Hvor En Var Baen: Places of Childhood

This chapter explores musical responses to a selection of poems written by Martin Nikolaj Hansen in the first half of the twentieth century. His verse is steeped in the bucolic imagery of his surroundings on the small island of Als that lies off Denmark’s south-eastern coast. In interpreting Hansen’s poems, the mediation of memory and construction of identity, contested notions of patriotism and nationalism and the borders and boundaries of belonging are explored relative to both source materials and the creative processes employed in the 2019 album release, Hvor En Var Baen, by Haftor Medbøe, Gunnar Halle and Eva Malling.