21 Lone Bang 1937

It was at Ocean House in Skagen that I saw the famous Lone Bang for the first time. She was a relative on my father’s side and by then already world famous in Denmark and Iceland; a folk singer who had performed in most European cities. She’d enjoyed a particularly good run in Germany, but after very nobly refusing to sing at a gathering for the Führer in person, all further concerts there were cancelled for her.

Lone was connected to us in every way. She was the daughter of Grandma Georgía’s sister and had, moreover, been born in Iceland. Her father, Mogens Bang, had been a doctor in Reykjavík at the turn of the century and Lone was reared in Reykjavík until the age of twelve, when her family moved to Nykøbing on the island of Falster. She therefore always spoke impeccable Icelandic, although her vocabulary was occasionally slightly infantile. When Grandad Sveinn was appointed ambassador to Copenhagen in 1920, she was invited to live with him and Grandma while she studied singing at the Royal Academy of Music. A twenty-year-old woman entered the home of a forty-year-old couple, her maternal aunt and her husband, and immediately gained the affection of her children. She later studied in Paris and dedicated herself to the folk songs of all countries and could eventually sing in seventeen languages and speak seven. She was a constant guest of the family’s, right up to Grandad’s death. He never called her anything else but his Songbird, and her visits were greeted like the joyful arrival of spring.

Lone was no classic beauty, but possessed an unusually striking air. Her face was as alluring as her voice, her cheekbones as high-set as her hair, a majestic nose that was often considered ‘Jewish,’ although I’d often heard her regret the fact that there was not a single drop of Jewish blood had been traced in her family. She had passionately embraced Judaic culture, sang their folk songs both in Yiddish and Hebrew and was never able to forgive my father for having joined the National Socialists.

One hot summer evening in July 1937 a party was thrown at Ocean House. The guests included the famous actor Poul Reumert and his Icelandic wife, Anna Borg, who owned a summer house in the area and were acquaintances of my grandparents. I recall very little of that night, apart from the clatter of Mum’s heels and the concert after dinner. Her accompanist was Reuter, who sat at the grand piano, and my cousin Lone stood erect in a simple black dress with her hair and chin up. She introduced the songs in Danish, with their history and the stories they told. In my memory her voice is just as peculiar as her face: not exactly beautiful, but clear and enchantingly quirky. The final song was in Icelandic:

Little children playing,

Lying in the moor,

Lying in the gullies and laughing ho ho ho…

Grandad stood up in the middle of the applause and walked over to her, radiating with joy. He took her hand and made her bow once more, as he exclaimed out loud in Icelandic: ‘The Songbird of Spring has arrived!’ At that moment the whole family, inebriated by the wine and the sun, was united in joy; apple-red faces in white shirts with rolled-up sleeves. It was the first time I sat in their midst and the last time I saw us whole.

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