Roskilde and Copenhagen, Denmark

We spent last night in Roskilde and headed to the Cathedral for opening time at 9am this morning.  We briefly stopped at the market in the square and it already felt like it was going to be a hot day!  We decided yesterday afternoon that we would wait until morning to visit the Cathedral, as we were there 1 hour before closing yesterday.  We paid entry and with this you receive a quidebook explaining most of the main sights of the Cathedral.  The Cathedral is 1 of 3 UNESCO heritage listed sites in Denmark and has the burials of all the monarchs since 1537 (20 Kings and 17 Queens).  In the end we spent 2.5 hours there.  There is a museum collection upstairs and you are also able to walk along the balcony upstairs and look down into the Cathedral below.  There are fabulously decorated tombs, an amazing altarpiece and the Kings door- 3 metres taller on the inside than outside, and used for the entry/exit of royals, and the exit after a funeral or baptism to the Cathedral.  We also saw work being done to create the place for the next Queen, once she has passed away.  It appears she will be placed in a glass capsule like coffin which is see through- interesting.  Overall one of the must sees in Denmark as it is a place of such importance in Danish royal history.

Viking ship museum

Roskilde Cathedral

Concert in the park

Alterpiece at Roskilde Cathedral

One of the preserved ships

On the Viking replica boat

After lunch we parked down at the marina and went to the Viking ship museum.  The interesting thing here is that they have the preserved remains of 5 ships that were deliberately scuttled with stones in Viking times to blockade a channel into the harbour and  protect the royal city of Roskilde against invasion.    There were 3 sailable routes into the harbour, they blocked two and the remaining was harder to sail, requiring local knowledge.  Here they set a gate, monitored and taxed traffic. They would set off fire beacons further up the harbour if there was an enemy approaching. They have built many replica boats (including of the 5 preserved ones).  Some are used for boat trips for visitors and they even sail some further abroad, around Denmark, to Norway and once to Dublin. We went on two tours, the family one which we pretended we were Viking warriors and sat in one of the replica boats and one inside the exhibition hall with the boats (the later being very informative about Vikings and the discovery and preservation of the ships).  They have dated one of the ships to May/June 1042 Dublin, with analysis of the wood- just amazing.  After dinner we walked around the marina again and up the hill to see some of the old fisherman's cottages.  We also saw 2 red squirrels in a churchyard the day before.  Dale took some really good photos and video as we were quite close to them.

The next morning we drove into Copenhagen.  We stopped on the way to buy gas (without luck) and stocked up on some more essentials at the Aldi supermarket. We have spent a great 2 days in Copenhagen.  The city has many old buildings and palaces, and a great selection of museums.  On our first day it was humid and raining.  We were unable to get a place on the tour of Parliment, so we went to the nearby National Museum and spent the afternoon there.  This is an impressive place.  We spent most of our time in the Danish prehistory section: stone, bronze and iron age.  They had some wonderful items on display, including many items that had been preserved in bogs.  Some people were sacrificed and put in the bogs the preservation is excellent and you end up with the so called bog bodies.  We caught the final 30 minutes of a performance in the foyer from a Indonesian University group.  The show included druming, singing, and highly coordinated hand and body movements. They even jumped up and down on broken crockery at one point. In the final song they invited the audience to join in, which I eventually did.  There was such a happy, good vibe and it was so much fun.  The weather had cleared up and we picniced in a park opposite Tivoli gardens (an amusement park in the central city- which had some scary looking rides!) and then started our trek back to the van. Following a tip we had parked near the Carlsberg Brewery, it is free and 3km from the city centre.  There are buses and trains which service the area, however we managed the walk both days.

The second day was sunny and we arrived at the Museum of Copenhagen at opening time of 10am.  There was free admission due to it being a Friday.  We looked at all the collection but spent most of the time learning about immigration to Copenhagen and looking at archaeological finds, which had been discovered due to building work in the city.  We headed upstairs to look at photographs and a Danish democracy and culture section, however it was really hot up there so we didn't linger long.  We headed to the Kings gardens for lunch (an impressive name for a park and we weren't disappointed).  It reminded me of Kensington Palace/Hyde Park in London, but Kings gardens are a lot smaller.  There is a castle there called Rosenborg (it houses the Danish Crown jewels).  Our next stop was a museum called the David Collection which features Islamic, Danish and European art.  The Islamic section was massive, they had such a vast collection of some amazing works ranging from works of the Koran from 600 to art works in the 19th century.  We were loaned an ipad from the front desk on which we could read English translations about each work (as the descriptions were in Danish).  The history of the changing islamic dynasties is so complex that toward the end I felt as if I was reading in Danish anyway as it was really hard to graspe the history that was being talked about!  It is interesting that due to religious reasons, Islamic art does not usually depict people, but instead focusing on animals and plants (which are not always portrayed realisticly either).  We headed to the last two floors of the museum and saw Danish and European paintings, furniture and porcelain.
Then we went to the Botanic gardens.  We saw turtles swimming in the lake and had a short walk inside the gardens.  We finished the day at the Round tower.  Built between 1637 and 1642 as an observation tower for King Christian IV.  It is a wide (3m ish) flat spiral slope to the top, which is nice compared to the usual hundreds of tight twisty steps in these places.  There was a good view over the city and we enjoyed spotting the buildings- the Town Hall, Cathedral, Rosenborg Palace, and even where we had parked the van!  We filled up the water bottles and headed back to the van- 50 minutes walk back this time.

View from the Round Tower

National Museum

Indonesian University performance

Town Hall

Rosenborg Castle