Temperance, spirits and beer
Jeppe Aakjær, who otherwise had his heyday in the same period when the temperance movement was going strong in its efforts to get Danes to renounce spirits and alcohol in general, has taken up the subject of spirits and beer from a historical perspective, and this article is an attempt to highlight some of the most interesting stories and not least local episodes in Aakjær’s writing from 1928. Despite the title “Spirits”, the main emphasis in Aakjær’s article is on beer and what excessive consumption of it can lead to.
Trouble in the royal court
Before Aakjær discusses the local conditions, he describes more general facts about the Danes’ relationship with alcohol in earlier times. Way back in the Viking Age, an English chronicle wrote that the Danes had red hair but were good at drinking beer, and when the Vikings thought of their paradisiacal Valhalla, they associated it with mead and pork. Today, archaeology has shown that beer brewing has been known since the Neolithic period, so beer was not a new phenomenon for the Vikings. Our Nordic neighbors have also known about the alluring effects of alcohol, such as when German sailors brought a cargo of wine to the then large Norwegian port of Bergen in 1186. The wine flowed in large quantities into the city and was apparently cheaper than beer, so the citizens made good use of the large quantities of wine. Eventually, it developed into drunkenness all over the city, and at one point the German shipmasters refused to serve more wine to the drunken Norwegians. The Norwegians would have none of it, so they drew their swords and stormed the Germans’ wine stall, which led to fights and brawls all over the city. At one point, the trouble reached the royal courtyard itself, where people were already very drunk. One of the people present had apparently climbed up onto a balcony or elevation and thrown himself over the edge, thinking he was jumping into the sea, but he landed on the floor and died on the spot. The entire guild hall then got into a fight and weapons were drawn. Many of the house servants (the king’s men) tried to flee to their ships, and it wasn’t until King Sverre himself arrived that the trouble ended. In this connection, the king gave probably the first and longest temperance speech in history.
Royal drinking
However, it wasn’t just house servants and ordinary citizens who had a penchant for alcohol. The historian Ander Vedel Sørensen wrote in connection with Fr. 2’s death in 1588 that he could have lived much longer as king if he had not lived like other princes, nobles and commoners – that is, consumed too much of the intoxicating drink. Sobriety was certainly not a virtue for Fr. 2, and once in 1550 he fell into the water while riding over the Castle Bridge in Copenhagen, but was rescued from the water in time. On another occasion, he got into a drunken brawl at his sister’s wedding to Albert of Mechlenburg, and the two brothers were only separated again with great difficulty. Chr. 4, who was otherwise the great guardian of morality and Protestantism, did not hold back either. On his whirlwind tour of Copenhagen, he had a habit of breaking all the windows he came across, and together with his brother-in-law, the nobleman Esge Broch, they kept a diary of how much brandy they had on various occasions. The size of the brandy was marked with the number of crosses. For example, four crosses were marked with a remark “Our Lord be praised”…..
Drunken priests
The clergy also resorted to spiritual values other than the spiritual. In 1682, the bishop of Zealand complained that he had 22 priests in his diocese who were “drunk” and were responsible for both fights and manslaughter. Locally, it was also wrong with the dean in Selde here in Salling, who went by the name “drunkard” Henrik Nielsen Arctander, who in 1633 drank the parishioner Niels Aand under the table in a tavern in Skive, killing him. The priest in Højslev, Styge Andersen, had some years earlier in 1616 finished off a farmer named Niels Pedersen, who was stabbed to death on the road between Højslev and Viborg. Aakjær also mentions the priest in Thorning, who in a duel at Nytorv in Viborg in 1606 accidentally killed the nobleman Otto Skram with his rapier. However, the reason for the duel was not drinking, but jealousy, which Blicher used as the basis for his short story “The Priest in Thorning”.
Don’t sit by the beer cone overnight
You can get an insight into the common people’s relationship with drinking from the renowned Bishop of Zealand, Peder Palladius (1537-1560), who in a long letter to the parishes warned the peasants against drinking (too much).for example, “not to straddle the pipe stove with a red jug (beer jug) by your thigh”, or not to sit with the “beer wife overnight”, while the wife and children at home had to make do with whey and water, which incidentally was not good for the marriage either. Palladius therefore suggested that instead of sitting at the inn in the village or market town overnight, the farmer should bring a bottle to the inn and have it filled and then go home to his wife and children so they could also enjoy the drops. This way, the man avoided getting a headache, falling off his horse or breaking his arms and legs in his drunkenness on the way home in the dark of night, and he could also go straight to bed once he had quenched his thirst. Yes, truly well-meaning words from a bishop. After Aakjær’s relatively long introduction with examples of Danes’ and others’ relationship with beer and wine in ancient times, he now turns his attention to more local conditions, where he has found some interesting episodes about the Salinger’s relationship with beer and what excessive drinking can lead to.
