Good Morning, Solvang. Er du Frisk?

By Rayna Jensen

photo credit: Solvang Elverhøj Museum

180 miles north of Orange County, past the flurry of the 405 and off the narrow lanes of the 101, the San Marcos Pass winds through the Los Padres Forest and splits off into East and West Highway 246. At the top of the hill where the east side turns into Mission Drive, just past the Spanish Mission Santa Ynez and right before the hay field and the horse ranch at the foot of the little hill, is the Danish-settled city of Solvang.

Little buildings with steep, straw-thatched roofs and painted beams line the main streets.  Waitresses walk to work dressed in traditional Scandinavian garb: bonnets and bright, embroidered aprons over crisp white dresses. Stork figurines sit perched atop the various bakeries, restaurants, and ice cream parlors after the Danish superstition that a resident stork was a bringer of wealth and good fortune.  The horse-drawn trolley, operated by a man in knickerbockers and a fedora, regularly causes traffic jams.

Solvang is the place that, for the first 18 years of my life, was a part of my home in the Santa Ynez Valley. Although I’ve grown up with the little Danish Disneyland, it hasn’t always been quite like this.

“When we came, there was a mechanic, a few bakeries, Rasmussen’s, just the basics,” my father said, standing in our kitchen and patting Havarti onto a butter-smeared slice of bread. “It’s been all downhill from there.” He emigrated from Copenhagen with his parents in the 1970’s, and like most residents, my father thinks of Solvang as an inconvenient roadblock in between the rest of Santa Ynez and the 101. If he goes into town at all, it’s usually to run an errand. There’s nowhere else that sells a decent jar of herring besides Nielsen’s market, which was Solvang’s first grocery store, and out of the five Danish bakeries on the two main streets, Olsen’s makes the best bread rolls and pastries.

Because we’re out of good bread, and because my parents have managed to convince me that pickled fish is a suitable breakfast food, I’m running the errands this morning.

As I struggle to park my car in between a minivan and an abandoned surrey cycle on Copenhagen Drive, I pay Solvang a terse but loving four-letter greeting. It’s hardly changed since I’ve left for school three years ago.

Giant busses park behind the big windmill next to the post office at the end of Mølle Way and unload tourists into the little town. They sit on benches eating ice cream cones, they stand on the street corners fiddling with digital cameras, and they line up to take turns climbing into the giant clog outside of the Solvang Shoe Store. The clock tower chimes out melodies every hour against the dull clop of horse hooves against asphalt and the jingle of bells. The streets are packed with stores where visitors can buy snow globes with Viking ships inside, little porcelain figurines of Danish milkmaids in pointed caps, æbleskivers dusted with powdered sugar, wooden clogs with windmills painted on them. Maybe “tacky” is the wrong word, but it’s the first word that comes to mind.

As I cross the street, I inadvertently walk into a family trying to take a picture with the imposing windmill and the bright red Vinhus in the background.   Although Solvang is now far kitschier than it is Danish, Vinhus—like Nielsen’s and Olsen’s—is one of the oldest and still authentic shops in town.

Inside, the owner of the store, an older Danish woman, and two tourists are clucking away in Danish, something that is surprisingly uncommon in Solvang. Today, only 10 percent of residents claim Scandinavian heritage, but Vinhus is still owned and operated by two Scandinavians that have lived in Solvang for decades.

”Dag et en virkelig god vin,” the woman says, pointing to a local Sunstone Merlot. “A very good wine.”  She switches her banter to English to tell a story about her last visit to Denmark, in which her brother proceeded to do nothing but unenthusiastically drink the $45 bottle of wine she brought as a gift and immerse himself in his work. “They are really kind of weird over there!” she chuckles, “Honestly they are.” The three laugh and resume joking in Danish as they stroll through the stores impressive selection of wines, cheeses and imported edible sundries.  In a Valley dominated by wineries, locals often overlook the little Vinhus, but there is no place in the area like it.  My dad, like any Dane worth his salt, attributes its longevity to it being Danish. He might offer the same explanation for the permanence of the entire city.

The Solvang that now sees upwards of one million tourists per year was once a humble little plot of land, bought in 1911 for $39 an acre by a handful of Danish immigrants hoping to build a home away from home in the prosperous West. Over the next few decades, hoards of Scandinavians would come to the little town by way of the narrow-gauge railroad, stock up their cabinets with loaves of rugbrød and bottles of akvavit and never leave.

Visitors were welcomed by the white wooden sign stuck unevenly into the grassy shoulder of the dirt road that lead into town, which read simply “This is Solvang,” painted in long block letters.  The town itself was accordingly unobtrusive, functioning on only the basics, but the outside community seemed to agree that what the Danes had built on the hill was something special.  In hardly over a year, the city had sprung to life.

In 1912, the Solvang Inn was built (which also served as the post office, bank, library and doctor’s office) and often housed visitors in its every floorboard, nook and cranny.  Bethania Lutheran Church began services the same year, with a bottle of wine borrowed from the priest at the Mission down the street. Atterdag College, a majestic white wood frame schoolhouse that attracted international attention and brought cultural and intellectual life to Solvang, began classes in 1914.

But just as soon as Solvang had grown up, it began to change. The Inn burned down in the fire of 1925. The reverend married one of his students and moved back to Denmark. The big white schoolhouse on the hill, once the heartbeat of the town, was bulldozed and replaced by an old folk’s home, where many of the pioneers who first brought life to the once-college town would ironically live out their last days.

But by the time resident Alfred Baker Petersen built Solvang’s first traditionally Danish-style home in 1931 and local handyman Ferd Sorensen had erected the town’s first windmill in 1940, Solvang had begun to attract a different kind of attention.

In January 1947, the Saturday Evening Post magazine published an article about the “spotless Danish village that blooms like a rose in California’s charming Santa Ynez valley,” and the flood of visitors has not stopped since.  The town quickly adapted: buildings were reconstructed to look more Danish, Main Street was renamed Copenhagen Drive, and four imposing and inoperative windmills were built.

Although today it seems the little city has sold its soul to tourism, it still does bloom. Perhaps that’s what sets it apart from all the other tourist traps in California; beneath the painted-on bindingsværk style is that genuine old-world charm that has been with Solvang since its founding.  People smile and greet each other on the street. They sleep just as soundly with doors unlocked. The police blotter in the local news even lists crimes and incidents with punny titles like “Taken For Granite:” a woman who reported her cell phone was stolen in the casino later found she had just dropped it on the (granite) floor. And, unlike most corners of the world, there is yet to be a Starbucks. What Solvang has is something that is distinctly Scandinavian: the notion that honesty, solidarity, and a stork or two will bring a wealth that is worth sharing.

I have to admit, there are more than a few things I miss sharing with Solvang: Reading the newspaper at Bulldog Café with a slice of homemade quiche and a mug of coffee before getting lost in the shelves of the Book Loft next door; sitting in Hans Christen Andersen Park with a sandwich from Panino, the lunch place just down the same sidewalk; bundling up and watching a play at the open-air Solvang Theatrefest stage; listening to my grandmother recall her memories waitressing at the Bit o’ Denmark over a plate of smoked gravlax and dill; and of course, stopping by Nielsen’s for a jar of the best pickled fish, and Olsen’s for a bag of fresh bread.  Although I can’t say I’ll come back to stay in Solvang forever, I’m afraid I’ll always have a soft spot for herring.