COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Ulrich Ammundsen was stunned and confused about what he had seen and what he was feeling and what he was supposed to do.
Even after Eriksen was taken to the hospital, and even after word came that Eriksen was alive and stable, Ammundsen — who is a host city manager for the fan zones in Copenhagen — struggled to process his emotions.
So that night, as he finally drifted off to sleep, still turning over in his mind the roller-coaster of emotions he had experienced, he came up with an idea.
She went to the supermarket and dropped them off at the office near the port, and early on Sunday morning, the first person — a man who by chance was at the fan zone with a group of heart attack survivors — picked up a marker and wrote Eriksen a message.
To have Eriksen — born, in 1992, the year Denmark won their only Euros, in the small town of Middelfart — leading the team in this tournament, where Denmark is able to play Euros games in its home stadium for the first time, was a source of national joy.
Patrick Hoff Sonne, a 32-year-old Danish fan, was sitting a half-dozen rows from the field on the side where the incident took place, and he says he initially thought Eriksen might just have fainted or felt woozy because of dehydration.
“I saw Christian Eriksen’s girlfriend” just a few rows away, Sonne says, and she was “carrying their children in her arms.” A friend Sonne was with had recently had a child himself and began crying beside him.
For Sonne, the shock, disbelief and fear had all mixed together, and though there was a chance the game might continue , Sonne knew he was in no place to cheer.
In the days since, he has grappled, just as Ammundsen did, with how to come to terms with seeing a person he has strong feelings for in such a grave state.
Ammundsen asked what it was, and they explained that their son-in-law was one of the medics who had rushed onto the field to save Eriksen’s life.
She had seen the game, of course, but even more she had come into school on Monday morning and heard her students, most of whom are 14, talking to each other about what had happened.
“Some of the students were a bit afraid and it’s important to talk about it.