"Velcommen and God Jul" - Welcome and Happy Christmas - is the greeting you're likely to hear this time of year along the streets of this self-proclaimed "Danish Capital of America."
A merry place any time of the year, Solvang - a town of 5,000 residents about 35 miles north of Santa Barbara that welcomes more than 1.5 million visitors annually - fairly glows with good cheer as the yule season approaches.Walk down Copenhagen Drive and you can smell aebleskiver - tennis-ball-shaped Danish pancakes, served with seedless raspberry jam - frying in the cast-iron pans with their half-moon-shaped depressions. Turn onto Alisal Road and the fragrance of spicy frikadeller - Danish meatballs - and rod kaal - red cabbage - waft out of one restaurant after another.
Head down Mission Drive and the aroma of pastries mixes with the scent of coffee, candles, old books and wool as you peek into various shops. Turn into Jule Hus, the town's year-round Christmas shop, and a blitz of lights, glass ornaments, fat Santas and mischievous nissen - Danish Christmas elves - greet you. In Solvang Park, workmen are hanging strings of tiny fairy lights in the trees while wreaths begin to ring hand-carved shop signs.
It's Christmas in Solvang.
"The Danes love Christmas," said Gerda Manetti, a clerk at Rasmussen's emporium in the heart of town. "They celebrate Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, the first, second and third day after Christmas. We like to have a good time."
Solvang's year-round Christmas spirit kicks into high gear Thanksgiving weekend with a parade and Santa's arrival. And nowadays, along with the voices of carolers, comes the ring of cash registers because the tiny town has become home to five factory discount centers.
The Old Mill Shops on Mission Drive include the Dansk outlet, featuring china, crystal and cookware; DenMarket Square on Mission Drive has Arrow and Oneida shops; Santa Barbara Ceramic Design on Copenhagen Drive features ceramics; and the Pfaltzgraff Building on Mission Drive sells Pfaltzgraff china and cookware while, next door, a combined Hanes-Playtex-Bali-L'eggs shop has hosiery, lingerie and sleep wear.
The newest of the malls - Solvang Designer Outlets on Alisal Road - opened earlier this year, featuring outlets for Nautica, Donna Karan, Nine West, Ellen Tracy, Brooks Brothers, Van Heusen, Bass and more. The focal point of the new outlet mall is a fanciful carousel. While parents shop, kids can whirl around astride a reindeer, a horse or a lion.
While shoppers flock to the factory outlet stores, they also stroll the streets of the village, peeking into little stores that sell Danish products, from wooden shoes to ironwork to handmade sweaters.
Tired, hungry shoppers can take a rest at one of several bakeries or restaurants that serve authentic Danish meals and pastries. (The bakeries are traditionally the last stop for many visitors, who load up on fresh-baked breads and rolls for the trip home.)
Food also takes on some of the qualities of performance art in Solvang, too. Visitors can watch chocolates and waffle ice cream cones being made, and fudge boiled up, then cooled on marble slabs. At the Solvang Restaurant on Copenhagen Drive, visitors can watch the aebleskiver being made to order in a pan that makes 50 at a time. (Smaller pans can be purchased - along with a recipe - in many Solvang shops at prices ranging from $9.99 to $22.99.)
"The aebleskiver bake about seven minutes," explained Connie, the cook, peering out from the restaurant's walk-up window. "I turn them four times, a quarter turn each time. The uncooked batter flows underneath and cooks." The turning is done with a knitting needle, and the light-as-air cakes are served with a shower of powdered sugar and a wash of raspberry jam.
The town that some see as a shopping mecca and others as a place of holiday cheer was founded as something very different: a farming community. A Danish Lutheran Church convention in Michigan in June 1910 decided to buy land somewhere on the West Coast for a Danish colony that would keep to the old country's folk ways.
The church settled on 9,000 acres in Santa Barbara County, choosing it for its good climate, fertile soil and plentiful water. The new town site was named Solvang, which means "sunny field."
The first pioneers arrived in spring 1911; the first church was founded a year later in the building that now houses the Bit o' Denmark restaurant. It shared space with Atterdag (the word means "There shall be another day"), a folk school that taught both academics and Danish ways. Atterdag College opened a few blocks away in 1914.
The future Danish king, Frederik IX, and his future queen, Ingrid, visited in 1939, giving the community worldwide recognition as an unofficial Danish province. Several subsequent visits by Danish royalty have cemented its place in Danish life.
A Danish student I met at the community's museum said most people in Denmark know about Solvang.
"I had to come here to see what it was like," he said. "It's just like home."
Solvang grew up with the same agricultural look of any small California town. But in the early 1950s, storekeepers began to turn their shops into replicas of structures in their Danish homeland; a neo-mission arcade was painted with Danish flowers, false dormers and gables began to appear, roofs of copper and shingles cut to look like thatch were fashioned, and buildings began to sport (begin italics) bindingsvaerk (end italics) - the timber-framed cross-beam design characteristic of structures in Denmmark.
Much of the town's history can be seen at the Elverhoj Museum, built by sculptor and artist Viggo Brandt-Ericksen in the 1940s as a home for his family. It was owned by his wife and children after his death in 1955, and in 1987, the family handed it over to a historical group that renovated it and opened it as one of the few museums outside Denmark to be dedicated solely to Danish culture.
Brandt-Ericksen's studio is now an art gallery. The main room holds exhibits of lace made by a 90-year-old Solvang woman, a fireplace fashioned by Brandt-Ericksen, and displays chronicling the history of Denmark and of Solvang, including the first piano to be brought into the community in 1911 by farmer H.P Jensen.
"Wherever there was a party in town, they loaded (the piano) on a buggy and took it to the party," explained docent Ethel Woodward. "It was played at every party, every wedding, for years."
The family kitchen has designs carved in the paneling and bright blue and green paint on the walls, and bedrooms display handmade furniture and linens. The front parlor, "the best room" used only for special occasions, is resplendent with ornate horsehair furniture and bric-a-brac.
A smaller museum is on the second floor of the Book Loft bookstore and coffeehouse on Mission Drive; it's devoted to beloved Danish author Hans Christian Andersen, who wrote more than 160 fairy tales for children, including "The Ugly Duckling," "The Princess and the Pea" and "The Emperor's New Clothes."
A larger-than-life-size bust of Andersen is the museum's centerpoint (a duplicate stands on a pedestal in Solvang Park), and rare and not-so-rare volumes of his stories line the walls of the tiny museum. One wall is unexpectedly dedicated to an exhibit of Andersen's intricate paper-cuttings, which he fashioned to amuse some of the children who delighted in his stories.
And no visit to Solvang is complete without a visit to Mission Santa Ines, which is at the end of a pepper-tree-lined entryway off Mission Drive. Built between 1804 and 1807 by American Indian craftsmen, then rebuilt after it was severely damaged by the 1812 earthquake, Santa Ines is one of the few mission chapels that has been in continuous use since 1817.
The church has the original five-foot-thick adobe walls, worn floor tiles, priceless European artworks and primitive native paintings. Wooden benches provide seating for daily worship services, and peacefulness reigns in the silence, broken only by the periodic ringing of the mission bells.
On display are fragments of the original church altarpiece, pottery, crucifixes and candlesticks, tools, firearms and ironwork produced on mission grounds - and historic vestments, including raiment worn by Padre Junipero Serra, founder of the California mission system.
Outside, visitors can stroll the flower-filled garden and visit the cemetery, which holds the unmarked graves of about 1,700 American Indians and about 75 early California settlers.