Sightseeing in Denmark

Here’s a quick report on some of what I’ve seen these last two blustery, wet, cool days in this fabulous and weird country:

Canal Tour. We hopped on one of Copenhagen’s famous Canal Tours the other morning, which is always a great way to get a feel for any city. Denmark is mostly islands, and Copenhagen is on the large island of Zealand; the Øresund strait separates Denmark from Sweden, and the Copenhagen canals are basically extensions of the Øresund. The new opera house is built on an island across the biggest canal from the main part of the city, seen here from our canal ride:

After the tour we returned to the new Royal Danish Library, a building known locally as the “Black Diamond.” It’s cool the way it leans out over the water; as you sail by you can see the rippling of the water reflected in the glass and the black stone. I went to the library hoping to find a little free wireless, but alas! it’s not that easy in this city.

Roskilde Adventure. We took a train over to Roskilde, the ancient home of the Danish kings, a little city on lovely Roskilde Fjord. Here’s a photo of Speight Jenkins in the Roskilde Domkirke, paying his respects at the column which contains the mortal remains of one of Speight’s heroes, Harald Blue-tooth, the ancient Viking king who championed the conversion of the Danes to Christianity in 980 A.D.

Viking Museum. The reason I dragged everybody over to Roskilde is that I really wanted to check out the Viking Ship Museum, which was one of the great adventures of the year so far for me (the other being my first time ever scuba diving, back in February, in Hawaii, on a day that looked much like this one). Somewhere around 1070 A.D. the inhabitants of Roskilde sunk five old Viking ships across their harbor to slow down the attacks of Norwegian Vikings, and over the last fifty years archeologists, historians, and sailors have been having a great time digging up the remains and reconstructing replicas of the original Viking boats.

I’d like to take this opportunity to point out that while my obsession with Vikings complements my obsession with Wagner, I’m the only person I know who seems to care about both subjects. Wagner’s Ring operas are obviously inspired by the myths of the ancient Norse people, and the Vikings worshipped gods who are characters in Rhinegold. But most of the Ring fanatics I know find the literary background to the Ring unimportant. I won’t say it’s the key to the cycle, but I think it’s an important road into the work and a great thing to study in and of itself.

Below, Roskilde’s reconstructed Viking warship, which held 80 men and could travel from the North Sea to the Mediterranean in two weeks. (They’d all be kind of rank by the time they got there...but I doubt these guys were too concerned about making a great impression.)