Grave beer
The first local example of how badly things could go wrong with excessive drinking in Salling took place in Grønning in 1620. Old Søren Thommesen in Vester Grønning had died on a June day and the coffin was ordered from Anders Mogensen in Dalgaard. A few days later, the deceased’s son Kjeld Sørensen had gone to Anders Mogensen in Dalgaard to collect the coffin, which Anders had apparently made. When Kjeld arrived at Dalgaard, he seemed to be in a sufficiently uplifted mood, so he invited Anders to come home so they could put the old man in the coffin and nail the coffin lid shut. Anders reluctantly agreed, but accompanied Kjeld home anyway so they could carry the coffin together. When old Søren was placed in the coffin and the lid was securely nailed shut, Kjeld asked Anders to stay and watch over the coffin, but Anders apologized and said that he was tired after a long day of work getting the coffin finished. Kjeld probably wished that Anders could stay and keep him company overnight so he had someone to drink with. According to Aakjær, it was not unusual at the time for such wake nights to develop into a veritable “night of debauchery”. A few days passed before Søren Thommesen was buried at Grønning Kirkegaard, and on the day of the funeral itself, when he had been buried, the surviving sons Kjeld Sørensen and his brother Mikkel Sørensen asked the funeral party present to accompany them home for “a barrel of beer”. Although it was the two brothers who hosted the wake, the wake was apparently held in Grønning in a certain Chr. Tommesen’s guildhall. This Chr. Tommesen had most likely been a close family member of the deceased.
Axe to the head
There are several versions of what happened next in the guild room and beyond. In any case, the company had started to empty the beer barrel, and the short version is that when the beer was almost drunk, the coffin maker Anders Mogensen in Dalgård had said goodbye and gone home. However, a loud argument had broken out between Anders’ brother Jacob Mogensen, who had apparently not followed his brother home, and Mikkel Sørensen, Kjeld’s brother. No one knew what the argument was about, but a witness heard Jacob ask what it was about, and Mikkel replied that he would find out, after which Mikkel hit Jacob in the head with a hammer axe. Jacob then quickly took revenge and hit Mikkel in the head, also with an axe hammer, which, as mentioned earlier, was a common weapon among the farmers when they went to town. By this time, the two fighting cocks should have reached the front door of the guild house.
Escape
Meanwhile, Kjeld Sørensen had been sitting in the living room enjoying the beer, and he was in such a good mood that he asked the guests to come back the next day, because the deceased father had left his sons plenty of beer so that everyone could be “merry and happy”. Outside, however, brother Mikkel had no intention of ending the showdown with Jacob, who was now on his way home to the safety of Dalsgaard with blood running down his face. However, he was pursued by an enraged Mikkel who, now that the axe had been abandoned as a melee weapon in favor of collected stones, sought to hit the fleeing Jacob with stones. According to witness testimony, Mikkel also picked up a wagon jawbone during the pursuit of Jacob. However, Jacob managed to reach safety at home in Dalsgaard, but only just barely and only with the help of Jacob’s and Anders Mogensen’s wives, among others. This is how the day of the funeral ended, and now the story could have been over, but it didn’t work out that way.
Axe man killed
A couple of days after the funeral, Mikkel Sørensen went to the farmer Søren Laursen in Intrup just east of Ø. Lyby, where Mikkel worked, and here Mikkel boasted that he had hit Jacob Sørensen in the head with an axe, and as if that wasn’t enough, he had threatened that Jacob would probably get a grave in the cemetery in Grønning, an indirect threat to kill Jacob. However, things didn’t quite work out as Mikkel had threatened, because under mysterious and unknown circumstances, it was the wronged Jacob Mogensen who killed Mikkel Sørensen shortly afterwards. Therefore, Mikkel’s brother had summoned so-called “Sandmen” in Nørre Herred (North and East Salling) to demand “Man Death” against Jacob Mogensen, meaning the death penalty for killing his brother.
