Mortensaften

November 10th is Mortensaften in Denmark— the evening before the catholic Saint Martin’s Day (Sankt Morten is the Danish name for Saint Martin of Tours). Not being religious, and being barely aware of Christian religious traditions, I had never heard of St. Martin’s Day, or of the tradition associated with the evening before it.

As the story goes, Martin (Morten, if you’re Danish) was a follower of Christianity during a time when the religion had barely been made legal by the Roman Empire (if you’re interested in all the gory little details, I suggest you go to Wikipedia). In 371, he was (rather unwillingly) acclaimed bishop of Tours by his parishioners. So unwillingly in fact, that he ran away and hid himself in a stable full of geese. Turns out that wasn’t such a bright idea on his part— as soon as his followers started looking for him, the geese began to make a dreadful racket, almost immediately betraying his location. Needless to say, Martin was found and reluctantly dragged off to become a bishop.

What does this have to do with Danish traditions? Well, as “revenge” on the offending poultry, the Danes traditionally eat duck on Mortensaften. Yes, I know logically they should be eating goose, and in Skåne (which was at one point part of Denmark) they do. Apparently, the Danes think duck is tastier.

For the occasion, Morten (20th Century Danish Architecture Morten) gave us one of his usual anecdotes: back before the Avian Flu scare, geese used to be kept on large open fields close to where he lived. There were so many that the fields were almost white. And every year, on St. Martin’s Day (the day after Mortensaften), the only things left in the fields would be feathers.