How Do We Stay Warm?

Staying Warm and Cozy during the Cold Months in Denmark

Living in a house with no heating in the Danish autumn looks like wet towels and laundry that remain damp and never fully dry up. It looks like water running down the inside of the windows, and a smell of basement in the whole house the morning after a rainy autumn night.

For over a month this is what our house has looked like.

You see, the only heating source of our farmhouse is a 25 years old masonry oven in the kitchen. Last year it was our first autumn here, and Herluf changed out the old, rusted and broken doors in the oven for some, that he had restored himself. We stacked firewood in the woodshed he had built in the summer, but only then where we able to light a fire in our home and exspel all that coolness and moist that had been building up since a summer long passed.

Our cat enjoying the heat of the masonry oven last autumn.

You would think that would be the end of it, and we would be set in a warm house every autumn from then on. At least that was what we was hoping. But the thing about living on a homestead is that earlier years work have a way of returning every year, and nothing is ever done for good.

That is why, when coming into the autumn this year, we realized that work, both with the oven and the chimney awaited us.

Herluf himself had spent days in the early summer in a garden in the little village near us, cutting up two big trees from a lady that had them cut down. He would spent entire afternoons in his woodcutting gear, big and thick trousers, boots, a jacket and a helmet, and cut up the trees in chunks in the thick summer air of June. Our neighbors kindly helped us transport the chunks home, and he spent his three weeks of vacation chopping up wood and stacking it in the woodshed, until at last, this August, there were no more piles of wood laying in from of the woodshed, and everything was neatly stacked and stored for winter.

However, the work did not end there, and when those first cold August mornings hit, he said: “It’s time now to start working on the chimney.” Being my optimistic self, I honestly thought it was much too soon, and I wanted us to continue work outside, in the sun, and enjoy the last rays of summer, before the misty and rainy autumn would inevitably come. I knew he dreaded the work that had to be done on the chimney, ever since the chimney sweeper had made us aware of it last winter. But where I will push the work I dread until the very last minute, Herluf will face them headstrong, firstly, before he finally can let himself rest.

Needless to say, there was nothing I could say to delay this work, or to make him pause, just for a bit, after a long and hardworking summer, and when autumn finally rolled around, I would be grateful that he had begun the work as soon as he did, instead of listening to me.

And so, he began working on the chimney that rose tall on the second floor of our farmhouse.

Herluf in the midst of working on the chimney upstairs.

The grout in between the layers of brick had gone soft and was turning to dust due to moist and running soot. Every line of grout had to be scraped off manually. There are electrical tools for this, of course, but our chimney, much like the rest of our house, is built with hand formed bricks, and using any electrical tool would inevitably damage the bricks. Therefore Herluf had to scrape the whole chimney all the way to the top of the attic by hand.

All the while the mornings grew darker, and our house colder. The coldness was a constant reminder to him of the work that had still not been finished, and he would work quietly in the night, scraping of old grout, while making sure not to awake the child, that was sleeping downstairs.

After removing it, the lines would have to be filled up again with new and strong grout that would once again ensure the integrity of the 100 year old chimney. Five times he went over that chimney from top to bottom, scraping off, filling in, and then painting it several times to make sure the running soot would be kept it and shut off from the rooms, we are planning to make into our children’s bedrooms in the near future.

Since I am pregnant with our second child and should not be near chemicals, running soot or dusty concrete, my work those weeks were to ensure the warmth and comfort of our 2 year old. Freezing inside is not new to me, and perhaps that is why, it always makes me anxious in a way I find it hard to explain. It is a deep feeling, I think, of not being able to provide a warm shelter for oneself and ones family. A fear of being exposed, too exposed, to the nature outside, that is as beautiful, as it can be brutal, at least here in the Danish autumn storms and rainy weeks.

Once the chimney was finally done, it felt like we were running out of time. The moist on the windows would be running down in the mornings, and no matter how many layers of clothes and wool and even winter jackets I managed to dress our 2 year old in, her little hands hands and feet would be cold. The only way to heat them up was to run us a warm bath or to drive somewhere, anywhere, so that the car heat may heat us.

The last work that needed to done before we could finally lit a fire was work on 25 year old masonry oven. It’s not in the best conditions, really, and some parts will need changing every year until we can afford a new heat solution for our home. Herluf was growing very frustrated by the work, realizing as he did last year, that the old masonry oven would never be as efficient or well working as newer models, but still it needed repairing in order to work at all.

The first fire of the season burning in the masonry oven.

That’s why, when we could finally light the first fire earlier in this week, he wasn’t happy, but frustrated, angry with the all the work he had put in for a not that good result. A couple of days went by, however, where the coolness of the hard tiles in our kitchen would soften up and moist would finally be able to properly escape out of the open windows instead of clinging to the glass as dew, that Herluf too warmed up.

Just like the coldness in early autumn had been a nagging reminder of unfinished work, the warmth of the heart was now a token of work well finished and finally done. Just the other day, I heard him talk fondly over the birch wood that he himself had cut up, admiring it’s ability to burn and the overall dryness of it as he sat back in the chair in front of the fire to enjoy the fruit of his labor.

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