Dead Man’s Mountain

By Mette Winge
Skagen, the northernmost tip of Jutland, was – and is – no mild and fertile region. During the first half of the 19th century the population was extremely poor. It helped, though, when a ship was wrecked, for a large number of them were carrying good cargo. At the same time many drowned bodies were fished out of the foaming seas.

In the novel Dødemandsbjerget (‘Dead Man’s Mountain’), which is set in the first half of the 19th century, the reader meets Jan. Born into slavery, he was brought by force to Denmark, sold on here, and his new owner is told how someone like this should be treated: ‘You should never treat them as human, such an error will cost you dear… The whip is their master.’

Jan is placed with the Skagen’s circuit judge. The year is 1818, and here he is given the task of planting up a forestry plantation. He is treated reasonably but coldly, and as long as he cannot speak Danish he is almost completely isolated. His appearance means that the local people are frightened of him.

Jan’s story is told up to 1827, and it is a cruel story, which is woven together with Marie’s. She is – like most people on Skagen – from a family of fisherfolk, but the family’s fate has been a fraction tougher than most of the others, since her stepmother drowns herself, her half-brother disappears and her father sits silent and completely withdrawn at the table in the living room and stares at the wall. The other fishermen come and give them a little fish so they can survive, but only just.

In the meantime Marie succeeds in breaking out by going into service at the circuit judge’s, and here she gets to know both Jan and the monkey, which also lives at the judge’s. It screams, is restless and is a tangible symbol of the effect of imprisonment, repression and secrecy on all living creatures, including humans.

There are no free and happy people in the Skagen Henrik Ventzel portrays. Everyone is repressed, oppressed by the tough living conditions, and even though the many shipwrecks provide good pickings, there are also many deaths by drowning to be buried. And since no one knows – as the priest says – whether they are proper Christians, the drowned, the suicides and the outcasts are buried together in Dead Man’s Mountain, the dune that gives the novel its title.

The author Henrik Ventzel has managed with exceptional skill to portray life on this undiscovered Skagen of old with its thundering seas, its stinging sands, its corrosive winds and with the black melancholy that forces people here to their knees.

Translated by John Mason

Dansk version