Denmark

Copenhagen

The best known of all of Copenhagen's sights is the Little Mermaid statue, representing Hans Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid. The popularity is obvious - the tour buses line up and people crowd around to take pictures. Hans Christian Andersen lived in Copenhagen (including in 3 houses along the Nyhavn canal), but was born in Odense (which has a museum that illustrates his lifes work). Unlike the rest of my travels, I was with a tour group on this trip, but our guide didn't bring us here to line up with the other buses, we instead saw other things, including some that were more out of the way but more interesting (but we did have free time to walk here on our own if we wanted).

Among those things that are less well known but more historic are the Round Tower, containing Europe's oldest functioning observatory. It was built by Christian IV in 1642. Copenhagen also has some good museums, including the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, which contains lots of Egyptian, Roman, Greek and Etruscan works, mainly statues and other objects, but also some paintings. The building itself is also very impressive, with lots of marble and even an indoor garden with palm trees. I have to rate the Glyptotek a notch above the National Museum which is itself a very good museum. The National Museum has an especially good section on Danish Prehistory, with artifacts, including well preserved bodies, recovered from peat bogs.

Tivoli Gardens has been in Copenhagen since 1843, built right downtown across from the train station. It offers all sorts of amusements, from rides to music and shows, and fireworks two nights a week. Shown here is one of the performers from the night I attended. The girl at the top was just catapulted up there from the springboard on the right. The 2 previous shows on this stage included gymnasts specializing in handstands, and a ventriloquist.

On the right you see the interior of the Train Station, with a very nice wood framed ceiling. I used this station several times, including for my departure from Copenhagen on an overnight train to Stockholm (that train ride included an interesting transfer of the train onto a ferry for the crossing into Sweden).

Zealand north of Copenhagen

In Helsingør on the coast across from Sweden is Kronborg Castle (also known as Elsinore), shown at the left, is most famous for being the setting of Shakespeare's play, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Although that story is fiction, the castle is real and has a real history, important militarily with its setting on the coast on the strait across from Sweden, just 4 miles away. I got here too late so wasn't able to tour the inside of this one.

The Louisiana Modern Art Museum in Humlebæk contains a good collection of modern art, with things like Calder mobiles and paintings by Andy Warhol.

Roskilde

The Roskilde Cathedral (16th century Antwerp altarpiece shown) was completed during the 13th century. It holds the remains of 38 Danish kings and queens, interred in various ornate sarcophoguses within the cathedral.

Great Belt Bridge

The Great belt bridge was just completed and opened to cars in 1998, it carries both cars (by bridge) and trains (by combination of bridge and tunnel) between Denmark's islands of Zealand and Funen, completing the link between Denmark's largest islands and the mainland of Europe. Until 1998, it was necessary to take a ferry to get from Copenhagen to the mainland of Europe, so this is a big change for Denmark. We crossed this bridge on a tour bus, with a toll of about $150 in each direction (cars are charged about $30 to $35 in each direction). The high bridge has a span of 1 mile between the main towers, and was the longest in the world until a new bridge opened in Japan about a month later. I don't have a figure for the low section of the bridge, but as you can see from the picture it must be many miles. This $5 billion new bridge was contracted in Europe's new currency the Euro, one of the first projects to use the new currency, which seems a bit ironic to me since Denmark has not joined much of the rest of Europe in adopting the Euro as its currency.

Ærø

Another interesting feature of this town was the small beach houses. These houses, built along the beach, are day houses used by people at the beach, they're not equipped with electricity or running water, and they're not for overnight stays. Unfortunately, they're not for rent, but they were interesting to see. Only a few are shown here, there were quite a few more.

Our island tour brought us to the Bregninge Church, which in many ways is typical of the churches of the region, but this is an especially good example because of the old frescoe painting on the ceiling. The small ship hung from the ceiling is also a common sight throughout much of Scandinavia. Both interior and exterior views are shown here.

Finally, a couple of other things seen on the island. First is a Long Dolmen, a 5000 year old Neolithic burial place. This is one of several styles of old burial places that we saw around Denmark, other types included mounds with rooms inside (built of stone, and covered with earth), and gravesites ringed with stones that outlined the shape of a Viking ship. Another thing we saw was windmills. There are not many of this old style left, we saw a lot more of the new type for electric power generation.