Get Off The Couch — Solvang, Ca.
Our Cookie Jar experiment # 6 — Visiting Solvang
Velkommen til Solvang.
This was our 6th weekend trip in the Cookie Jar Experiment. See my first article attached at the end for background on how this started. But, for the benefit of those unfamiliar, my wife and I put pieces of paper in a jar, pulled one out each month, and then went to that location.
This was an effort to get off the couch and visit someplace new. This trip was one of my wife’s picks and she took a co-worker's recommendation and wrote down to visit Solvang, California.
Neither of us had been to Solvang and I hadn’t even heard of it. This was a long drive for a weekend. About 340 miles (547 kilometers) round trip. But, half the trip would be in places we had never driven, so even the drive might be fun.
Solvang is a charming town in the Santa Ynez Valley. It’s California Wine country and if you saw the movie “SIDEWAYS” it was filmed in this area.
But Solvang isn’t famous for wine, it’s truly a slice of Denmark in California. A beautiful Dutch settlement that offers visitors a cultural smorgasbord of tulips, clogs, Vikings, and of course Danish Pastry of every type.
Danish Pastry is my weak link, I can’t pass by without buying some and it is almost guaranteed I will eat too much. I can’t believe I hadn’t heard of this place.
Solvang’s rich Danish heritage dates back to 1911 when the area was founded by Danish immigrants. Solvang boasts authentic architecture, thatched roofs, old-world craftsmanship, and yes — traditional windmills.
Solvang was named by Sunset magazine as one of the ten most beautiful small towns in the Western United States. . . and I hadn’t heard of it!
The drive was beautiful with fields of strawberries, pastures with horses, and of course grape trellises running in straight rows for miles. Sometimes in undulating curving patterns that followed the hills.
Solvang is a pedestrian-friendly town and car parking is limited to a few streets and hard to find.
Along Copenhagen Street is the Hans Christian Andersen Park with his bust. It’s a nice green space dedicated to the Danish author who wrote many famous fairy tales, consisting of 156 stories within nine volumes. They have been translated into 125 languages and are culturally embedded in Western consciousness. One of his many stories is “The Little Mermaid”, and there is also a statue of the Mermaid in the park as well.
Known as the “Danish Capital of America”, it was not until 1946, after the end of World War II, that promoters of the idea of a “Danish Village” were finally able to move ahead with plans to redesign the existing facade of the town and mandated the Danish style for new construction.
Solvang attracts many tourists from the Nordic countries and has been the subject of several Danish royal visits, most recently a visit by Prince Henrik in 2011.
Between 1850 and 1930, many Danes left Denmark, which was suffering from poor economic prospects. Some estimate, as many as one in ten Danes emigrated during this period, mostly to the United States.
I was fascinated by the roofs of the buildings and how they were made, but one thing stood out. There were hand-carved wooden life-size stork replicas nesting on the roof of many buildings. Why would they be on the roofs, I thought.
I finally asked a shop owner, who smiled and said “they bring good luck.”
I looked this up when we got home and the story is charming when you consider the belief in good luck. Many cultures have traditions for good luck.
But the full story is sad and more tragic.
European White Storks have nested on man-made structures such as towers, chimneys, and rooftops in Denmark and around Europe since the Middle Ages.
People would go to great lengths to attract them to their rooftops, putting up stick nests, hoping a stork would come. The arrival of migratory storks always meant the beginning of warm weather.
In 1890 there were 4,000 pairs of European White Storks in Denmark. In 1989 there were only 12 pairs, and in 1995 the Danish Ornithologist Society recorded only five pairs of wild storks. By 2008 the white stork was declared extinct in the wild in Denmark.
Pesticides, the loss of marshlands, and power poles are to blame for the loss of the birds in Denmark.
We opted for some Danish Sausages at Solvang Restaurant for lunch and then grabbed some Kransekake, a traditional almond-based cake from the Danish Mill Bakery, to take home.
I wanted some famous Aebleskiver (Danish pancakes with powdered sugar and raspberry jam), but one can only eat so much. So, maybe another visit.
All and all, we had a wonderful time and enjoyed a bit of Danish culture without needing a Passport — the ending of another Cookie Jar Experiment travel adventure. If you're in California, I join Sunset magazine in recommending this charming small town.
Check out how our Cookie Jar travel started with the original story below.
