A Jaunt in Denmark

Græsset må ikke betrædes (The grass may not be betrodden—the amusingly formal Danish way to say “Keep off the grass”)

Where to begin after a week-long trip around the beautiful country of Denmark? I simply can’t detail everything we saw—there’s too much, and you can read a guidebook for a more accurate report on the attractions of Scandinavia if you really want to. So perhaps a brief overview, then some thoughts.

I flew into Copenhagen last Wednesday with a friend of mine who also happened to be presenting at the Århus Universitet conference on medieval Iceland. She had brilliantly discovered that Kronberg castle in Helsingør is just a train-ride away (it sounds like Elsinore because it is Elsinore!)—so naturally we two Shakespeare buffs had to take a quick detour to see Hamlet’s castle.





We got there just in time to see the courtyard and the casements (the terrifyingly labyrinthine, pitch-black cellar rooms where soldiers stayed during sieges), but it was so worth the trip.

Then it was back to Copenhagen to catch a different train to Århus where the conference was held. After getting over the shock at discovering that Århus has a population the size of all Iceland (about 300,000 people), we came to like the cozy, quaint city very much in the few days we were there. The conference, by the way, was terrific—all graduate students and therefore lots of free exchange of ideas, with none of the intimidation that can accompany full-fledged scholars when they sit in the back of the room with their arms folded as you stammer through your paper.

It was quite chilly in Denmark, but we were lucky and had very good weather while we were there. We missed our bus-stop going to see the Moesgård Museum outside of town and so ended up walking a half-mile on a country road through the snow-covered hills (and trees!) of Jutland. The walk was almost as great as the museum itself!

On Sunday, we reluctantly parted from Århus and took the train southeast back to Copenhagen (which is on the island of Zealand—something my geography-impoverished mind never picked up on until the train passed through an underwater tunnel to get there). Because all the museums are closed on Mondays, we raced through the National Museet (so many artifacts that my Old Norse Religion class refered to—it was like meeting celebrities!) and the Statens Museum for Kunst (the art museum—some lovely Danish paintings by artists whose names I will never, ever remember).

We explored Strøget, the world’s longest pedestrian shopping street, drooled copiously over the 17th-century books the antiquarian bookstores just had lying around on their shelves, and tried our best not to let our jaws drop too far when we realized how much food costs there. If any place can make Iceland look cheap, it’s Denmark with its 30% sales tax.

On Monday we walked all over (and I mean ALL OVER) Copenhagen, visiting the Rundetaarn for a bird’s-eye view of the city and seeing the famous Den Lille Havfrue statue (the Little Mermaid statue in the harbor). We managed to find the graves of Søren Kierkegaard and Hans Christian Andersen, and also the smørrebrød sandwich shop that my grandmother ate at when she was in Copenhagen some 40 years ago. Some good things never really change. The only thing we missed was Tivoli Gardens, which, sadly enough, are closed until April.

At last, it was “hej hej” to Denmark (pronounced “hi hi”—a very cute Danish way of saying good bye), “hæ hæ” to Iceland (pronounced the same way—a less creative Icelandic way of saying hello).

We got back on Tuesday and were pleased to find all the snow washed away by a week’s worth of rain! Enough of the virtual tour; I could go on and on, but I’ll curb my enthusiasm and move on to a few thoughts on my first impressions of Denmark.

First, every single corner of the downtown area of Århus and Copenhagen is photograph-worthy. There are so many charming red or yellow brick houses and churches that they don’t even bother to name them all on the maps. You turn a corner and ta-da—there’s an 18th-century church right in front of you. It was so overwhelming, in fact, that we walked right by the royal residence of Amalienborg palace and didn’t even distinguish it from all the other beautiful buildings. Copenhagen has its sketchy side too, of course, and its architectural monstrosities from the 60s and 70s when the world lost all artistic sensibility, but on the whole, it still feels like Hans Christian Andersen’s hometown.

Second, Danish is a bizarre language. The joke among Scandinavians is that it is impossible to understand a Dane—a stereotype I thought had to be exaggerated until I heard the language spoken for the first time. This is not my own analogy, but it’s accurate: if a person tried to speak with a mouthful of hot porridge while at the same time trying to blow on it to cool it off, they would give a fair impression of the sound of Danish. Where Icelandic is clear, articulated, and on the tip of the tongue, Danish is throaty, full of vowels, and short on consonants. An example: in trying to find the cemetery, I asked a fellow at a 7-11 (which, by the way, are far fancier in Denmark than in the U.S.) where the street called Kapelvej was. “What street?” he asked. I showed him on my map. “Oh,” he said, “Gawewai.” Yes, that street, thank you. I’m sure it’s a lovely language to those who know it, but to me it sounded like it was only spoken by people half-asleep or perhaps intoxicated.

Third, since Iceland has made me a bit of a hotdog connoisseur, I have to say that Danish hotdogs are more satisfying than Icelandic ones. They come in funny buns like half a hollowed baguette, so the hotdog is enclosed all the way around and about half of it sticks out from one end of the bun. The condiments are squeezed in between the bun and meat, usually overflowing from the top. Quite unique, I have to say—but the flavor just about makes up for the fact that you pay twice as much for a Danish hotdog as for an Icelandic one.

Fourth, Icelanders are everywhere. After the conference in Århus, we all went out to dinner and, toward the end of the meal, there were some toasts made in Icelandic. The folks in the next table over suddenly cried, “Eruð þið íslensk?”—Are you Icelanders? Because they were. And not only were they delighted to run into several of their countrymen, it turns out they knew one of the folks in our group! This led to much rejoicing and a spirited round of some Icelandic folksongs. (For some reason, one of the Icelanders from the other table pointed right at me and said, “American.” I must have a tattoo on my forehead or something that I didn’t know about.)

Fifth, it’s lovely to be back in Iceland where I can at least distinguish the words people say to me even if I don’t know what they mean, and where I know how things work and can do my laundry and enjoy all those comfort-of-home niceties.

Sixth, I hope I can get back to Denmark someday soon….