Danish Kings Poster

My great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great (or so) grandfather is the Danish King, Gorm the Old. I’ve done the math and figured out that the current queen is my 23rd Cousin (our common ancestor is one of the Valdemars, around 23 generations back). Most of this is silly because at these sheer distances, it’s meaningless. The number of people who have to die before I can take the throne is astronomical. And, of course, there’s that problem of me not being a Danish citizen. I have a much bigger claim to fame on Jens Christian Hostrup, a Danish playwright of some renown who is my GGG Grandfather (Maybe GGGG? I don’t have my genealogy software open to check).

What does any of this have to do with anything? Well, growing up I had this wonderful poster on my wall. It showed all of the Danish kings. Denmark is the only western nation (as far as I know) that has had a single royal family since before 1000 A.D. and I loved that I was a part of it, in my own small way. The poster is long gone and I bought a postcard version from a Danish museum on a trip there in 1984 but otherwise have not seen the poster in decades.

My mother sent me a print she had (a copy) of the poster (an old copy, it doesn’t have the current Queen on it and she began her reign in 1972) and I got all nostalgic and wanted to get the poster for Jack. Maybe he’ll love it as I once did? So, I went a-googling and found it! It’ll cost me over $50 to buy and ship it, but I think I just found one of those off-beat, interesting Christmas presents that he will love. At least, I hope he will. If not, there’s a spot next to my desk where it would look fantastic…