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Every year in December a Good-Spirit-Prize is donated by Christian the Fourth´s Guild to a student at each of the colleges in Aalborg. It is up to each college to decide which student is worthy of the prize – but every year the Guild itself wants to present the prize at one of the colleges.
This year a group of the benchers went to the Commercial College for the presentation of the prize (and a check) to student Jacob Østergaard Nordtorp from Gistrup.
To get the prize the receivers are expected to be cheerful and positive persons with a sense of good fellowship. The applause when the prize was presented at the Commercial College seemed to indicate that Jacob Østergaard Nordtorp was the right choice.
The money that comes with the prize is not meant for books, pens and erasers, but for the more cheerful aspects of student life – as the chief bencher pointed out.
Jacob Østergaard Nordtorp receives the prize check from chief bencher Niels Voss Hansen, who is escorted by the guild clerk Henrik Jensen, the Guild´s treasurer Ib Regnarsson and one of the Guilds troubadours, Per Iversen, who blew a fanfare.
Photo: Jens Morten
Have you lost your C4 lapel pin or lost the key to “the secret passage” ?
Seventy years ago on August 28 1943 Poul Edvin Kjær Sørensen was executed by the Nazi occupation forces. Therefore the Veterans of the Resistance had asked the Guild to lay a wreath on his grave in Nørresundby Cemetery.
Poul Edvin Kjær Sørensen was the first member of the Danish resistance to get a death-sentence and be executed by the Germans occupying Denmark during the Second World War. On the night of August 18 he was with a group of resistance fighters from Aalborg collecting air-dropped weapons near Madum Sø in the Rold Forest. On their way home their van was caught up by a German military patrol, and a firefight broke out. Niels Erik Vangsted was killed and Poul Edvin Kjær Sørensen was taken prisoner. The other members of the group escaped.
After the death sentence and the execution in Copenhagen a few days later Poul Edvin Kjær Sørensen was buried in Warnemünde (in Germany). It was done that way by the Germans to avoid further unrest in Aalborg. After the war the body was brought back to Northern Jutland to be reburied in the cemetery in Nørresundby beside his mother in accordance with what Poul Edvin Kjær Sørensen had asked for in a farewell letter to his father.
Benchers from the Board of the Guild accompanied Chief-bencher Niels Voss Hansen when he laid a wreath with the colors of the resistance on the grave in Nørresundby. Also present were members of the family of Poul Edvin Kjær Sørensen.
Photo: Jens Morten
International Balut Federation is a gathering of fun-loving people, so it was most appropriate that about 50 IBF-members were initiated into the Guild, when IBF held their World Champion-ship in Aalborg at the end of July.
Members of IBF are Danes living and working in other countries. There are more than fifty branches all over the world. The members are “baluteer”s, and they meet to play Balut, which is a fine game of dice. It is a network, but mostly it is fun and happiness. Fun and happiness are exactly what you find in the Guild too, and when 300 baluteers visited Aalborg for the World Champion-ship, their about 50 chairmen from all over the world were initiated.
Balut goes with cold beer, and is was a startling experience for the chairmen when they had to endure their thirst while looking at the benchers declaring: “Our thirst first!”
They had their revenge later on . .
Foto: Ajs Nielsen
According to tradition the main actors from the festivities in Rebild Hills were initiated into the Guild in Aalborg before they went away to the Rebild Hills.
The Danish head speaker, Danish Radios foreign correspondent Steffen Gram, the American head speaker, professor in economics Dale T. Mortensen and the new president of the Rebild Park Society, Jesper Jespersen, were together with several other participiants in the Rebild festivities initiated into the Guild at the traditional ceremony in Duus´ Wine Cellar in Jens Bangs Stenhus.
And they were - like all new members of the Guild - presented with a key to the wine cellars secret back entrance and treated to the Guilds traditional meal: red sausages, beer and "potato juice".
Foto: Jens Morten/Fini Ryming