Letter from Erik Menved’s Troop, April 15

Introduction by Jan
Scout-letter translated to english by Jan

Dear Scouts of Troop 8,

As your unsurpassed scoutmaster Bob has probably told you, my troop in Denmark, would like to write with some scouts in the US. I will start with a short introduction to who we are.

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I am a scoutleader from Erik Menved’s Troop located in Horsens, Denmark (Erik Menved was a former king in Denmark, hence the name, which is in fact totally irrelevant in this letter…)

Our troop now has more than 100 scouts age 6-20 and 15 active (hyperactive) scoutleaders. The troop is a part of the Danish Scout Association (Det Danske Spejderkorps), which is a non-religious scout organisation for both boys and girls. Currently the Danish Scout Association have approx. 32.000 members which makes it the largest of the five scout organisations in Denmark with a total of approx. 90.000 scouts.

I am the scoutleader of our junior-scouts (20 kids age 10-13) and of our scouts (18 kids age 14-17). I have been looking for a troop in the US that we could communicate with, to help our scouts enhance their knowledge of scouting in other parts of the world. I was looking for a large troop with lot of activity, and I came across your troop, after looking at more than 100 websites of BSA troops. I was furthermore very pleased to discover that you make great use of the internet, which is something our scouts are used to.

At this point I would usually ask anyone else to read any further information about our troop on our website (www.erikmenved.dk), but I guess it wouldn’t make any sence to you, until we make some pages in english 🙂

I was travelling around the western part of US last year, and my experiences from talking to a lot of nice americans during 3 amazing weeks of my holiday, forces me to make a few points absolutely clear:

1. Denmark is NOT the capitol of Sweden.

2. Denmark IS the home of LEGO and Hans Christian Andersen.

3. No, we dont have penguins or polar bears in the streets.

4. Yes, we all really descend from the vikings

5. Denmark has a population of 5.5 millions, and is 1/10 of the size of California (40.000 square kilometers).

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This weekend my youngest scouts (junior-scouts) attended a trip to a small cottage not far away. During this trip a few of the scouts wrote a letter for you on behalf of all the juniorscouts. Because of their age, the letter was translated by me (which is not necessarily an advantage, but anyway…) so that they could concentrate on the content and not the correct english spelling. Later this week, some photos from this weekend will be available on our website, and I will send you a link for that.

Later on some of my older scouts will write too.

LETTER FROM JUNIORSCOUTS BELOW:

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Hi Troop 8,

We’re not as active as you seem to be. We only have 40 days of camp-trips every year. On our trips we make different scouting stuff, for instance building things of poles or making campfires, but we also have some time for ourselves, where we just sit in our sleeping bags and talk. We talk all night, or most of it. The boys make stories of creepy things, og tell jokes. The girls fight in their sleeping bags.

Soon we’re going on this year’s junior-tournament. We’re divided by age in our scout organization as Mikro (age 6-8), Mini (age 8-10), Junior (age 10-13), Spejder (age 13-17) og Senior (age 16-23). On the junior-tournament we compete with the other patrols from the area in making the best campsite, the best food and so on.

We’re also going on summercamp soon. We are going to travel through Denmark all the way to Germany (220 kilometers away) on our bikes along an old road called Haervejen (Army Road), which is crowded with sights related to the history of Denmark.

There is also an orienteering race based on the famous Harry Potter on May 4. On this race we’re going to play quidditch and a lot of other things with 800 other scouts from the area. We have not been told anything else than that, and that we are going to use messages on mobile phones to solve something with the other participants.

The nature in Denmark is mostly fields, not less than 60 percent of the country. There is 11 percent of woods, so it is most common to use bivouac, sleep in tents, shelter or cabins when going on scouting trips in Denmark. We don’t have any dangerous animals in Denmark, but we have a lot of rodents, which is probably nothing compared to what you have in USA.

Today we have build some towers of poles. That was fun, and our patrol won. Well, now we will tell you a little about who we are.

My name is Peter, and I am 11 years old. I’m quite small and I talk a lot.
My name is David, and I am 12 years old and usually I’m called Harry Potter, because the other think I look a lot like him.
My name is Thea, and I am 12 years old too. Well, there’s nothing special about me…

When we are on scouting trips, we fight a lot with our leaders. Our scoutleaders are: Jan (28 years old), Kasper (28 years old), Soeren (25 years old) and Lars (40 years old).

We hope to hear a lot about scouting in your country.

Regards,

Peter, David, Christian and Thea
& all the other junior scouts of Erik Menved’s Troop

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