Udder cream, or udder ointment, has been the go-to cream for dry skin in Denmark for decades. If anything it’s seen as a bit old fashioned largely due to the name (Kopattesalve for my fellow Danes).

I didn’t even consider the history behind the cream (which should’ve been pretty obvious with a name like that) until I randomly stumbled across an English-speaking video where they talked about how, yeah, it seems a bit weird but it doesn’t just work on cows’ udders but on people’s hands too!

More and more often I’m in a situation with my siblings where I’ll be like “What’s going on right now in the family makes sense because of what happened back then” and my siblings (the middle child is only two years younger than me btw) have no idea what I’m talking about and my little snippet of information suddenly change their whole worldview.

I wasn’t burdened with other people’s trauma and secrets, but I realize now that two years made all the difference even in our teenage years and I was just more aware and the adults talked to me and told me things and perhaps didn’t think to tell the others because they “already did it” or something?

But also, I love the secret little “joke” that during the cat festival Phillip doesn’t wear cat ears but fox ears, symbolizing his job as a shapeshifter. And as his mixed-race “daughter” Mia wears a mix of cat and fox ears.

It’s Caravaggio’s “The Calling of Saint Matthew” depicting Jesus choosing Matthew as one of his 12 disciples.

Matthew was a tax collector, hated by all, so he points at himself like “…Me? Are you pointing at me? Are you sure? Me? Of all people? Me?”

Many years ago I heard a song where an angel visits a church only to realize it has been abandoned, but instead of getting sad it is delighted to see that God’s creation has been able to reclaim it and calls it the most pure and holy church it has seen in a long time.

But I know. I think it was me.

In my defense I never intended to start a rumor. Many years ago I worked as a cleaner at the school and one evening I had to transport one of those big floor washing machines from the basement to the second level via the elevator. When the doors opened a very confused looking man stood inside. He was one of those slicked back gym-bro IT guys and made no movement to get out. The elevator wouldn’t fit him, me and the machine so I asked “Where are you going? Up or down?”

He gave me a smug shit-eating grin and said “Down?” in a mocking tone.

It took me a second to realize that of course he wasn’t going down, we were in the basement, but his look and tone annoyed me so much I refused to admit I misspoke and instead said “Yeah, down. I don’t know if you’re going to the second basement”

His smile disappeared “There’s a second basement?”

“Yeah but it sounds like you don’t have access to it so I guess you’re going up? I’ll just wait”

I never thought of it as anything other than a funny story to tell about that time I got so annoyed with a guy that I invented an entire second basement, but it turns out he probably refused to believe a cleaner fooled him and the story spread.

When I say belief I don’t actually mean that people in Denmark truly believe it. It’s more like a funny thing you can say like “The sun is shining so I’ve been good” or “Its not my fault its raining. Must be all the other people who have their birthday today”

It’s been many years since it was read to me as a child so when I read it again I was surprised by how violent it is. It’s clearly a product of its time with the soldier basically kidnapping the princess every night, and I did remember the soldier chopping the head of the witch off for no other reason than she didn’t want to answer his question, but I had completely forgot that a crowd of people including the king and queen are mauled and torn to shreds by magical dogs.

It’s understandable that a lot of modern retellings depict the soldier as having violent PTSD from the war, but I do think the story is open to other interpretations and with a few rewrites it could be a story of finding yourself and true friendship/love.

In the original story the soldier becomes rich after crawling into the hollow tree and getting gold from the magical dogs and suddenly everyone loves him and wants to be his friends. He remembered how horrible it was to be poor so he gives his money away to every poor person he meets but no one, not even his new rich friends, ever gives him anything back so eventually he has no money left and his friends abandon him. Then he realize that the magical dogs can be summoned with an enchanted tinderbox and retrieve anything he wants so he ask for more money and suddenly people want to be his friends again, but this time it feels hollow.

Throughout the story we’re told about the princess who has been locked away by her parents because it has been foretold that she’d marry a common soldier aka a poor, and the king and queen couldn’t stand the idea and keeps her trapped so no one can fall in love with her.

The solder asks his dogs to go get the princess so he can see her and though she’s said to be asleep she tells her parents about it in the morning, calling it a dream, so she could just as easily be written as awake and being free for the first time. She might even tell her parents that they can’t keep her trapped anymore because there’s a soldier who has the power to get her out. Make up your own reasons for why she has to go back to the castle every morning, but the king and queen tries to find the soldier before she can escape for good, but the last night the soldier gives the princess the tinderbox so she can free herself. Unfortunately he is captured right after and sent to hang. Instead of a random boy getting the tinderbox for the soldier before his hanging it’s the princess who summons the dogs to save him.

Decide the king and queen’s fate yourself. Maybe the soldier and princess become the new king and queen (the princess is said to like being queen very much in the original story after all) or maybe they hit the road to live a free life with their three magical dogs.

It’s easy to go extremely dark with the story but you could just as easy give it a more positive spin in my opinion.

Today it’s mostly famous for what it looks like on the inside.

It has an equestrian staircase though it’s so smooth it’s really just a gentle slope more than a staircase. It was build like that so our lazy bum king could ride his horse all the way to the top (king not in photo)

And naturally people have also driven cars up the tower

And held a bike race

For a while it was just sort of abandoned by the authorities and became a spiraling marketplace

But today it has been restored and become a tourist spot as well as a popular destination for school trips. And yes, you can still watch the cosmos at the top.

If you see a groove in the grass running along a sidewalk or path then there’s a good chance it’s a popular dog walking area.