COPENHAGEN – Denmark (Tues 11 Aug)

Today was our museum day. We started out by taking the ‘Free’ English speaking tour around the National Museum of Denmark. Something about that word ‘Free’ that has a certain attractant quality to it. I said it took us around the gallery, it actually took us around the section devoted to the years ‘1660 to 2000’. When we finished the 45 minute tour (340 years in 45 minutes), our first impression was that we were glad it was free as it was a little rushed and didn’t give much detail. But then we went back through the same section at our own pace (over two hours), and we decided that the tour was good in the way that it gave a good background to the history in a broad brush sense. This section is also very well laid out chronologically. It follows a circular path through the periods with side rooms adding the asides. Museums really aren’t the boring places that they used to be, presentation really is the winner. What we did come out with was the knowledge that Denmark was once a very large and powerful country, but through a habit of fighting in wars they had no hope of winning, or taking sides with the losing team, they have lost huge chunks of land that have decimated them to where they are today. Something that even now they are a little bitter about.

We had an intermission for lunch and a walk around the city before going back to the museum for phase two. This time it was into the Ancient History of Denmark. This was very cool with artifacts, bones, weapons, graves, etc dating back to 8700 BC!!! Hard to imagine really. Most of these things have been found in this area, so that made it all the more interesting. There were items in there that were found just a couple of Kms from where we are staying.

There was a skull in there with a story attached that said that a local farmer had found a skull in his field whilst ploughing and sent it in to see if they were interested in it. He was evidently in a bit of a hurry as he said ‘please let me know as soon as you can because I would like to finish ploughing my field’. This stuff is all around us here. We have said that there are bone artifacts, there are not just one or two, there are piles of them. We haven’t mentioned the jewelry. There are just piles (literally in piles) of silver and gold pieces that date back to these ancient times, a time beyond what we can imagine. This place really is incredibly rich in history.

And then there were the Vikings, the people that we relate to this part of the world. They were the relative newcomers in the history books, I mean they were here around 700 – 1000 AD. But they were extremely effective in their time carving great chunks into the world and changing the way villages worked together and alliances were formed, to protect themselves from this force of pillage and looting.

There were a few other sections to this great museum, but that is all we had time for today, besides when we are in Norway, we don’t feel compelled to go and look at Egyptian artifacts. What is it about the Egyptians that they seem to have a large section in every museum? We would like to go and look at Egyptian artifacts when we are in Egypt, just as we would like to look at African artifacts when we are in Africa. That is what we think makes it relevant.