AN AARHUS JOKE. As I posted here, Seamus Heaney begins his poem on the bogman, Tollund man, in Aarhus, which is the city in Denmark where my mother’s people lived.
An Irish friend of mine who knows that some of my Danish ancestors came from Aarhus (which is the second biggest city in Denmark) returned from a trip to Copenhagen with this story for me:
A man from Aarhus comes to to Copenhagen for the first time. At the airport, he gets in a cab, and to make conversation he says that he has heard that Copenhagen taxi drivers are crazy reckless. “Sure” says the taxi driver. “See that lady over there. Watch this.” He guns the motor and heads straight for the lady. At the last moment he swerves and avoids her.
There is a sickening thud. Says the man from Aarhus: “You missed her, but I got her with the door.”