Light in the Darkness - Singing Through the Danish Winter
December 15, 2025
Dark outside, bright in the heart: Winter with a choir in Denmark
Yesterday, a wonderful but also very exhausting week came to an end. On the third Sunday of Advent, our choir gave our final concert of the season in a beautifully tiny church in the village of Hulsig. Hulsig actually has only 175 residents. All the more touching was the fact that so many listeners had found their way to us: people from across the region, especially from nearby Skagen. The church was filled with music, silence, and that special sense of concentration that only arises when everyone feels the same thing for a moment.
It was a wonderful concert and a fitting conclusion for us. Now a little peace returns. We'll recover from the strain; though of course the next challenges are already waiting: Christmas needs to be organized, families want to come together, houses filled with light, food, and conversation. And hardly has the new year begun before it all starts again.
In the one year that my husband and I have now been members of this choir, we've grown remarkably close to the other singers. You grow together when you rehearse together, freeze together, laugh together, push yourselves, and sometimes doubt together. For us it's often particularly challenging. Unlike the Danes, we don't just have to learn the melodies, we also have to learn the lyrics - in a language that we don't yet fully trust ourselves with. We far from understand every word, and the pronunciation demands a lot of patience. Sometimes it feels laborious, sometimes overwhelming.
But we do it the way the English say it: learning by doing.
And it's precisely this shared learning, this growing together, that lets us look forward with great anticipation. We're so looking forward to the new year, to new rehearsals, new concerts, and to being together with our choir again.
After this dark and yet warm winter moment in Hulsig, one thing remains above all: the light. Lys i mørket - Light in the darkness. It's more than a beautiful word, it's a feeling that you find in many Danish songs, and that we felt in this concert. Music brings light into the darkness, and community lets it shine on until we see each other again in the new year, sing again, and walk this path together once more.
