The festivities in Rebild are tradition – and so is Christian the Fourth´s Guild in Aalborg. These traditions meet once a year on the Fourth of July, when the leading dignitaries of the Rebild festivities on the morning before the events in Rebild Hills are initiated into the Guild.
As usual the initiation took place in Duus´ Vinkjælder in Jens Bangs Stenhus. This year the main speaker was the former Danish foreign minister and present chairman of the UN General Assembly, Mogens Lykketoft, who together with some twenty other members-to-be had to sit with an empty glass, while the Guild benchers proclaimed “our thirst first”.
After the initiation and the traditional walk round Jens Bangs Stenhus, food and drink for everybody were served: red sausages, beer and snaps – the latter is in the Guild called potato-juice.
Mogens Lykketofts wife, Mette Holm, was also initiated and so were the other main speaker, Rune Hørby, the chief of tourism in the “Danish” town of Solvang, California, Jeff Paaske, and Stephen De Vincent, the partner of USA´s ambassador to Denmark. The ambassador himself, Rufus Gifford, was initiated two years ago and was both last year and also this year among the onlookers. Youth speaker was Victoria Due from Aalborg. She has just returnet from Oregon where she has been a exchange student for one year.
Also as an onlooker was the new-appointed Mayor for a Day, Poul Pedersen. He is from Thisted and got his education as a landscape gardener at Thomsens Planteskole in Aalborg and he has since the late 1960´es been living near Chicago where he has founded a large garden center and nursery. Poul Pedersen was initiated into the Guild about 30 years ago.<<<
Photo: Jens Morten og Fini Ryming