• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 cup milk
• 1 cup flour

Directions

1. Beat eggs slightly with sugar and salt
2. Add milk and flour, then beat until smooth
3. Heat vegetable oil in vegetable shortening to 375 degrees
4. For the first Rosette, wipe excess oil from iron with paper towel and dip into batter, but to not allow the batter to cover the top edge of the iron
5. Put iron back into oil and fry for approximately 20 seconds or until the desired color is reached
6. Remove iron from oil and turn it over to drain
7. Shake rosette off iron and repeat above steps
8. Drain rosettes on paper towels
9. Place in 300 degree oven BUT turn off the oven once 300 is reached
10. Dust with powdered sugar before serving

The diminutive stone figure is a replica of the bronze Little Mermaid that is perched on a granite rock in Copenhagen’s Langelinie waterfront, welcoming visitors to the harbor for more than 95 years. A national treasure of Denmark, it is reported to be the most photographed statue in the world, and four nations have put her likeness on commemorative stamps, including: Denmark, Japan, Korea and Mongolia.

Born out of Hans Christian Andersen’s imagination in 1837, when he wrote the classic fairy tale of the same name, the statue sits about four feet high. Half human, half fish, a sea creature with a woman’s head, she gazes longingly toward land, dreaming of her prince and of one day joining the human race.

She came to the Langelinie waterfront in 1913, after Carl Jacobsen, the founder of Carlsberg Breweries, became enchanted by the story during a performance of The Little Mermaid by Copenhagen’s Royal Theatre ballet company. Jacobsen commissioned well-known sculptor Edvard Eriksen for the bronze piece that now graces the harbor.

The mermaid’s face takes its sweet countenance from its model, Danish prima ballerina Ellen Price, and her lithe body from the artist’s wife, Eline.

Like her Junction City sister in years past, Copenhagen’s Little Mermaid has also been the victim of vandals, often on a weekly basis, and is sometimes “out for repairs.” She has been toppled into the sea twice, her arm broken off and even decapitated in 1964 by Danish artist, Jorgen Nash, who hid his crime for 30 years; and then again in 1998.

Because the statue means as much to Danes as the Statue of Liberty does to Americans or The Eiffel Tower to the French, the “homicide” was nearly regarded as a national disaster.

Here in Junction City, the destruction of its own Little Mermaid five years ago was viewed with sadness and responded to with a little good ol’ Scandinavian rectitude. Although the vandals were never discovered, within a few weeks, the community’s second “The Little Mermaid” was on her way home.

Today, she continues to welcome visitors to her quiet corner of the festival, Scandinavian style. Be sure to stop by and see why she’s been beguiling young and old for nearly a century.

- By LaRae Ash

A neglected Engine No. 418 arrived in Junction City in 1980, on the Scandinavian Festival’s Finnish Day. The community formally and warmly welcomed the unique, wood-burning steam locomotive to her new home.

Her acquisition, restoration and placement in Founder’s Park at Fifth Avenue and Fifth Street was a feat accomplished by a multitude of individuals, businesses, clubs and civic organizations who raised and donated money, time, knowledge, supplies and a whole lot of enthusiasm to the cause, said Bob Nelson, who was then the head of the city’s task force charged with bringing the engine to town.

“There were lots and lots of people, hundreds of people, involved in this thing, many here, many gone,” Nelson said. “Because I happened to be the (task force) chairman, I held the bottle of champagne (for the dedication). But I like to see it as demonstrating a small-town spirit and activity you don’t have in the big cities.”
More than a century old, built in Tampere, Finland, in 1904, she and her sister engine, that now sits in a Leningrad museum, encased in glass; a gift to Russia commemorating Lenin’s escape from the country during the Bolshevik Revolution, once linked the villages and towns of the Finnish countryside.

Carrying people, livestock and goods, No. 418 would pause in her lumbering trek every 10 kilometers or so to feed on the brush stacks stockpiled by the townspeople along her route. A veteran of WWI, the Finnish Civil War, the Winter War and WWII, she still bears the scars from a Russian plane’s bullets during WWII. Riveted patches cover the wounds located on the boiler’s left side.

Retired from service in 1958, the locomotive and tender car that carried the wood and water was a gift from the people of Finland, given for the Oregon Centennial Exposition of 1959 and solicited by John Virtanen, who was then Portland’s honorary Finnish consul. As a boy, Virtanen once cut wood to fuel the engine, and as a young man, he received his own scars, rendering one arm nearly useless, from those same Soviet bullets that gouged the locomotive.

