| 30 September 2026 |
 den lille havfrue Visiting The Little Mermaid has actually become a bit controversial, at least for the Danes. It's just too popular, and the endless succession of tour buses has the effect of stereotyping Danish culture. I don't mind! It's a lovely statue and a lovely story, although most of us today think she should not have given up so much to become human.  Nyhavn, the classic canal in Copenhagen. A viking ship replica sails past our AirBNB in Aarhus. We were on the 32nd floor of a condo tower with ceiling to floor windows. Thanks, Sean and Nicole! A modern cruise ship, predawn, from the same vanatage point.  Den Gamle By is an award winning museum in Aarhus. The village is comprised of authentic half timbered houses collected from all around Denmark, disassembled at their point of origin and faithfully reassembled at Den Gamle By! Period actors occupy the buildings explaining their trades. The Danish flag flies over Kronborg Castle. The Danish flag is the oldest national flag in the world! Kronborg Castle spire with crows on ramparts.Kronborg Castle in Helsingnor was the location of Shakespeare's fictional tragedy, Hamlet. There were reenactments of parts of the play throughout the day that we visited Kronborg.  Kronborg Castle from outside the ramparts.At this location, Mary and I were only 4 kilometers away from Sweden. Mary ascends the narrow and rounded steps of the Vor Frelsors Kirke tower. 400 steps for me using a bad knee and a bum ticker, but Mary encouraged me all the way!  Mary snaps a photo of Holger the Dane in the lower casements of Kronberg Castle. You walk through the narrow basement casements advertised as "creepy" but they mostly seemed dangerously dark to me as they were barely illuminated by small candles. We used the lights in our phones to prevent falling down some deep Danish well. Roskilde Cathedral. This 850 year old church is the burial place of 39 Danish kings and queens, all held in elaborate sarcophagi. Sean, Nicole, and Mary inside Roskilde Cathedral. Kng's tomb Roskilde Domkirke The ever popular Lazarus story carved into one of the choir stalls at Roskilde Domkirke. Hojbro Plads in Copenhagen  Sean, Mary and Nicole admire a Ron Mueck sculpture at ARos. Lucy - the mother of us all - greets visitors to the Moesgaard Museum outside Aarhus. Moesgaard is a fabulous archaelogical museum demonstrating the latest discoveries, often culminating in a lifesize model of the deceased. Mary has posed with Lucy in the insert; she wasn't very tall! A stone age girl - full size reconstruction from skeleton - Moesgaard Museum. I've talked before about the tremendous advances in archaeogenomics. This reconstruction of face including eye and hair colour can all be done by analyzing the DNA in hair and bone fragments. These early human visitors to Denmark created enormous shell middens right under their habitations. It seems that no Danish museum is complete without a handful of skeletons or bog bodies. This young woman, buried with all her finery, was really attractive in reconstruction. I guess none of us look that good with all the flesh stripped from our bones. Mary and I spent almost three hours at the National Museum and we only scratched the surface of all the exhibits there.  I am glad that the human remains in these Danish museums are treated very respectfully.The 2500 year old body now called Grauballe Man is held in a chapel-like room at Moesgaard where it is possible to quietly contemplate connection with such a remote life and death. bicycle parking lot, Copenhagen shrimp smorrebrod I emphasize here, relative to my comments on the news page about Danish cuisine, that this is everyday food in Denmark! This is not new Nordic cuisine, but quotidian repast in Denmark.  herring smorrebrod with blackberries  salmon smorrebrod  We flew over Greenland on the way home. Mary and I looked around the cabin of the plane. Only 5 window shades were up, lifted by people watching this landscape go by. The rest were watching movies! Don't get me started. If someone tells you that you should see The Little Mermaid, people will line up forever. But the landscape of Greenland isn't on people's to-do list. We also flew over Baffin Island which as you know is equally spectacular. The more rolling terrain of the Northwest Territories - where we started off this summer - was already covered in fresh snow! Yikes.  |
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