Follow the Vikings, see the Danish gift for bringing history to life

When he’s feeling particularly proud of his Danish half, my husband likes to argue that but for a few quirks of history, the Danes … rather than the English … would have expanded a maritime empire to world domination.

This isn’t that preposterous an argument. If you tip your world view up a bit and start with the North and Baltic Seas as the centre, Denmark suddenly becomes the spider at the centre of a critical trading web. It once counted England, Norway, Sweden and the American Virgin Islands as part of its domain. In the early Middle Ages, you could find Danish influence as far afield as Russia, Constantinople, Sicily and Normandy. The early grasp for world domination, of course, all started with the Vikings.

You don't have to leave Copenhagen to get a taste of Viking culture, of course ... the National Museum has an amazing collection (see the story here). Heading for Jutland, however, will take you deeper into the Viking heartland, while the Vikings offer a great historic theme to bind your wanderings together. The following three stops will also show off how, whether using the latest tech or hands-on experimental archeology, the Danes do an amazing job of making the distant past vivid and exciting.

Jelling

Today, it's a small village off any main route. In the 10th century, Jelling was the seat of King Gorm and his son Harald Bluetooth, the Viking monarchs who unified Denmark, used the country's name for the first time and introduced Christianity.  For both its artistic and historical significance, Jelling is a UNESCO world heritage site.

Gorm and Harald built an enormous wooden palisade here ... now marked out with towering metal posts like a vast modern sculpture ... around their great hall, two earthen mounds and a buried stone ship. The ancient burial traditions that show plenty of pagan influence sat side by side with the new religion. The most significant artefacts left to see are two monumental stones carved with runic writing and symbols. They're still in their original places between the mounds, but now enclosed in glass boxes to limit exposure to the weather. King Gorm set up the smaller to honour his wife, "Denmark's adornment", while the larger is their son's statement. It's the more impressive, with runes claiming the Christian conversion on one side, a dragon-like creature on another and a crucifiction on the third.

The colours that once decorated the stones are gone. Without stretching your imagination, the site might not be that exciting. It's the museum here that brings it to life. The experience centre is the single best example I've encountered of using technology and storytelling to bring the past to life. It's magnificently designed, and equal fun for both children and adults. It's also free.

The first room sets the stage. You enter a dimly-lit Viking great hall with an empty throne at the far end, seats along the sides and fires playing down the centre on video screens. Pause to listen to the disembodied bard's voice tell stories of conquest in English and Danish. While exploring the Viking world you'll encounter hands-on exhibits like a body fallen in battle, pierced with axe, sword and spear. Grasp a weapon's handle and the display will tell you about the injuries inflicted and how long the victim took to die. Kids loved it. In "the burial chamber", clever three-dimensional video projections take small fragments found in the mound excavations and build upon them, restoring them to their completed former glory and then pulling out to show how they would have fit into clothing or the accessories of life.

 In one particularly spooky and effective room you can journey to Valhalla. A camera reflects your image into a screen at the far end of the room. As you walk towards it your body is struck down in battle, burns in a funeral pyre, then crosses the rainbow bridge into the warriors' afterlife. In another room, hanging screens shaped like the roots of a tree and shadowy projections on the walls, constantly rotating in dim coloured lights, conjure an image that you're cradled in the roots of the tree of life, Yggdrasil. Grab a dangling listening device to hear tales of gods and heroes. Eventually you make it to the roof terrace, with spectacular views of the whole site. Don't miss the binoculars, where rolling the focus button super-imposes images of what the site would have looked like at various periods from the 10th century onwards.

The experience centre operates on standard attraction admission hours (check their web site for seasonal fluctuations), but the monuments outdoors are accessible 24/7 and the stones are lit at night. The contrast of night lighting accentuates the carvings and brings them to their best. Now that I've visited once, I realise the ideal would have been to spend an afternoon in the centre, stay at the neighbouring Jelling Kro and explore the monuments after dark. Next time.