Engine 418 was the first locomotive to be shipped across the sea. Although freight companies said it couldn’t be done and the U.S. Navy refused to carry her, a Finnish shipping company agreed to transport the massive machine to America at half charge. Cameras followed her departure from Helsinki, her arrival in New York and her piggyback ride across the nation by rail flat car, where she was welcomed to Portland with champagne and celebrants in national costumes.

After the Centennial, Portland’s plans to house the locomotive in a world-class museum featuring early land, air and sea transport vehicles failed to materialize, and after watching the old engine succumb to vandals and the elements as she sat outside for two decades in Oaks Pioneer Park, Virtanen approached the Portland City Council in frustration and spoke of his plans to find a caring community to give the engine new home.

In mid-January, 1980, he sent a letter to Junction City Mayor Jerry Brown outlining his intentions. By February 27, he had purchased the locomotive for $1 from the City of Portland. It took less than a week for Junction City officials to organize a committee to bring the engine to town, and on March 13, Brown responded to Virtanen that the City Council had designated a downtown corner as its future home.

“The long-term care of the locomotive will be uppermost in the minds of the Council and the city officials, as well as the citizen committee arranging for the locomotive’s arrival and placement in Junction City,” Brown assured him. But also pursuing the engine were Astoria, which had its own active Finnish community, Medford and a railroad museum in Duluth, Minn.

“The city that has told me not what the locomotive is today, but what is the future of the locomotive. This is very important to me. The city must prove it is worth having (the locomotive) permanently,” said Virtanen to the Junction City officials.

After learning that Astoria had little vision for the historical engine, Junction City officials were notified on April 14 that Engine 418 was theirs on a two-year trial basis to be re-evaluated by the new Finnish Consul. Plans were made to bring the engine to her new home on May 5.

Along with the media, two buses of jubilant Junction City residents, including costumed Scandinavian Dancers and the Community Chorus, joined the expedition to witness the ceremony and escort the engine into town, offering a champagne toast and the Finnish National Anthem for the occasion.

With the engine on a Sherman Bros. 10-axel trailer and the tender car on a Morse Bros. low-boy trailer, the convoy set off for Junction City at 11 a.m., briefly halting the entourage to creep through a Salem underpass, which cleared the structure by a mere three inches.

“We couldn’t go across the Harrisburg Bridge, so we had to go into Eugene,” Nelson remembers. “When we reached the airport, there was a convoy of fire trucks, police cars, and towns’ people, waiting to escort us into town.”

Organizers had only had three short months to prepare the park before the engine was to arrive. They drew up the plans for its shelter, got donations of gravel, equipment and labor to build its bed. They had railroad workers who “borrowed” and laid its track in a blink of an eye all to meet a fast encroaching deadline.

“We’d got the building painted and the floodlights in, but the night before the ceremony, there wasn’t anything but sawdust, dirt and gravel. A local landscaper brought in soil, plants and trees and we worked through the night and had the dedication ceremony the next day” said Nelson.

The massive effort by so many proved, as Nelson likes to say, that Junction City really was “the little town that knew it could.”

- By LaRae Ash

In this museum visitors will find a collection of very early medical instruments and books used by Dr. Lee, Junction City’s first physician. Other Lee family items are also on display including dental and pharmacy items used by two of Lee’s sons – one a dentist and one a pharmacist.

Those interested in the Oregon Trail, Native American artifacts and early medicinal instruments will want to visit the museum, located north of Sixth Avenue on Holly Street. The upstairs boasts a room dedicated to the Oregon Trail and the pioneer lifestyle. Tools and farm equipment have also been added to the collection. The downstairs pays homage to the city’s early history, by displaying a variety of Native American artifacts, such as arrowheads and ceremonial costume pieces, much of it from the collection of the late Clarence Pitney.

By the time the railroad reached Junction City in 1872, the course of the Willamette River had already changed and it was no longer possible for the river boats to reach the wharves at Lancaster. Several of the homes and business buildings were put on skids and pulled by horses the two miles from Lancaster to the new town of Junction City – a division point for the Oregon and California Railroad (later the Southern Pacific; now Union Pacific). The small one-story portion of Dr. Lee’s house was one of those buildings. He then began building the two-story addition that would serve as his home, his office and even some “laying in” rooms.

The Mary E. Pitney House Museum, at Fourth Avenue and Holly Street; is another one of the oldest buildings in Junction City. Built just over a year after the city’s incorporation in 1872, the house has been restored and kept intact by the Junction City Historical Society.

