Danish Legends

The first thing I said on Sunday morning was that I should have brought my sunglasses. The Copenhagen sky decided to help by pouring rain as we made our way to the station to catch the next train to Lejre, a village about 50 km west.

The small settlement is a relatively unobtrusive blip on the Danish countryside today, but it was once the capital of an Iron Age kingdom and the real-world counterpart to Heorot, the famous mead-hall in Beowulf. It’s because of the extensive historical dramas that played out on these simple fields that this area is described as the “land of legends.”

More particularly, an open-air museum not far from the train platform, Sagnlandet Lejre, boasts the English name Land of Legends. This is an archeological site, but it’s also an immersive, interactive experience, described as “experimental archeology” because of the way in which re-enactors use historically accurate techniques to heat reconstructed buildings, weave costumes, and construct pottery. The Land of Legends, in the space of about 100 acres, brings together a Stone Age campsite (circa 5000 BC), Iron Age settlements (around 200 BC), a Viking village (900 AD), and an eighteenth century village (positioned as far away from these heathen influences as possible, of course).

During the summer months, families can actually sign up to live in these unique places, dressing in the historical costumes and living life as we think they might have done, hundreds (or in some cases, thousands) of years ago. Not surprisingly, the Land of Legends was much more sparsely populated at the end of November, but the whole area was open to the public for free, as part of the Christmas season (it’s closed for most of the fall season).

A larger version of the map is available here

An empty bus was waiting at the train station, and the friendly, middle-aged driver accepted our train tickets from Copenhagen, even though we’re pretty sure he was just glad for the company. The drive through the village, sleety snow in the ditches and marshes spread out across the low-lying fields, felt a bit too much like the drive to Eel Marsh House in the Woman in Black. We were more interested in different kind of ghosts though. 

The absence of a full crew of re-enactors and tourists actually afforded us a really unique perspective of the Land of Legends, starting at the Viking village. We were able to walk through the reconstructed buildings at our leisure and across the fields, breathing in the fresh, albeit brisk, Danish air. The rain held off while we were in Lejre, though every other step was through the mud.

Things got even more deserted as we moved to the Iron Age village, where we felt wonderfully isolated in time and space.

Just past the Iron Age village, a path through the woods supposedly leads to a Sacrificial Bog—remember the Bog Bodies in Copenhagen? Some of them likely came from ceremonial sites like this one, but the bushwhacking ended up being too tangly and off the beaten track that we were convinced we were headed to our own sacrificial pool of muck and couldn’t count on getting out in the end.

Meanwhile, a log bridge connects the Stone Age campsite to the rest of the site—a very low-lying bridge at this time of year, and you can imagine what happened as soon as we put our weight on the plank. All the crews of Vikings and Iron Age hunted never had adventures the likes of the two of us trying to get across that bridge and keep our shoes in decent condition.

On a piece of higher ground, overlooking a sizable, beautifully desolate landscape, there were boulders arranged in the pattern of a ship—a Viking Age Stone Ship, a massive burial monument (no bodies here, although this reconstruction was, like everything else at the Land of Legends, assembled using ancient techniques, and is a replica of a Stone Ship located about 2 km away that had been cleared by the landowner in 1921).

Leaving the Vikings and prehistoric folks behind, we entered an eighteenth-century village, where re-enactors kept the low-lying houses warm on a cold afternoon by constantly tending a fire in the kitchen, offering visitors a seat in the cozy wood heat to shake off the chill—and a steaming hot beer, if that suits your tastes.

We passed through a number of workshops on our way through the village, including a textile workshop where period costumes were constructed using large looms, and a pottery where jugs and vases were created, for sale at the gift shop.

On a hillside, the grunts and groans of wild pigs filled the ears. We were walking side-by-side with a costumed peasant now, so Kayla asked what happened to Piglet and her friends over the winter. Here we were, in a world that literally had a portion of bog designated as a Sacrificial Bog, but the nonchalance of being told most would be slaughtered still somehow caught us off guard.

The Land of Legends is a strange place to have stumbled upon, and a really cool place for exploring in the off-season. Of course, the settlements arranged in a neat row are hundreds of years apart, but the park still gives a sampling of Danish history over a long trajectory.

Our bus driver friend was parked by the entrance gate, almost as if he were waiting for us again—he had one more passenger this time, the Pig-Slaughtering-Peasant. When we tried to buy our tickets, we found out that his dispenser only accepted cash—which of course we had none of, so we had to go back through the gift shop and take a few kroner out. As we left though, we thought we heard the bus driver yell something at us, but decided we were hearing things.

With a few coins in our pocket, we came back to the parking lot, only to hear the bus coming to life—he said he’s wait for us, right? We jumped on-board, but as we tried to hand him the money he simply yelled: “I have to go!”