Moesgaard

This is one of the highlights of any visit to Aarhus. Though its collection has been around for generations ... sort of a Danish version of the British Museum ... the 3-year-old main building is an architectural jaw dropper. Dominating a sylvan woodside a few miles from town, a vast triangle of concrete and glass sleeps under a sloping grass roof; it's as if Thor's lightening bolts had embedded and fossilised with a view of the fjord. The collections come to life in a magnificent mash-up of design, storytelling and technology. Galleries feel like entering atmospheric movie sets. Experts blink, shift or sigh on life-sized video screens, like portraits in Harry Potter's world, "waiting" to be asked questions. (They'll answer in Danish or English.) Throughout, there are chances to interact with the exhibits to learn more: put on 3-D goggles to see how a pre-historic village developed; stick your head inside a vast caldron to see funerary items; take the rudder of a Viking ship to sail the world. With huge kid appeal and deep content for adults, you could easily spend a day here, breaking your time up with lunch purchased from the restaurant and consumed on the grassy slopes of the roof.

The interior is like a roofed mountainside, with a vast staircase linking four stories. (There are lifts, too.) Wander down it to come face-to-face with incredibly life-like models of our pre-human ancestors. The star exhibits are on the lowest floor, as those ancestors become fully recognisable as people like us. The Viking section is the most modern down here, and invites you to follow various individual stories by grabbing a model of an artefact associated with him or her. Place it on screens throughout, and you'll hear explanations of what you're looking at from the perspective of "your" guide. This means you could actually come back multiple times and have a different experience. Though the storytelling is great, the artefacts themselves don't comprise that impressive a collection of Viking stuff. Spend time with the Viking ancestors for the best experience.

In the Bronze Age galleries you'll see exquisite artefacts (jewellery, weapons, armour, etc.) that show how the patterns and designs we think of as Viking came down in a straight line from the sophisticated people who lived here between 1700 bc and 500 bc. You'll enter a streamlined take on a burial mound to come face-to-face with some of the best preserved mummies in the world. Move on to the Iron Age (500 BC to 800 AD) where the objects get even more beautiful and there's another ancestor to meet. The Moesgaard's bog man makes the one at the British Museum ... tucked in a corner in his dusty old case ... look a very poor relation. This one,  in an even more astonishing state of preservation, forms the centre-point of a two-story gallery, surrounding him with objects and tales from the world where he lived and was probably a human sacrifice to the gods. Upstairs, as you approach an opening from which you can look down on him, the flooring changes to spongy stuff with a bit of spring, to echo the peat bog in which he was found. This is the kind of thoughtful design you find throughout the place.

In the gallery next door, you're thrust into the middle of the massive battle of Illerup Adal, in 205 AD. History has left no trace of who the warriors were, or what they were fighting for. Thanks, however, to a tradition of sacrificing the defeated enemies' armour ... in this case, throwing it into a lake ... you can wander amongst a dazzling array of swords, spears, axes, and armour for humans and horses.

Ribe
Founded at the very beginning of the 8th century, Ribe is the oldest continuously occupied town in Denmark. It was a major port throughout the Viking Age and was the first Danish town to have a cathedral as the country became Christian. By the 17th century the port had silted up. Business and government moved elsewhere. Today, only about 8,000 people live in this ridiculously quaint little town centred on a gorgeous square surrounding a rare romanesque cathedral. It's a place caught in time, much like Bruges, Venice or Mont St. Michel. Though it's like those places in its reliance on tourism, visitor numbers are much smaller (and mostly German ... it's a short jaunt over the border), meaning you can still wander quiet streets and revel in a sense of discovery.

There are two significant Viking attractions here. If you're serious about the topic, it's worth your time to do both.

Start at the Museet Ribes Vikinger, an old-style museum a few minute's walk from the cathedral. After Jelling and the Moesgaard, the collection of artefacts in glass cases with explanations on labels is a bit of a shock to the system ... especially when only the headline information is translated into English ... but it's worth ploughing on. There are some beautiful artefacts here, my favourites found in case that holds a mask of Odin and an early Christian communion cup. Contrasting religions duelling via silversmith. I was well aware of Viking craftsmanship with metal; the finds displayed here show off an impressive skill in glass, as well. Though you're likely to come here for the Vikings, there's an equally interesting section of the museum on the Middle Ages/Early Renaissance, thanks to a great fire in 1580 that trapped evidence of that period in ashes. There's also a great gift shop here with a particularly good selection of Viking-inspired jewellery.

Once you've gotten the more academic grounding at the museum, it's a short drive across the flat coastal plains around town to the Ribe Viking Centre.

