen Corydon. The month was
November, 1937. The place was Copenhagen, Denmark

Bent was born next in June of 1942. .

The third and final child of the Christian and Ellen Corydon brood to be born was
named René. He was born in May of 1944.

A few months following René’s birth, Mor went into post-partum depression.
That is not an uncommon condition and is not these days considered mental
illness unless it is extreme. But in their great wisdom, the doctors at that time
had Mor admitted to a mental hospital.

During her pregnancy with René Mor had developed a benign tumor in her
womb. The baby had been pressing on the tumor while inside and this was
thought by the doctors to have been hard on her nervous system. This situation
may have been a factor in Mor’s subsequent post partum depression. It is also
possible that sleep deprivation played a part. No doctor so much as tried to
analyze it.
Far was an early riser. However while he was snoring and enjoying the scenery
in dreamland during the wee hours of the night, Mor was up a lot with René, a
fact that escaped Far as he slept.

Far got up in the morning expecting Mor to be bright and cheerful preparing
breakfast and a packed lunch for the bread winner of the family. Then in the
evening, Mor made a meal for him and the children, which we all ate when Far
came home. After every evening meal Far fell asleep in the easy chair and
snored away until around 11. By that time Mor had put we kids to bed and had
fallen asleep herself.

Now, feeling the need for Mor’s sweet company, Far did not hesitate to wake her
up. By this time he was usually feeling very alert and full of important ideas he
wanted to her to hear about. He talked to Mor for an hour or so and then fell
asleep again just about the time when René required breast-feeding. At 6:00 in
the morning Far again needed coffee, breakfast, a packed lunch and a kiss
goodbye.

He had earned Mor’s attentions. Far was a very hard worker. So, when he
came home after a hard day’s slog, there was a repeat performance of the
previous day, then again for six days a week and church on Sunday mornings.
Church was never to be missed and Far always paid his 10 per cent tithe
regardless of how desperate the situation might be at home. The Lord’s house
needed his support. Despite her love for Far and her children and her pride in
her role as wife and mother and despite her deep devotion to God, Mor suffered.

Birgith:

I turned seven just after Mor went into the mental hospital, so I asked Far
whether I was going to have a birthday party. He responded: “I’ll make you a nice
cup of coffee”.

Before she went into the hospital, whenever Mor gave me money to get
groceries, she always added a few extra øre. However while Mor was in the
hospital far hired a woman, Anna Vellegren, from the Church to look after me,
Bent and René. One day when Vellegren sent us to the store my friend Annalise
and I had a couple of øre left over after paying for the groceries. We spent the
extra øre like we used to since Mor always gave us permission. This time we
spent them on one or two little glossy colored angel stickers. When we got home
Vellegren carefully counted the coins we brought back. “There are two øre shy!”
she squealed. I tried to explain that we bought the angels as we always did and
that Mor always lets us do that. Vellegren wasn’t listening:

“You naughty girls”, she shouted. “You go right back to the shop and tell the lady
that you have been very bad and that you have brought back the stickers, and
wish to have the money back. You tell her you are sorry!” We did it but we hated
Vellegren for making us do it.

After several weeks Mor got out of the hospital. “It was horrible in that place” she
said, “I hope I never go into a place like that for the rest of my life!”

Mor then threw herself into caring for her family. She took great care in making
sure we kids looked our best. She prided herself especially on keeping her
daughter gorgeous. Birgith had long shiny brown hair that Mor worked into two
long plaits. Of course these plaints just begged for her brothers to tug on them.
That temptation was impossible to resist. However, she was the older sister and
revenge was easy. She grabbed our little necks often, one in each hand, and
steered us around totally under her control. We were helpless puppets and not
at all happy about it.

Mor and Far worried for our safety. It didn’t help their peace of mind that I was an
escape artist. I disappeared one day while Mor was hanging out the washing. I
was four. I somehow managed to navigate my way down the long hill that led
towards the center of Copenhagen. A teenage girl there asked me where my
mother was. I vaguely pointed up the hill. She decided to walk me up the long
couple of kilometers. When we neared the house, I casually said “That’s where
my mother lives”.

The wanderlust that inspired my adventure that day was irresistible. Perhaps it
was genetic. After all there were those Viking genes and many generations of
wanderers before and after the Vikings. The peoples of the Danish peninsula
and Scandinavia were by long tradition seafarers; explorers of land and sea and
builders of empires. Perhaps that helps explain our little family’s future travels.

By the time of the Second World War, Denmark had long ceased to be a
conquering and colonizing force to be reckoned with, but the people of
Denmark’s spirit of independence and pride in their country, flag and culture was
very much intact.

