Orientation
A short orientation in my site:
History: I have written a series of history books for school children, called “Children in Denmark´s History”. Number eleven was published in 2016. The books are published by Alinea, Copenhagen. Every book tells the story of real danish children. They tell the reader about their dailyday life in a special key year, fx 971, 1397, 1534, 1592, 1658, 1872, 1914, 1944, 1971. Through the eyes of the children we discover danish history.
I was teaching history in elementray school for many years until I started studying history at the University of Southern Denmark. I have been a board member at the Funen Historical Society for 21 years and I write articles on several subjects, specializing in Children´s history.
Article published in 2025: Angrebet på orlogsskibet The Kite i Storebælt 1808. Danish privateers´ attack on the british war-ship The Kite in the Great Belt during the Napoleonic War.The article was published in Historisk Samfund for Vestsjællands Årbog 2024.
My article on early danish industrialization, 1750-1800, and the impact of foreign know-how on the development of trade, crafts and industry in Denmark, is going to be published in Svendborg Museums Årbog 2026.The article also deals with the life of my 3 x great parents, Maria Catharina, née Sturm, and Johan Anthon Ziegler, merchants in Svendborg. Johan imported glassware directly from his native village in Bohemia.
In 2021 I published an article about a self-employed photographer, Andrea Gomard, who had her own atelier in Odense around 1900.
Story-telling: I am an active story-teller and also an active story-collector. I tell stories in many different places, like schools, libraries, churches and cultural centers. I have a big repertoire, from viking stories and myths to stories from the Middle Eastern countries.
Schools: For several years I have been thinking of how to bring more storytelling and more use of oral work into everyday teaching at danish schools. I have been working on this together with the danish storytellers organization, FIDA. We have started with the schools of one city, Svendborg, and our first results are convincing: Children listen and concentrate when their teacher or another schoolchild tells a story. It may be in a history lesson as well as in a math and physics lesson.
I am now chairman of the national society FISK – Fortælling I Skolen.
Måle Fortælleteater. I have the privilege of being chairman of Anette Jahn´s storyplaytheater Måle Fortælleteater. For more than 15 years we practise a wonderful and fruitful collaboration.
Social work/2 Hours per Week: I am chairman and founder of the organization 2 Hours per Week. Bilingual children between 3 and 8 years of age are matched with a grown-up danish volunteer. The two of them meet once a week for two hours where they play and read books together. In this way the child learns to express itself in the danish language and it gets to know danish culture and traditions – in a playful way. 2 Hours per Week started in Odense and has now branches in Esbjerg, Aarhus and Horsens as well. Several new cities will start new branches up i 2026.
The Story-Bazaar: About 15 years ago I started getting interested in stories from our immigrant countries. I started collecting them, spending time with immigrants in Denmark, studying the litterature and travelling in the Middle East, spending time in countries like Palestine and Syria.
I have published the stories in four books in a series called The Story-Bazaar: Stories and History from Turkey, Stories and History from Bosnia & Hercegovina, Stories and History from five arabian countries: Irak, Jordan, Libanon, Palestine and Syria – and Stories and History from Iran. Between the stories and myths you can read historical facts about the time, the place and the background for the stories. The books are published by the publishing company Ravnerockforlaget.
Paintings: I love painting. My paintings and my research for the books I publish are often mixed. So for a while I painted angels because of the title of a book in The Story-Bazaar: “An Angel on both Shoulders”. The paintings were exibited at the artgallery Solvognen in Odense.