There are no artefacts here. Instead, you'll find a Viking village re-created and lived in by properly costumed historical re-enactors. (Ironically, when we went, many of them were German on back-in-time summer holidays.) There are a couple of classic long hall houses, divided with sections for animals, work and living, all under an elegantly curving roof crafted like the hull of an upturned Viking ship. Explore a farm stocked with historic breeds. Wander through thatched houses stocked with the tools of the craftspeople who worked there; at many, they'll be practicing their trade. Watch the craftsmen building a Viking ship, or others working on the new Christian church. There was a marketplace with the tented encampments of visiting re-enactors, some of them selling hand-crafted wares like knives or pottery in the Viking tradition. Children can head off to an arena to train as Viking warriors.

The Viking Centre is probably a bit more intriguing for kids than adults, since all the activities are geared towards them. I was expecting the re-enactors to be employees tasked with delivering a rounded experience. Discovering that they were volunteers explained why most of them quietly went about their work, only speaking when you prodded them with questions and often not having the answers we were after. Given that entry was DK120 (about £10) and that the Center is probably the most widely-advertised Viking-themed attraction in Danish tourism, I don't think it was too demanding to expect a bit more for our money.

Try Jutland for an easy, off-the-beaten track summer holiday

We’d been toying with the idea of exploring Denmark beyond Copenhagen for years. Then circumstances demanded that we take our holidays in August. As childless people we’d always been able to avoid the limited availability and the jacked-up prices of the school holidays. Even if we succeeded in finding an option with heat, sun and sand, I realised we’d be surrounded by children. Even staying in the UK would be tricky; by the time I started planning in late June everywhere I called in Devon, the Lake District and Scotland was booked.

The fates … or, more appropriately for this story, the norns … were clearly calling us to the Bencard homelands. Who, takes summer holidays in Denmark? (Other Scandinavians, Germans and a few Italians, it turns out, but not in any great numbers.) Flights were reasonable. Almost all the hotels I called had availability. I booked a table at a Michelin-starred restaurant with less than a month’s notice. Despite the reputation of Copenhagen as a fabulously expensive city, hotel and restaurant prices on Denmark’s main peninsula of Jutland were in line with or a bit below English prices. There would even be the possibility of a beach.

Of course, there were drawbacks. The temperature would rarely top 20C (70F). Sunshine alternated with pounding rain, and the wind never let up. (Admittedly, all the locals have said it’s been a horrible summer.) The rain had a strange way of descending when we walked out to dinner. Danish hotel rooms tend to have a monastic austerity that discourages lingering within them, and none have bathtubs. Most companies charge a phenomenal premium to hire an automatic car (not, thankfully, Europcar). The country has an old-fashioned approach to Sundays; without advance planning you’ll find yourself with little to do and nowhere to eat.

These are minor irritations in what turned out to be a fantastic holiday choice. And an exotic one. Go to a specialist travel bookstore and you’re likely to find just a single guide to Denmark beyond Copenhagen, while neighbouring shelves groan beneath the weight of Italian, Spanish and French titles. Almost everything we did felt like a real discovery. We found museums at the cutting edge of using technology to bring their collections to life. A world-renown aquarium. Dramatic landscapes. Truly spectacular food. An independent micro-brewery in every town and high streets that have far more boutique shops and independent restaurants than chains. All in places that almost nobody I know has ever set foot.

Go North, tourist!
We started with a week exploring Jutland. This is the thumb of land that sticks up from the European

continent. (The rest of Denmark is comprised of an archipelago of more than 400 islands, meaning that you get to cross some spectacular bridges ... most notably the Great Belt Bridge, above, which covers the longest span of any bridge outside Asia.) We’d go all the way to the northern tip of the country at Skagen, then work our way back down.

Skagen is the last town at the northern tip of the country. This fishing port and critical guardian of
shipping lanes was “discovered” by a group of 19th century artists who did for this part of the world what the French impressionists and post-impressionists did for Provence. Thus you’ll find picturesque 19th century cottages clustered behind dramatic grass-covered dunes, linked by bike paths and quiet, sand-dappled roads. Once you clamber over the dunes, the sand is smooth as finely-milled flour, scattered with pebbles fascinating in their variety of colour and scrubbed smooth by the power of ancient glaciers. Most gloriously, even in the middle of the summer holidays you can have vast tracks of beach to yourself once you walk a few hundred yards from the main access points. It’s a beach resort from the imagination of Hans Christian Andersen, distilled for holiday makers with a Disneyish flair. Half an hour along the coast in Hirtshals, the Nordsoen Oceanarium shows off how vibrant life is in the waters off those sands.