Turns out the train to Copenhagen only passes through Lejre once an hour. Turns out said train was coming in about five minutes, and so the bus sped across the narrow roadways to somehow make the journey in four. As we jumped off the bus at the platform and tried to hang him the coins, he refused them—which probably explained what he yelled out to us, and says something about the hospitality of the Danish people.

Let’s just ignore the fact that the bus could have abided by the speed limit if we hadn’t gone back for those coins in the first place. Pig-Slaughterer jumped off with us to point us in the right direction, and the unlikely team of three ran across the platform, found the ticket machine, and punched in our destination as the lights of an oncoming train appeared at the edge of the tracks. I couldn’t have written a more down-to-the-wire ending if I tried—the screen read “Printing” (come on, come on, come on) just as the brakes of the train squealed and the doors hissed open, and we waited until we were seated before catching our breaths.

After another long day, we were both exhausted as we settled in for the half hour trip back to Copenhagen, calling ourselves pretty lucky.

We found a café that was essentially a less-smoky version of the house in the Land of Legends—a close, cozy atmosphere with hot, creamy soup, a far cry from the hot dogs and croissants we’d been accustomed to. Oh, and the beer was cold here.

When we got back to Trine’s, our host had left a note for us that she was gone for the night—I realize that when you sign up for Airbnb you have to go through a verification process, and the whole system works on user ratings and feedback, but it’s still amazing (or insane?) that someone would trust another person they’ve just met with the complete run of their house. I thought a bit about some of my earlier experiences Couchsurfing—this definitely has some similarities, especially when it comes to trust and interaction, but Airbnb sets up definite level of distance with the host (or at least have a greater potential to do so). We didn’t speak a whole lot to Trine during our two-night stay, whereas that’s kind of the whole point of Couchsurfing—I guess privacy is part of what you pay for, for good or for bad.

Anyway, we didn’t go through her desk or steal all her tea. Again, for good or for bad.

After a windy, rainy night, the morning dawned overcast but dry. We hooked onto the metro line and got ready to leave Copenhagen in the early afternoon.

We still have two and a half weeks left in Europe, but that time will quickly slip by. The turbulent flight from Copenhagen to Amsterdam was our last flight together for the foreseeable future, and the wall of European city maps is full for now—instead, we have term papers and final assignments to fill up the remaining time, along with some decidedly Dutch Christmas festivities.

Shouldn’t be too hard to have a bit of fun in the time we’ve got left, but it will be nice to be on the other side of the Atlantic again after all.

Cheers,

rb

Christmas in Copenhagen

If we’ve learned one thing about air travel during our fall abroad, it’s the importance of being aware of when you’re leaving Point A on your journey. An early morning rise, like when we left for Greece, throws your day off, while an evening trip, like this past weekend, gives you a weird span of a few hours where it’s too early to go to the airport but you’re bored sitting around home and don’t want to start anything new. When you’re looking at a flight a few weeks down the nose of the calendar, it’s easy to forget the correlation between bad timing and grumpiness.

We packed our heavy coats and umbrellas for a weekend in Copenhagen, the capital city of Denmark positioned right on the eastern edge of the country (on the island of Zealand, which has no connection to New Zealand) with just a thin strait between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea separating it from Sweden. Kayla had Vikings on her mind, while I was in tow for the Scandinavian Christmas lights—both of which we found in droves.

We landed in Copenhagen well after dark on Friday night and found the metro line connecting the airport to the city centre. When we found ourselves at the doorstep of the cozy Sleep in Heaven hostel, we were worried about being those people who show up in a dorm room after everyone is asleep and make an obnoxious racket, putting on pillowcases and stowing their bags away.

Somehow, we ended up being the first two in a nine-person dorm room, and were able to flick on the lights and find our beds (stacked in bunk beds three mattresses high) without incident. That also meant that those people referenced above weren’t here yet, and so we were glad we picked up earplugs in Amsterdam before we came.

Saturday morning dawned in a manner fairly consistent with our whole time in Copenhagen—a chilly 5 degrees, a bit of wind, a bit of rain. Enough to be a nuisance, and for Kayla to insist I wear my hat (and win that argument, much to my chagrin/benefit).

We had such good fortune with our Airbnb in Athens that we arranged to stay with a Danish student with a two-bedroom apartment about fifteen minutes outside the city centre this weekend. We walked to Trine’s apartment from the hostel, relinquishing our damp luggage and making for Copenhagen Central Station on the trains.

Copenhagen usually ranks on the lists of most expensive cities to visit, and so we were careful with prices, especially since we’ve spent three and half months learning how to quickly convert euros to Canadian dollars in our heads, only to have the wrench of the Danish krone thrown into the mix. All the public transit are on the same ticket, and the prices depend on how many “zones” within the city you travel—two tickets to the city centre from our Airbnb worked out to just under $10.00, which is pretty reasonable. Meanwhile, we lived off 7-Eleven pastries and pizza, and while Tuborg beer is more expensive than Dutch beer, it’s still cheaper than Molson Canadian!