Our family’s little domestic adventures happened not far from one of the horrors
of modern history. When Birgith was born, the Second World War was in its
infancy. When I was born, the Holocaust was at its height. Around the time
René was born, hell was breaking out just a short distance to the south of us
over a thin stretch of water and land. Now the Allies were bombing Berlin,
Dresden and other German cities to smithereens in response to the Holocaust
and Hitler’s atrocities against the occupied territories and the Allies. German
civilians were dying by the thousands as the allies hit back dropping masses of
bombs on civilian populations.

Unaware of their suffering – or of Hitler’s pending defeat and suicide in his Berlin
bunker – my father was taking me for walks around a lake in Copenhagen,
nearby our house. The most horrible story I was aware of had no connection to
these war crimes and tragedies: Far told me that a little girl from our
neighborhood had drowned in that lake. “You must never go there by yourself!”
he told me.

In our little world the war had an impact on Birgith that meant a lot to her. Birgith
started her schooling late. She was eight and she began school just after the
war ended. The normal starting age for school in Denmark was seven. The
reason for her late start was the fact that the Germans had taken over the school
property and were using it as a hospital for their wounded. When she did start
school, it was housed in a bunch of army huts used as classrooms. Birgith was
mad about the delay in starting school because the boy in the flat above could
read already and she couldn’t.
The war in Europe ended in early May of 1945, when I was three years old and
just before René’s first birthday. I remember the shouting and the partying in the
streets without grasping that all the excitement was in celebration of Germany’s
defeat.

I also remember my mother pointing out a Jewish man who was openly shopping
on a main street in Copenhagen when I was four. Seeing him wandering openly
was still an intriguing event for her since such a thing would not have been
possible during the German occupation.

But for the most part this history was unknown to the Corydon boys at the time.
That’s certainly true for me at the age of two and earlier. The earliest memory I
have was completely unrelated to any such horrors. I remember vividly lying in a
crib with the sun’s warm rays streaming through the windows of our little home.
My ambitions were limited to smiling and gurgling, soiling my diaper and gulping
big helpings of Mor’s breast milk.

Birgith of course knew more than her brothers of what was going on around us.
She was almost five years older than me and listened to Mor and Far sharing
news about the war.

René and I had many little adventures that were unrelated to the war and its
aftermath where German babies injured in the bombings were brought to
Danish hospitals and badly neglected by vengeful Danes. We explored the
surrounding fields of our house in Skåde, Århus. One day we discovered a barn
with a loft where large piles of stale ice cream cones were stored for pig feed. It
was near a small lake where we skated in winter with the assistance of a rope
suspended from an overhead tree branch. Nearby, there were wheat fields, with
stalks of wheat taller than we were and wild cherry trees, heavy with sweet dark
red fruit that we ate till we were stuffed silly. Then back to the house where there
was relief in Far’s eyes that we were home safe.

Far’s affection for us was never in doubt. He loved to play and tease. He was a
confident and strong man despite his short stature and balding head. Part of his
confidence may have come from the fact that Far’s father and mother had been
respected and wealthy landowners. That was in Kolsnap in southern Denmark
inland from the southern city of Haderslev. This background of an elite family in
the south mattered not to the folks in the church of Elim in Copenhagen where
Far sang a little too loudly and spoke with that southern Jylansk farm boy’s
accent.

“Judge not, lest ye be judged” is a fundamental Christian teaching; but in our

church Christians judged others more harshly than did most non church folk.

Whatever infected these church folk with stuckupedness towards Far, in our
house Far was loved and respected. He was the man in charge. He was master
also of the plants and trees in the gardens he created and tended with such care.
Birgith remembers the gardens he created in the two houses Far owned in
Copenhagen. “They were both beautiful”.

For me in vivid color are memories of the garden Far created after we moved
from Copenhagen to the house he bought in Skåde on the northern part of the
mainland of Denmark (Jylland) when I was four. The bright colors and the smell
of the flowers and the sweet taste of the fruit Far planted in the fertile black soil
there linger in my fondest memories still, as do memories of the rows of peas,
potatoes, carrots, beets and leeks.

There were the sweetest strawberries in season and red stalks of rhubarbs and
hyldebær (elderberries). Mor made a thick velling (desert “soup”) from these
hyldebær. A huge pot of it created enough for a week of deserts for the family.
Thick raw cream was the poured into it just before it was served. Seven year old
Birgith adored this delicious dessert. She ate so much one night that – when Far
playfully poked her in the tummy – a squirt of hyldebær velling shot out of her
mouth as if from a fire hose, covering Far with red viscous liquid. He roared
laughing!

Mor – who cleaned up the mess – was less amused.