One room of the house is furnished as a 19th century schoolroom, an upstairs bedroom is as it might have been when railroad men boarded there. There is also an office and reading room as well as the museum store. One room is designated “A Danish Room in an American House” which is filled with artifacts from the Danish settlers.
Mary Pitney, after her death at age 104 left her family’s house to the Junction City Historical Society. In her younger years, she traveled much of the country and the world teaching in Oregon and Washington. Pitney returned to her family home in Junction City and became one of the founding members of its Historical Society. The house was opened to the public in 1997, after a restoration process by historical society volunteers. The group has tried to maintain the house as a typical turn of the century home.

The museum is full of artifacts reflecting the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Junction City. The living room is still full of Pitney’s possessions, some of which had been in the family for more than a century.

Donated items such as an Edison upright phonograph and a Milton piano add to the historic allure of the house.
The room displays are still evolving. Artifacts which complement each room continue to be added. Kitty Goodin, the museum’s curator, believes that people appreciate such an authentic representation of the city’s history, even the more modern touches such as the mid-century chrome dinette set and the GE electric range.“We’re a bit like Grandma’s attic,” Goodin tells visitors. Older people like the opportunity to connect to their past, and younger kids watch their elders and become curious about these objects as well.

New in the Pitney House Museum this year is a map showing the locations of the nineteen schools that were consolidated to become Junction City School District 69. The historical society would like to find photos of all those old one- and two-room schools.

On the grounds is a small building that was Junction City’s first jail. The jail is the most recent attraction for the 130 year old house and draws a lot of attention. Restoration work has continued during the last four festivals. The shingle siding has been removed to expose the original 2×4 construction, a new roof has been put on and the inside is being refurbished. Iron work inside to make a cell was added last year and an outside door is work in progress. The jail was one of the first contracts the City of Junction City entered into, paying Thomas Humphrey $84.37 to construct the two-cell jail in May of 1873.

Both house museums are open from 1-7p.m each day of the Festival. Anyone with an interest in Junction City history is invited to join the Historical Society and help volunteer to keep such treasures as the Pitney House, and the Lee house alive in the 21st century. Information is available at both houses.

~ By Linda Van Orden

Nielsen, a real estate dealer from Tyler, Minnesota wanted to bring Midwest Danish immigrants to Junction City to establish a religious and cultural center for them on the West Coast. He took an option on a 1,600 acre ranch located east of town near the Willamette River and began advertising in Dannevirke, a Danish weekly newspaper published in Cedar Falls, Iowa.

The ranch was divided into 40 to 60 acre parcels, considered too small to be functional by his contemporaries’ standards, and Nielsen sold them to the families that began arriving. Despite the size of the farms, the families that settled on them began a thriving, diversified, agriculture industry. Most of the first settlers were Danish-born and had learned to make the most of small plots in the old country.

But the Danish culture Nielsen had hoped to preserve became diffused and its influence dwindled. The second generation, who learned to speak Danish at home, found English more of a necessity. Though relatively little of the cultural influence was still felt in Junction City by the late fifties, the Danish community, now in its second and third generations, still remained on many of the original farms. It was this continuing presence of the original Danish community, and the wish to revive some of the folkways of the first settlers, that helped prompt the first festival in 1961.

The festival was the brainstorm of Dr. Gale Fletchall. The idea came at a time when Junction City’s future seemed uncertain at best. Interstate 5, which opened in the late fifties, diverted most of the traffic going through town on Highway 99.

“When that Highway opened it was just like you had shut off a valve,” he said in 1970, recalling how Hwy. 99 had suddenly been emptied of traffic. “The town seemed dead. One morning I took a walk downtown. There were twelve store buildings empty, a gutted theater, and brambles growing all around. The community seemed heartless, and there was no prospect for things getting any better.”

Dr. Fletchall searched for a rallying point for community spirit. He thought a city wide celebration would be ideal, but was stumped for a theme. He studied dozens of possibilities before considering the most obvious one – the very real, very dormant, Scandinavian heritage.

Fletchall’s proposal for a four day festival built on the culture of the four Scandinavian nations: Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland, was accepted by the Chamber of Commerce and underwritten with a modest financial guarantee to cover initial expenses. The decision plunged the community into a frenzy of activity. Community classes in Scandinavian dancing and singing were organized and church and civic organizations were persuaded to operate food and craft booths.

