A walking tour of the centre of town takes in most of the top attractions without a great deal of effort. Unless, of course, it's the deep of winter after heavy snows. We slipped and slided our way around, fortunate to never end up on our backsides but definitely prone to a few of those comic, arm-windmilling moments of near collapse.
Certainly the most magical snow and ice fields through which we
trekked were in Tivoli Gardens. For some reason I had always had the (incorrect) impression of this as formal gardens in the European style, with flowers, parterres and fountains. Nope. It's Disneyland. Quite literally. The legend has it that Walt's visit here is what inspired the original park. It's easy to see the inspiration, with themed areas, loving attention to architecture, careful landscaping and a balance between rides, restaurants and shops. I looked longingly at the roller coasters but, frankly, I was already having difficulty with the sub-zero temperatures. Accelerating the speed of the arctic air didn't seem like a good idea. Instead, we tried a progression of mulled alcohols (wine at one booth, cider at the next ...) and drank quickly before the libations cooled. (Drinks went from boiling to chilled in about 10 minutes.) The whole place is magical at this time of year, kitted out with Christmas lights and featuring a Christmas land where elves play amongst the igloos and romp with polar bears. Go after dark for the best effect.A comprehensive walking tour of town started on the Strøget, a long, pedestrianised area linking the west and east parts of town. Though recognisable global brands were present, the town seemed to retain more local vendors than the modern average. Royal Copenhagen is, of course, worth a look in, but the most interesting shop is probably Illums Bolighus, a multi-story emporium of kitchenware, furniture and design all with that clean, bright Danish style.
Strøget empties into an exceptionally large town square called Kongens Nytorv. Here you'll find the country's most famous department store, Magasin du Nord, and the Hotel d'Angleterre, supposedly the city's grandest hotel (poky, dark lobby and a '70s-feeling coffee room and restaurant across the front; I wasn't impressed), the royal theatre and all manner of grand facades of former palaces surrounding an equestrian statue of Christian V, the "Kongens" for whom it was named. I saw photos of the square in summer in which it looked lovely and gracious. I have to admit that at this time of year it was just a greyish white stretch of tundra with dirty slush around the edges, disfigured by a massive public transport construction project.
While here, we picked up the sound of the royal guard coming down Strøget for their change in front of the current Queen's palace of Amelienborg. Here, Copenhagen beats London, as the ceremony covers a much longer distance and is more interesting at its culmination. The guards march a good half mile, led by an impressive marching band that pulls tourists and natives like a group of pied pipers of Hamlin. When at last they reach the palace, the change takes place four times, because Amelienborg is actually four matching neo-classical palaces, set on corners of an octagonal courtyard, with the massive dome of Frederick's church anchoring your eye out one sightline, and the modern opera house along the other. All this dramatic architecture, designed to be a fluid, monumental whole, makes Amelienborg one of the great architectural set pieces of Europe. Even better when a bunch of nattily dressed guardsmen in bear skin hats are enlivening the scene.
Frederick's Church, more popularly known as the marble church or Marmorkirken, is more impressive on the outside than in. It's the dome of St. Peters, brought north and put atop an imposing classical building. Unfortunately they ran out of money in its construction, delaying its completion for a century, so the deft, light touch of the baroque gave way to heavier, darker 19th century styles. Worth a look, but it's a brooding, somewhat oppressive interior that won't encourage you to linger.
Nearby (in fact, just off Kongens Nytorv) is Nyhavn, the picturesque harbour. A procession of colourfully painted warehouses stand on either side of a channel filled with sailing vessels. Most of the buildings are now restaurants or hotels. It's clearly a hub of nightlife on the tourist scene, but was too far a walk for convenience from our hotel, so we simply walked around at mid-afternoon and took a few photos.
Just beyond Amelienborg in the other direction you can walk along the waterfront until you get to the statue of the little mermaid, for most people certainly the most well known attraction in Denmark. She is, I'm sorry to say, a disappointment. I'd always had the impression of her sitting in the middle of the harbor, framed by water. Instead she's right up on the shore, perched on a rock on a small, pebble strewn beach and surrounded by busloads of tourists. Much more impressive, to my mind, is the monumental statue of Gefion you pass on the way to see her.