Coroner’s inquest in Skive
However, Mikkel Sørensen’s body was brought to Søren Mikkelsen’s inn in Skive, where an inquest was to be held under the authority of town bailiff Jacob Skriver. Here, the “Badskæreren” (barber), who was the coroner of the time, found that Mikkel had two wounds above one ear, which could have led to Mikkel’s death. Jacob Mogensen was summoned on behalf of the suspected killer, who for good reason was “over the hill”. There is no record of Jacob Mogensen ever being found by the authorities and brought to trial, and the case was probably dropped or completely abandoned. Nor is there any information that Anders Mogensen in Dalgaard was commissioned to carve a coffin for Mikkel Sørensen…..
Murder in Øster Lyby
The next local “beer killing” that Aakjær reported took place in Øster Lyby in 1626, six years after the killing of Mikkel Sørensen in Grønning, so statistically it seems that south-eastern Salling had been a violent area where the trigger was not far away. Here in Øster Lyby, the “drunkard” Didrik Tækker was sitting at a neighbor’s house one Sunday in April and had gotten “drunk as a skunk”, but didn’t want to go home, even though he couldn’t “suck another pint”. Suddenly, however, he spotted someone he knew on the street. The term “street” in Øster Lyby in the 17th century is questionable, but in any case, the drunk Didrik spotted Niels Thygesen out on the road, and the dear Didrik obviously didn’t get on well with him, because he got a “mean” look in his eyes and rushed out onto the road ready for battle to attack the unsuspecting Niels with insults. At first, Niels took the attack quite calmly and replied that he wanted nothing to do with the aggressive Didrik. Didrik responded by shouting that Niels was no better than a “thief” and a “bastard”, so he could just come and fight. This caused Niels to pick up a stone and grab a fork in his other hand, which spurred Didrik to pick up a few stones and lash out at Niels. Niels said that Didrik was “wronging” him and told him to hold back, whereupon he threw a stone at his head. Didrik fell over on the road and didn’t say a “muk”. He was dead on the spot, and on a “holy” Sunday, as Aakjær puts it. There had probably been a big commotion in Øster Lyby that day, and Niels Thygesen had probably wisely seen fit to disappear from the scene of the crime, although according to this account he was strongly provoked to fight back and defend himself. In any case, the body was brought to Skive for an official post-mortem examination for the purpose of indictment, investigation and trial.
Coroner’s inquest
The coroner’s inquest was held on April 24 in Thue Jacobsen’s house, where the town bailiff was certainly present. The coroner sent for Else “Badskjær”, who obviously must have been familiar with the barber’s trade or something similar, and she was able to establish that Didrik’s decapitated body had a large bloody wound at the temple above the left eye. By inserting a “viewfinder”, i.e. a needle or similar into the wound, she could also see that the left eye was large, blue and bruised, so there seemed to be no doubt that the wound was caused by the stone impact and that it had caused so much damage to the brain that it had led to immediate death. Didrik would probably not have had time to notice anything after he was hit. Else Badskær added, when she turned the body over, that Didrik’s clothes were “overdressed and dirty”. Also present at the inquest was Didrik Tækker’s wife, who wanted Niels Thygesen accused of killing her husband. The authorities had a hard time bringing Niels Thygesen to court, as he was nowhere to be found, but he was convicted in absentia as an outlaw, so anyone had the right to arrest him and take him to the authorities so that he could receive his sentence, which would most likely mean the death penalty.
Didrik Tækker
As for the murdered Didrik Tækker, apart from his wife, there probably weren’t many people who missed him. Aakjær himself describes him from his sources as a drunk, angry, dirty and aggressive, and Kirsten Christendatter in Øster Lyby, who knew Didrik, testified in connection with the autopsy that Didrik visited and molested her in her own house, broke windows, lifted doors and even knocked the spigot off the barrel, causing “beer spillage”! This testimony might have helped Niels Thygesen in a possible trial, coupled with the fact that the course of events in connection with the murder could indicate that it was an accident or negligent manslaughter, as the unfortunate event might be considered today, but such a consideration or decision on mitigating circumstances was probably not known in the 1600s or, for that matter, until several centuries later.
Search and penalty
When the authorities could not get hold of the convicted outlaw Niels Thygesen and thus the income to the state that a man’s fine would generate from the convicted man, the authorities (the judiciary) in the form of riding bailiff Mogens Jensen at Skivehus went to Niels Thygesen’s house in Lyby to see what they could get out of the convicted man’s belongings. Niels’ clothes, which included a leather bodice (leather blouse without sleeves), brown pants, brown sweater, leather gloves, etc. were valued at seven daler. In addition, the authorities found four cows and some “ol” (ol = rod = approx. 80 pieces) of herring with Niels Thygesen’s mother. Based on current estimates, it seems that Niels Thygesen had a reasonable wardrobe in terms of peasant clothing at the time, and he also had a house and cows, so the authorities must have gotten something out of the search, and the assessment amount was also entered in the county accounts of the time. However, the authorities did not get hold of Niels Thygesen himself…..