In August of 1961 the first annual Scandinavian Festival opened in temporary booths in downtown Junction City. Dr. Fletchall expected maybe two thousand visitors; he got twenty-five thousand. The rest is history.
The success of that first festival in unifying the community and developing interest in the Scandinavian culture led to the formation of the Junction City Scandinavian Festival Association. By its second year the festival was functioning with a board of directors who understood Dr. Fletchall’s unspoken guidelines: no admission, no beauty pageants, no commercial displays, no carnival rides, and cemented them into place.

Still, the Festival has changed much over the years. It expanded when grounds were purchased at the corner of Fifth and Greenwood in 1964, the same year a nightly play, called a pageant for fun, was added to the program. Authenticity in food and costumes has also been gained, and the Junction City library now houses a large collection of traditional costume books.

But for all that’s been gained, some has also been lost, including competitive Scandinavian horsemanship events and epic tug-of-war competitions.

And like any other community institution, the Festival has known its rocky moments. There was the year of the great Ableskiver price war, when the question of two-for-15-cents vs. three-for-25-cents had the community divided. There was also the 1977 conviction of a festival board member for the theft of more than $4,000 of the organization’s money.

There was also a period of controversy in the early 1970’s when long-haired artisans began peddling their wares at the Festival. And while there were political overtones in those years and not everyone was happy with the decisions made, it did lead to a significant upgrade in festival crafts, and now anyone who wishes to be a vendor must go through a jurying process.

Attendance is something else that has changed over the years, and Festival now sees upwards of 100,000 visitors each day. But for most of the people who walk through the archway to enter old world Forbindelsestad, it isn’t about attendance or the price of Ableskivers. It’s about the chance to experience a community rising together to bring about something larger than themselves; to realize that your town isn’t just where you live, it’s your family, your friends, and your home.

~ By Amelia Githens

This group of men decided that they couldn’t just call themselves Vikings, but would dress up as them during the four days of the Festival itself.  They began working on costumes consisting of leg wrappings, tunics, and horned helmets.  They initiated themselves one morning by raiding Cliff’s Barbershop.

On one occasion, they also raided the State Legislature.  The Vikings had drafted a charter for fun and, in full costume, went to Salem and “made” the head of the Oregon Senate sign it.  Following this raid, the group in costume went to the KVAL news station.  John Doyle was in the midst of reading the evening news when he glanced up and saw them all standing there.  He was so unnerved that he stopped reading and simply laid his head down on the desk.

After this incident, it became apparent that these Vikings could be used as publicity because they were a very unique group.  So they decided they needed a fitting vessel to better impress the general populace.  They secured an old car chassis and began work building their very own ship.  She was a 24-foot square-rigged raider they named Absalon after the Christian bishop who founded Copenhagen, Denmark in the 11th century.

The Absalon, with its costumed Vikings, appeared in several parades: including the Rose Parade in Portland, the Bend Winter Pageant, and the Eugene Roundup.  She and her crew were enthusiastically received whenever they went anywhere and were a huge success in advertising the Festival.  For years the Absalon was part of the opening ceremonies, and was then on display during the Festival.  The Vikings themselves roamed the streets, to the delight of the crowds, and led the evening processional with flaming torches, as they still do to this day.

Sadly, the Absalon ended up outside for several years and slowly deteriorated.  In may of 1988, Ron Ripke buried what remained of Absalon in his backyard, a fitting end to the proud vessel as when true Vikings of ancient history died, they were laid to rest in their ships along with many offerings, and then buried under mounds of stone and earth.

Luckily for us, this was not the end of the Junction City Vikings.  Even a short meander through Old World Forbindelsestad can bring you face to face with one of these impressive warriors.  They’ll be more than happy to share information or take a picture with you, but watch out, some of them are pranksters!

Since its history you’re looking for, we’ll start right here in our hometown of Junction City Oregon.  I’m sure you’ve all heard that this area was settled by a group of Danes come out from the Midwest.  The choir even sings a song that names the families listed on the county road known as Dane Lane.  But what you haven’t heard is the real story about the original Scandinavian heritage of this area.

Now, everyone can remember their elementary school history about a fancy Spaniard who was the first European to set foot on this continent.  But I and the rest of the Vikings would tell you that he stole that glory away from the great Leif Erickson, who was the true first European on the western continent.  However, both stories end the same, with the glory hounds getting themselves led by the natives to the place we now call home.

