Dear Islanders

For 1½ year I’ve been reading on the forum pages and I’ve been posting a couple of times myself.
To those of you who are new or havn’t taken notice of me I’ll make a brief introduction.

My wife and I were married on Solomon Beach, St. John, in February 2010. We ended up spending our entire honey moon exploring ruins and plantation grounds being astonished by the great Virgin Islands. We read all we could in the evenings and visited historical sites in the daytime. Even though we are Danes we did not realize the history that we have in common. We were brought up like any other Dane - knowing almost nothing about our colonial history.
A lot has changed since then...

Even before we went home we contacted our network in Denmark, and less than three weeks later we had an article on our USVI cultural heritage published in a Danish newspaper. Since then we have written several other articles on the shaping of Danish society by the wealth from our Caribbean colonies. Wealth made from slave labor. Wealth that can be seen in every street in central Copenhagen - if you know what to look for and know our history.
I will be the main speaker at the annual Copenhagen City cultural festival this October. At the Christianshavn part of Cph I am scheduled to lecture about how the West Indies shaped the streets and how it can bee seen in everyday walk.

Furthermore: We are determined to publish a book on the colonial wealth, and we have been granted minor fundings to do so. For additional research we will return to the USVI this Christmas as it is the only time we can get off our regular jobs I Copenhagen.
Obviously it will be of great interest to us to get in touch with people from any level to share knowledge and perhaps do some interviews. We would be grateful for any contact to any interesting person you may know.

As our funding doesn’t include money for the research (only for publishing), we’ll have to pay ourselves, wich we gladly do. But in case you know somebody whose spare room or guest house we might rent for a couple of weeks (for a couple of dollars 🙂 ), we would be very happy. We don't need swimming pools or landing sites for private choppers . All we need is a place to stay and keep our stuff.

Our home in the absolute centre of Copenhagen will be open to any islanders who wish to experience the city and wants to keep expenses low. We'd be happy to host and guide visitors from the USVI.

Perhaps you know of someone who’ll swap houses during Christmas and New Year?

Please write on the board, a pm or write: [email protected] if you have any great ideas that might of any help to us.

Yours
Steen Tommerup, Copenhagen