About an hour further south, Aalborg was underwhelming. We’d hoped to tour the eponymous distillery here, maker of the country’s most famous and widely exported line of aquavit. Akvavit (also called snapps) in Danish. It’s a requirement at any traditional family meal, particularly when pickled fish is involved, and a mainstay of the Bencard bar in a variety of flavours. Though both Aalborg’s web site and Trip Advisor talked about tours and a museum of Danish akvavit, a walk around a dilapidated and very quiet factory complex told a different story. Not a tourist sign to be seen. Eventually we found a local who revealed that the museum and tours had shut down a couple of years ago and the distilling had moved to a new factory on the outskirts of town. The picturesque 19th century complex had been sublet to other businesses. This is, admittedly, the kind of occasional disappointment that comes with the risk and adventure of going off the beaten track.

The distillery’s evolution is a fitting metaphor for Aalborg itself. It feels like a town past its prime, shrinking through a long, dignified and never-ending recession. Once a manufacturing powerhouse and a key port on a fjord, now a lot of businesses have moved elsewhere and it feels a bit of a backwater. There are some pretty buildings in the centre of town and an impressive promenade along the fjord that would have been excellent for a bike ride. There’s a dignified town square hemmed by half-timbered buildings and dutch gables and a community centre by the fjord designed by the same guy … a local … who created the Sydney Opera House. It has an interesting roofline but doesn’t make it into iconic architecture territory. Aalborg is a pleasant place to wander around, but there appeared to be nothing to hold your attention for too long. It’s worth a day and a night, but probably not longer.

Far more significant is Aarhus, the 2017 European capital of culture and Denmark’s second city. A mix of sprawling port and major university town, it’s obvious that money has poured in here over the past several years to get things ready for this year’s honour. (It appears some improvements didn’t meet deadlines, as there’s still plenty of construction around the harbour.) There are new museums and attractions, long stretches of pedestrianised shopping streets and a river walk lined with restaurants. The square around the cathedral is bright with freshly-restored historic buildings … and a few new ones … filled with hotels, shops and restaurants. The town also boasts two Michelin-starred restaurants, one of which became a highlight of our trip. Our two nights here could have easily been three.

Viking heartland
Continuing south, almost to the major highway that heads east towards Copenhagen, Jelling is well worth a detour. A picturesque drive through forested hills leads to a small village with some Viking burial mounds and a couple of carved rune stones beside an old parish church. This might not sound like much, but the former palace and and family funerary complex of Harold Bluetooth is one of the most significant Viking sites in Denmark, and a discovery centre is arguably the best I’ve seen at using technology to bring ancient stories to life. There’s not much beyond this, so it’s probably not worth more than half a day, but there is a tempting-looking inn called Jelling Kro I’d consider booking if I wanted to start or end my day there.

Anyone with children would naturally head from here to Billund, Lego world headquarters and home of the original Legoland. Those in the know told us that, unlike Disney, it’s really not a place that offers anything for adults without children. So, as tempting as it might have been for the husband to revisit scenes of childhood delight, we headed for a different scene of his youth.

Back in the ‘70s, my husband understandably thought that watching experts scraping away at selected dark patches in a field of mud while your uncle tried to explain how Viking archeology worked wasn’t as much fun as getting your Lego driving license. Year’s later, the fact that the uncle ran the excavations in Denmark’s oldest city, uncovering the history that makes Ribe one of the best sites to visit for a Viking experience, is exciting. The legacy of Mogens Bencard’s work is a fine little history museum in the centre of town (much more old school than Jelling, but filled with interesting stuff) and a Viking Centre just outside of town where they take the “experiential archeology” approach to let you wander through a very authentic Viking village peopled by re-enactors. Ribe is also unbelievably pretty, with a small Romanesque cathedral surrounded by streets of charming shops and houses. It looks like one of Denmark’s museums of historic buildings … yet it’s still a working town. My biggest planning mistake was only allowing one night here; we clearly needed two.

Jutland is popular with Germans, particularly Ribe which is a charming excursion not far over their border. I heard a few Italians who I assume, as with their visits to Scotland, like heading here to get a respite from their hot summers. We encountered only a handful of Brits and Americans and, with the exception of one American family, they were always travelling with someone with Danish connections. English is widely spoken here, so you’d have no problem getting around,but Jutland is clearly an undiscovered country for those groups. In the coming stories I’ll offer a bit more detail on our Jutland adventures: the glories of Skagen, the Viking trail and a validation of Danish high cuisine’s heady reputation.