Nordic Meeting in Copenhagen / Frederiksværk

April 8-9, 2006

Starting point of the meeting on Saturday afternoon was the Bispebjerg Cemetery, I arrived there together with Peter Holmgren, afterwards Jurgen Stigter (in company of Øystein Brekke and Calle Erlandsson) joined us, then Claes Løfgren, the two members from Jutland, Per Skjoldager and Knud Lysdal as well as Jes Knudsen with his friend Carsten Møller Larsen and chess old-timer Stellan Persson (originally a Swede, he ran his Copenhagen chess shop till 1998 – the Mecca of all chess collectors in Scandinavia in spite of princely prices; in the meantime he lives one half of the year in Göteborg and the other half in Mallorca).

Gallery 1: Bispebjerg Cemetery - At Aron Nimzowitsch's grave (10 photos)

From the cemetery which is located a little out of the centre of Copenhagen we went to Øster Farimagsgade No 11 – Nimzowitsch’s home (he lived in the 2nd floor) – in the vicinity of the botanic garden.

Gallery 2: At Nimzowitsch's home (8 photos)

Then we continued our trip to Fredriksværk, Jes Knudsen’s place of residence (about 60 km in the north-west of Zealand).

Gallery 3: In Fredriksværk - Per Skjoldager's talk (7 photos)

Some snapshots of the very pleasant evening meal follow ...

Gallery 4: Evening meal (7 photos)

On Sunday morning (from 10:30 am) a fine talk was given by Per Friedrichsen (in German) – as a German teacher he finds our language more easy than English. The subject "Brettgeflüster" ("waffle at the board") refers to the strange chattering chess players come out with particularly during free games [an example by Karl Kraus, 1921Karl Kraus, 1921 #2 (in German)]. Afterwards I presented the KWA and the Lasker book project, unfortunately a demonstration of the BoC fell victim to the technical possibilities and to lack of time.

At the end (before all rushed to the book market) Per Friedrichsen gave an introduction to the Viborg book, that’s a Philidor translation by Casper Peter Rothe and at the same time the first chess book in Danish. Per Friedrichsen and Jes Knudsen still intend to prepare a more comprehensive lecture about it.

Gallery 5: Second part of the meeting on Sunday (17 photos)

At our Nordic Meeting only the Norwegian Ole Kristian Førrisdahl (who was at the university of Wismar for one week), Rolf Littorin (doesn’t like to travel any more) and our Finnish man Kimmo Välkesalmi were missing – I found an old picture of the latter from his active time (olympiad Thessaloniki, 1988) in my documents. Unfortunately we (still) have no member from Iceland ...