But let’s begin at the beginning.  Rodskjegg was a young Viking who had quested many times under Leif Erickson and knew well the routes to the west.  One summer, when the weather was unusually hot, the ice above Greenland opened wide and called to the heart of the adventuresome red-bearded Viking who had just been given his first command.  So he rounded up a crew of other Vikings who were unafraid of voyaging further west that any others had dared.  Off they sailed; and though some said his quest was impossible, Rodskjegg’s resolve remained unshaken.

Many days into the voyage, a harsh arctic blast dropped the temperature by forty degrees.  The ice closed around the boat and froze so fast that the men could nto pull it free.  Amidst the barrage of “I told you so’s” and other woeful cries of doom, the crew suddenly began to notice that their fearless leader was nowhere to be found.  Then came the accusations of abandonment, which lathered into a fury of mutinous rage, until one crewman spotted a glimpse of movement on the horizon.  Closer came the hazy image and soon they could pick out the obvious color of Rodskjegg’s beard riding high.  The men dropped their jaws in disbelief to see their captain ride up to the boat on the largest polar bear any of them had ever seen, followed closely by two more.  Rodskjegg quickly lashed the beasts to the bow line and ordered all to pull.  Soon the boat was free and skating upon the ice, with the bears pulling it forward.  Finally, after miles of the terrifying race, the bears led the boat crashing back into the open ocean.

The men gave a great cheer for their captain, built a fire upon the deck to dry out, and soon sailed further west.  Eventually the ice widened, the whiteness turned to gray and black as solid land rose up before them, curing south.  Down the coast the mighty ship curised, the wind at its back, until Rodskjegg chose a wide-mouthed bay in which to enter this new land.  The natives looked on in wonder as a ship like no other they had yet seen came to rest on a sandy bar.  Finally, onto this sacred land leapt a fair-skinned, red-bearded man, who planted his flag right here on this very spot.

Rodskjegg made many trips back and forth from his home to here, until he finally made this his permanent home.  He had many more adventures though, and I would be glad to tell you more of them later, but for now you can be proud that you know the true Scandinavian Heritage of Junction City.

We can’t wait to hear what tales the Vikings will have for us in the future.  When you come to visit, please be sure to leave a comment or send us a message with our contact us page!  To get our monthly email newsletter simply enter your email into the box in the sidebar, and check your email for confirmation.

Scandinavian tradition holds that in Värmland, Sweden, a white-clad maiden, wearing a crown of burning candles, brought food to the starving villagers on the shores of Lake Vänern. No one knows how long ago the tradition began, but it was so far back that the festival of Saint Lucia was marked by a notch on the primitive calendar stick. It later became customary in western Sweden to finish the threshing by Lucia Day so as to begin the cooking and baking for the long Christmas festivities.

However, the origins of this tradition are not from Scandinavia, but rather from Syracuse, on the island, of Sicily around 304 A.D. According to Sicilian legend, Lucia’s mother, a wealthy lady, had been miraculously cured of an illness at the sepulcher of Saint Agatha in Catania. Lucia, a Christian, persuaded her mother in thankfulness to distribute her wealth to the poor. So, by candlelight, the mother and daughter went about the city secretly ministering to the poor of Syracuse.

Unfortunately, this was during the last great persecution of Christians in the reign of the Emperor Diocletian. The pagan young man to whom Lucia was engaged took a dim view of this distributing of her dowry, and denounced her to the prefect, Pascasius, who ordered that she be seized and tortured. Miraculously, when neither boiling oil nor burning pitch had the power to hurt her, she was blinded and slain with a sword. Her martyrdom is recorded in ancient sources and in an inscription found in Syracuse.

How or when this legend and tradition came to Värmland, Sweden, no one knows. With the coming of Christianity to Sweden shortly after 1000 A.D., missionaries and priests may have told the story to inspire new converts. Or, possibly, sailors from Sweden, having been captivated by the popular candlelight festival of Saint Lucia in Italy, may have brought the tradition back with them.

However it made its way to Värmland, the customs in honor of Saint Lucia have spread throughout Sweden, and more recently to the rest of Scandinavia. Today, the festival is celebrated in schools, hospitals, businesses, and towns, each of which has its own Lucia Bride and festivities to mark the beginning of Christmas. Saint Lucia Day is also an international holiday, celebrated not only in Scandinavia, but also in Italy and France in the rites of the church.

Don’t forget to check out our own St. Lucia during the Junction City Light Parade on Friday December 7th in Downtown Junction City!