American Ice Cream: A Danish Girl’s Discovery of Independence
In the summer of 1960, an eighteen-year-old girl from Copenhagen, Denmark, sailed into New York Harbor and felt, for the first time in her life, like she was exactly where she was supposed to be.
She had spent her childhood carrying the weight of being the wrong child in the wrong place. The awkward middle one, the left-handed daughter her father had not asked for, the girl whose poor vision went undiagnosed for so long that her teachers thought something was wrong with her mind. Denmark gave her a name for what she was. America gave her the chance to become someone entirely different.
The Danish girls of Troop II Absalon (right) shake hands with the American Girl Scouts, having just arrived into New York City after a week sailing on the Gripsholm from Copenhagen, Denmark. Kis is the 6th girl up from the bottom right.
The Story
Kirsten Maersk Dyhr was born in Copenhagen in the spring of 1942, the granddaughter of Peter Maersk-Moller, founder of Maersk Line. The weight of that heritage was complicated. Wealth in Denmark carried its own stigma, and it did not protect a sensitive, left-handed middle child from the particular loneliness of feeling like an outsider in her own family.
In June of 1960, she sailed on the Gripsholm with her Girl Scout Troop from Copenhagen to New York, watching the lights of Long Island slide past in the dark and feeling something she had no name for yet: possibility.
She stayed. She got a job, a car, a blonde American hairstyle. She traveled the country and realized she could outrun the identity her childhood had given her. She was no longer the awkward middle girl. In America, she was exotic. Foreign. Interesting. Two years later, she came back for good, built a life, raised a family, and became the kind of woman who tells a story so vividly you feel like you were there.
American Ice Cream: A Danish Girl's Discovery of Independence is her memoir, written by her daughter, drawing on decades of recorded conversations, family photographs, letters, and a trip to Denmark for the kind of research that only happens in person. It is a story about immigration and reinvention, about the particular freedom of being a stranger in a country that does not know what you used to be, and about how a person finally finds the place where they belong.
Read an Excerpt
Kirsten kept a diary during her adventures. This is the night they sailed into New York:
Far away in the fog we could catch a glimpse of the shadows of buildings: New York! Hurrah!! The sky was now dark, around 8 p.m., with only a rose-colored line on the horizon where the sun had been. There were seagulls flying around: a sign of land nearby. The air was warm and heavy. It smelled of land.
Later on, we began to see more and more lights. It was quite fantastic. We shouted and pointed. We just stood there for half an hour and watched the lights as they came closer and closer. There was land on the starboard side of the ship, and also towards the stern, and we could clearly see moving car lights on the streets along the shore. On the port side stood the Statue of Liberty with its lit flame on the top.
Now the ship will lie at anchor overnight. As we lay here in our bunks, we miss the sound from the engines. Once in a while, I'll peek out the port hole. On shore, I can clearly see the lights from the cars driving. And there again, far out off the bow, we could still see that tall shiny column with one light on the top: The Statue of Liberty.
About the Author
Kirsten Maersk Dyhr was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1942, the granddaughter of shipping magnate Peter Maersk-Moller, founder of Maersk Line. At eighteen, she sailed to the United States with her Girl Scout Troop and returned two years later to stay. She raised five children and spent decades making a distinctly American life, while never quite losing the sharp, unfiltered voice that is entirely her own. American Ice Cream is her first book.
The Making of This Book
American Ice Cream was developed and produced by Plumb Creative Books over several years of research, recording, and design. Working from decades of recorded conversations, family photographs, and a research trip to Denmark, we shaped Kirsten's story into a memoir that holds both the intimacy of lived experience and the visual richness of a life documented across two continents.
This is the kind of project we were built for: a story that lived in one person's memory for years, waiting for someone to help it take a permanent form.
A Note from Kis:
“What really surprised and delighted me was how quickly Julie was able to pick up how the story should be told. I was impressed by the way she had the photographs placed and amazed at how she used the envelopes from all the letters I had written as part of the cover of the book.”
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