Gefion was a minor Norse goddess to whom the King of Sweden offered as much land as she could plough in a day. She used magic to turn her four sons into supernatural oxen, and the quartet was able to circle enough acreage to create what is now the island of Zealand, on which Copenhagen sits. The statue is of a much larger than life Gefion driving the four impressively energetic oxen before her plough, and sits at the top of what, in summer, is a large, cascading fountain. It doesn't take long amongst the Danes to pick up the long-standing, passionate rivalry with the Swedes, so this isn't just an attractive monument, it's a statement of national pride and a reminder of superiority over the northern neighbours.
Within three days we'd ticked off the majority of sites in my Top 10 Copenhagen book, so thought a trip outside the city was in order. A decision reinforced by the fact that few other things were open on New Year's Day. So it was off to Roskilde.
This is an ancient city with deep Viking roots, ranging up a hill above a fjord. There's a good variety of tourist attractions, but the top two are the cathedral and the Viking Ship Museum, the first at the top of the hill and the second below, on the harbourside. (This is worth mentioning (a) because there are so few hills in Denmark and (b) because slipping and sliding our way up and down that hill was one of the most precarious parts of the holiday.)
The cathedral is absolutely fascinating. Unusual in that it's entirely of brick construction, yet light and airy inside due to generous windows and plaster vaults of bright whitewash decorated with vivid medieval designs. I was surprised, in a royal cathedral in a protestant country, to find many ancient catholic touches remaining, from the wall paintings in the chapels to the saint-encrusted tomb of Margaret I to misericords on the bottoms of the choir stalls. Either the reformation was a lot more gentle here than in many other parts of Europe, or they've done a lot of restoration. The main draw of this church, however, is the procession of royal tombs from the legendary Harald Bluetooth to the present day. You can even see the artists' model of the radically modern glass egg that will someday hold the present queen and her consort.
Christian IV is here, of course, in a gloriously over-the-top mortuary chapel (see right), a private box and the pulpit. Elsewhere are clusters of later 17th century tombs beneath marble canopies, baroque fantasies encrusted with fluttering angels and a room of early 19th coffins that look more like a display of oversized French Empire urns than anything funereal. Our wander triggered a real interest in Danish history, as when I look at a grandiose memorial I want to know more about the person inside. Does the sculpture honestly reflect the majesty of a life, or is it architectural compensation for under achievement? While not sure of her contributions, I was pleased to spot the baroque splendour of Queen Charlotte Amalie's tomb. Any woman who gives her name to a Caribbean capital filled with great duty free shopping and within spitting distance to some of the finest beaches in the world is going to deserve a few extra prayers from me for the gentle repose of her soul.
Down the hill, the Viking Ship Museum is a smaller and far more austere experience. The whole place is built around the carcasses of five early medieval ships that had been scuttled to make a breakwater. Not enough to make a whole museum, you'd think. But from the bones of these vessels the Danes have crafted a rounded experience. First, there are the ships themselves, displayed cleverly, in an austere, featureless hall with a glass wall behind them looking over the fjord, so it's not hard from certain angles to imagine them sailing again. There are exhibits and dioramas about the different kinds of ships, how they were used and why they were sunk. A film showing the voyages of a reconstruction of one of the ships does a fine job of conveying how brave the original sailors must have been to take to the high seas in these things.
At the end of the exhibit you get to a hall with reconstructed sections of ships, decked out with supplies, sails and painted backgrounds. On pegs across the wall are Viking costumes to try on before scrambling aboard. Were I five, or even 15, you couldn't have kept me out of them. Trying to maintain a dignified 40-something I resisted the dress-up-and-take-a-picture game, though I do think I would have looked fetching in one of those fur lined cloaks. Maybe next time.
Coming next: Why Denmark is the world's new culinary capital.
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