Sønderjysk Kaffebord

Maybe you've heard of it, maybe you haven't - but a Sønderjysk Kaffebord is a dream come true for anyone who likes a stacked cake buffet. And I'm serious about stacked - in order for an event to be considered a proper kaffebord you must have at least 21 different cakes:

• 7 soft cakes
• 7 creamy cakes
• 7 hard cakes (aka cookies)

You're obliged to try all of them, but if you think you can just dig into any old cake from the buffet as you see fit you're sorely mistaken; there's a semi fixed choreography to the buffet.

Cake Choreography

You start with the stop cakes - yeast-dough based cakes and buns which will make sure no one's starving. We're talking:

• Buttered cardamom-flavoured boller (buns)
• Kringle (a filling butter-pastry)
• Søsterkage (a sort of pound cake mixed with a fruit cake).

After this follows a selection of cut cakes - sponges and the like. You start with the driest and end with the creamiest. Together these two categories are known as the soft cakes.

Next up are the creamy cakes - most importantly the torter which is the local name for the traditional danish layered cakes known as lagkager in the rest of the kingdom. You need at least 3 different layered cakes for a proper kagebord, and one of them must be the brødtort - a regional layered caked baked using old ryebread. No, I'm not kidding. The most fancy kaffebord events will end this section with a cremesnitte - a flaky puff pastry shell with a creme filling.

And finally we reach the hard cakes - the cookies - where you'll typically find:

• The large and impressive gode råd
• The amusingly named knepkager
• The traditional final cookie of the night; ingenting, a meringue-topped vanilla cookie which takes up no space at all.

By the end of the evening, everyone should be suitably stuffed - especially because it's considered rude to say no. In our day and age we can probably skip that part, right?

The History behind the Kagebord

In 1864 Denmark lost the Second Schleswig War - and with it the part of Denmark called Sønderjylland by the Danes and Nordschleswig by the Germans. As a consequence, about 200.000 Danes came to live under German rule, about 40% of the population(!).

The Danes who now lived under German rule were keen to keep their national identity, and so they would arrange meetings in the village halls where they sang Danish songs and listened to lectures. The practice was tolerated by the German administration, but they decided to refuse all Danish village halls license to serve alcohol - which presumably dampened everyone's spirit a bit.

The Danes decided to combat this move with... a coffee and cake potluck, where every guest would bring a cake for a combined very impressive kaffebord - a buffet of cakes to have with your coffee.

It is this cake buffet which is known as the 'Sønderjysk Kaffebord' and is, as we say in Danish, world-famous in Denmark.

The Songs

In between listening to speeches and stuffing themselves, the attendants at a kaffebord event would sing songs together. Singing Danish songs together in public had become a significant way to express your Danish identity in Sønderjylland from the 1840s and forward.

"Singing has always been popular in Nordslesvig, and in no other place are the Danish songs as well known as here. Toddlers, young men and women, husbands and wives until old age - all known the Danish treasure trove of songs by heart, from the first verse to the last."

Gustav Johannsen, Danish member of the German Reichstag 1881-1901

Common themes were the language, the country, and our shared history. The songs were written by some of the most popular poets of the day, many of whom were also popular preachers. You'd sing at gatherings large and small - from the huge gatherings at Skamlingsbanken to the smaller gatherings at village halls - typically from Den Blaa Sangbog (the Blue Songbook), a book with Danish songs printed in Aabenraa.

Under German rule, some of the songs were illegal to print and sing, in which case only the title would be printed and the people gathered would then sing it from memory anyway.

Some of the more popular songs were:

I Danmark er jeg født, der har jeg hjemme (1850)

Det haver så nyligen regnet (1890)

Det er et yndigt land (1819/1835)

Dengang jeg drog afsted (1848)

I alle de riger og lande (1837/1845)

Det er så køhnt, det er så dejle (1870)

Many of these are still sung today - although admittedly not the last one, which is quite unknown. So why include it... well...

My connection to all of this

My great-great-great grandfather - tiptipoldefar in Danish - was Karsten Thomsen (1837-1889), a humble farmer-cum-innkeeper from Frøslev very close to the modern border between Denmark and Germany.

Not a revolutionary by nature, Thomsen was quietly insistent on being Danish and calmly resisting the fairly persistent germanification attempts by the authorities. He was elected kommuneforstander - a local leadership position which involved hiring the local school teacher - and would insist on only hiring those who would teach in Danish. It is said that his efforts to keep the area Danish-speaking is the reason why the people of Frøslev voted decidedly to join Denmark in the reunification vote in 1920.

Karsten Thomsen also wrote a lot of poems - many of which were later put to melody and included in the super popular Danish songbook called Højskolesangbogen.

• 244.  I Synnerjylland, dér er æ føjt – Karsten Thomsen/Thv. Aagaard
• 280.  Det er så køhnt, det er så dejle – Karsten Thomsen/Oluf Ring
• 345.  De vår en daw i høstens ti – Karsten Thomsen/Thv. Aagaard

My family has since moved away from the area, but we still own a fair bit of land down there and go there often for weekends and holidays.