Copenhagen has a definitely urban, European vibe—wide, clean cobbled streets, impressive architecture, and crowds of pedestrians and cyclists protected by billowing scarves and mittens. It might be one of the most expensive cities in the world, but it’s also been ranked as one of the most livable.

When we set off from Copenhagen Central Station, we headed to the National Museum of Denmark, a free exhibit in the massive Prince’s Palace, former residence of the Danish king Frederick V. We easily could have spent a full day here in Denmark’s largest museum, tracing the history of the country from the prehistoric settlers to the modern day, but our focus was on the very earliest inhabitants.

In the nineteenth century, Copenhagen went through a bit of an identity crisis, and desperate for a new source of national pride. The Viking Age, with its heathen warriors and epic sagas, was easily romanticized and fulfilled that role, but the National Museum made it pretty obvious that these Norsemen and their roughly three-hundred-year existence was just one piece of Danish history.

Take, for example, the Huldremose Woman, a body preserved from the Iron Age. Her corpse has become part of the permanent display at the museum, a so-called Bog Body that ended up being naturally preserved in a peat bog.

Nearby, the Christiansborg Palace houses the three supreme powers of the Danish government: the executive, the legislature and, with the Supreme Court of Denmark, the judiciary. That just so happens to be the only single building in the world that does that, for all the political science trivia buffs out there.

As for that imposing tower overlooking Copenhagen (it’s the highest tower in the city, at 106 m), it’s now open to the public by way of a series of elevators, affording expansive views of the city stretching out along the historic alleyways and harbour. We waited until it was a bit darker before we made our ascent, nearly getting blown away by the sheer force of wind but getting a good view of the city adorned in glistening lights.

While we were waiting for the sky to darken and the lights to come on, we passed through the neighbourhood of Nyhavn—colourful canal houses, an iconic shot of Copenhagen as the afternoon started to clear.

By the time we made it to the pedestrian walk along the harbour, the grey sky had bits of sunlight peaking through. Copenhagen started as a fishing village in the 10th century, and its name is a rough translation of “merchants’ harbour,” so it should come as no surprise that this is an important part of the city.

Not to mention that a minimalistic statue serves as a major tourist draw along the harbour—the Little Mermaid, based on the fairy tale written by one of Denmark’s favourite sons, Hans Christian Andersen. Meanwhile, here’s another Copenhagen connection—the statue was commission back in 1909 by one Carl Jacobsen, whose father founded the Carlsberg brewery.

The statue sits a little ways out into the harbour, perched on rocks, but that doesn’t stop a few brave souls from skipping over the stones and getting their pictures up close and personal. And, of course, with fame comes the potential for vandalism—the head isn’t the original one, but you’d never tell.

Meanwhile, it’s also said that this statue bears  a passing resemblance to a certain statue along the waterfront in Napier, New Zealand. What do you think?

Walking through Copenhagen, from the waterfront to its green spaces, it isn’t that hard to imagine the city inspiring fairy tales. There are no castles clinging to the hillsides, but there’s something about silhouettes of sparse trees along the edge of a lip of green in the fading light of an overcast Scandinavian afternoon—something that’s capable of transporting you, somehow.

By the time the chilly evening was almost upon us, we were almost back to the train station. But first, speaking of fairy tale worlds, we took a spin through Tivoli Gardens, an amusement park dating back to 1843 (that makes it the second oldest in the world, incidentally). The park was in full-blown Christmas mode, and the deepening evening meant that it was just the right time to see some of the illumination.

We strolled along the crowded footpaths, in between stalls selling Christmas decorations and mulled wine while roller coasters zoomed by overhead. Admission to the Gardens doesn’t get you any ride tickets, but we were more than contented to people watch and look at the lights before we made our way to our cozy little spot on the edge of town. Tivoli is more compressed than even Disneyland Paris, but it makes the most of its limited space literally in the heart of the city, giving visitors a whirlwind of sensory overload and serotonin.

As we traipsed through the streets of Copenhagen, we borrowed every rogue wave of wifi we could lay our hands on, to get all the updates on a brand new niece back home in Newfoundland. Happy to say little Avery and her mom are both at home and doing well, and her new big brother couldn’t be much prouder if he tried.

 
The last Saturday night in November (and one of our last ones in Europe) wasn’t too wild—we picked up a few seasonal Tuborg Julebryg (a liquorice-infused flavour that’s popular this time of year—the fourth bestselling beer in Denmark, despite its very limited shelf life) but only got through one before we were yawning and tucking ourselves in.

Fresh air will do that to you, and we had a busy day of gallivanting on Sunday to look forward to, and it would take more than a bit of cold and rain to mess that up.

Cheers,
rb