Would you have boarded that ship?

I was walking along the harbor in Copenhagen on one of my last days here, and a woman walking beside me told me what this place used to be. Her name was Lisa. She was with her American family visiting from New York.

This exact quay is where Danish families boarded ships for America. They stood in a line, hoping nothing would go wrong on the crossing, on their way to a country they had never seen, to start with nothing.

Most of them never came back.

I have done it three times. Russia, then South Africa, then Canada, then finally the United States. And standing there, I thought: they may have had the harder part, or maybe I did.

There is a statue on that quay of a young woman looking out at the sea before she leaves. Her name is Kristina, spelled the same way as mine. Aunt Lisa, as her family called her, said we look alike.

Around her, the paving stones carry the names of people who left, with the year each of them departed. 1881. 1895. Real people who decided their dream was worth taking this risk.

The statue on this quay, Kristina, was made by an American sculptor, Dennis Smith, and she is his own great-grandmother, who left northern Jutland for Utah in the 1860s at seventeen. He placed her facing into the wind, looking out at the sea, in the moment before leaving. He has said he did not make her only as his great-grandmother. He made her to represent everyone who left, standing there knowing she is about to leave behind everything she has ever known, and knowing at the same time that a new life is waiting for her.

The paving stones around her carry about 200 names of people who left from this spot, each with the year they departed. They were Danish families who sailed to Utah between 1850 and 1900. About 18,000 of them made that crossing.

The quay is called Amerikakaj (lit. ‘America Quay’), and it is still here in Østerbro. The last passenger ship to America sailed from Copenhagen in 1935.

When I was leaving, one of Aunt Lisa’s family members asked if they would see her again during the trip. She said no. He asked if she was tired of them. She said, all good things must come to an end. She didn’t apologize, soften, or go for a polite lie. She just said what was true. And in the place where thousands of people said goodbye forever it felt like exactly the right thing to say.

You can watch the full video here.

Have you ever left everything behind to start again? I would like to hear where you went.

Kris Safarova

P.S. We are starting to wrap up the co-author project, similar to Win When It’s Hard. This may be the last co-authored project I do as we have other initiatives that will be taking up my time. If you want to join us, you can do so here. I am offering a $300 discount, so you can lock in your spot at $997 upfront fee or still get a discount with installments, four payments of $275.