Brandy
Aakjær’s title for this 1928 publication was “Spirits”, but as the writer of this article has decided that the incidents recounted and commented on here about drunken deaths in Grønning and Lyby were the most interesting and dramatic from a local perspective, the sections on the impact of spirits on society will be presented as a summary of the overall conditions.
A “dram” and “a little one for the palate”
It wasn’t until after the Reformation that brandy gained popularity, but only among pharmacists who sold the clear drink as medicine. This also gave rise to the word “dram” for a “little one” for the palate, as the word dram comes from the word “drachme”, which was a unit of weight among apothecary measures. It wasn’t until the 17th century that brandy really took off and became the preferred drink of the poor and common people, presumably because it was cheap to produce at home. Brandy became so widespread that people not only drank it, but also ate it as sea food with a spoon. It is said that after a trip to the sea, west coast fishermen gathered around a barrel of brandy, which they stabbed with a spoon while eating coarse rye bread. The folklore collector Evald Tang Kristensen has also told of visiting a house in Jutland where the entire household ate from a bowl of porridge with a butter hole filled with brandy, which everyone – young and old – spooned up. Aakjær describes the use of brandy at the time as “universal”, which is why it was also known as “Akvavit” – Water of Life. In addition to being drunk as a stimulant and poor man’s consolation everywhere, it was also used as (folk) medicine for swollen (swollen/inflamed) fingers, toothache and other ailments – there were probably enough excuses.
“Wi haar et jen taar brandy drip in æ huus”
Aakjær himself mentions from his childhood in the latter part of the 1800s that the first thing in the morning, his grandfather would reach for the brandy bottle that stood in a “flowered” cupboard at the end of the bed so he could have his morning dram. When Aakjær went to the town of Skive as a child, he also experienced how the farmers from Fjends, dressed in wadding and big fat leather boots, stood at grocer Dige, swarming around the counter like cats around the hot porridge, just waiting for the shopkeeper to pour their morning dram. Even the maternity wives had to have brandy like the calving cow, and the height of misery was if you had to apologetically confess that “Vi haar et jen taar brændevinsdrip i æ huus”. (We don’t have a single sip of brandy in the house).
Storm on moonshine stills
During the 17th century, the authorities realized that distilled spirits posed a danger to society with their destructive effects on people’s health and ability to work, so something had to be done, and as the vast majority of distilled spirits were produced in farm distilleries with their often homemade ‘lead and copper hats’, in 1689 a royal decree banned the production of distilled spirits at all. by royal decree, it was forbidden to distil brandy for private individuals. As it was the poor comfort of the common people that was affected, there was an outcry across the country on all the farms, and the farmers had no intention of complying with the law. They continued with their moonshine still, so the authorities had to conduct searches on the farms. When the authorities found lead and copper hats on the farms, the items were dragged out into the courtyard and brutally smashed, while the owners were fined 10 Rdl. to the nearest hospital. These searches often led to riots and even fights on the farms, and the informers were not popular. These informers, who told the authorities who had distilling equipment, were often tavern owners and merchants, who were the few who had a license to produce spirits. In Skivebogen from 1926, Aakjær described what happened to one of these “snoopers” in connection with a Christmas market in Skive in 1776, when a group of furious Salling farmers stormed the house of the supposedly former customs officer Mikkel Kaarup, smashed his windows, threw out the inventory and insulted his wife, simply because they thought he had reported several farmers to the town bailiff for moonshining.
The Danish Liquor Factories
Aakjær wrote his article on spirits around 1828, by which time the temperance movement had been gaining momentum for a number of years in order to put an end to the continued high consumption of spirits. By the end of the 19th century, however, it wasn’t so much the farmers or, as they were now called, the farmers and their families who had the problem, but rather the industrial worker who had a firm grip on the spirits. It was no longer the moonshiners who supplied large quantities of spirits to workers and other poor people, but rather the Danish Spirits Factories, which emerged around the turn of the century in the late 1900s. Today, spirits are considered a stimulant on a par with beer and wine and other spirits, with beer and wine being the most widely consumed stimulants.