Denmark

Copenhagen

Our favorite food venue….. 7-11. Just as in Japan, this convenience store shows up all over the city, with an amazing array of fresh food, coffee, booze and other products…. AND it reflects values that are embraced in this society…..

Also colorful were a series of fabulous tapestries depicting Denmark’s history that were commissioned for Queen Margrethe in 1990. (She retired as queen in 2024, relinquishing the crown to her son Frederick X.) The detail is dazzling.

A little bit of street art….

Town Hall Square had a rhino on blocks… a reminder of the importance of the natural world.

From Copenhagen we wandered a bit…. For those of you who may not be familiar with Denmark’s geography, I have marked up this map to show our path…..

Praesto/Møn

From Copenhagen, we moved south across the eastern island of Zealand to visit Møn Klint, a towering chalky cliff.

We stayed near the town of Praesto at a wonderful bed and breakfast with delightful hosts Anette and Filip

Odense

From there, we went to Odense on the middle island of Funen – where they have a good zoo with some happy manatees…..

This fine statue of Oceania occupies a central square…. But she doesn’t get a lot of respect from the local children…..

Henry finally got a chance to ride on one of the rental scooters that are commonly used for transport..

Billund

A Mecca for children and AFOLs (Adult Fans of Lego)….. Billund, the home of Lego. A carpenter here named Ole Kirk Kristiansen began making wooden toys during an economic slowdown in 1932. He named them Lego in 1934, derived from the Danish phrase for “play well”, and started making the plastic interlocking bricks that we now know so well in 1947….. an incredibly successful and enduring business.

Even in summer with so many families on vacation, the Lego people have activities well-organized and only sometimes are we elders overwhelmed with the crowds…

You can make your own mini-figure with artwork that is exclusive to Lego House in Billund…..

Silkeborg

And now we return to what has become a theme on this trip….. peat bogs! Do you know about the bog people? Peat bogs are uniquely suited to preserving things…. Including human remains.

Tollund Man is one of the finest preserved corpses ever found…. In 1950 in a peat bog near Silkeborg, Denmark. His death occurred in the early Iron Age between the years 405 and 380 BCE…. 2400 years ago! It is most reliably believed that he was sacrificed by hanging (the rope was still around his neck when his remains were found.)

Visiting Tollund Man was an intimate and stirring experience. You creep into the room quietly, because you truly feel like you just might wake him up!

Nobody knows what kind of religion or spiritual beliefs people had in the Iron Age. Humans then and today yearn to understand something about why we are here and what may lie beyond this existence. Folks in the Iron Age may have regarded the bogs and wetlands as portals between the everyday world and that of the gods….. making the bogs likely places for rituals… including human sacrifice.

Scientists have generated a model that projects what Tollund Man may have looked like….

Viborg

Viborg is in the same lake region as Silkeborg, but not quite as crowded with summer travelers. We enjoyed just wandering around, visiting the small market to buy some mead (wine made with honey) and chatting with locals.

Near Viborg lies Kongenshus Memorial Park, set in a valley in a beautiful moorland. Over 1200 stones have been erected in tribute to the simple farmers and their families who converted the wild heath into crop land. How refreshing to celebrate the “common” folk and the sacrifices they made to feed themselves and others…….

Now, of course, naturalists are working to restore the original ecosystem with good results. Another example of just how powerful Mother Nature is, especially when she gets a little help from human partners.

Skagen

Skagen is a picturesque town at the northern tip of Denmark…

Its cuteness and proximity to pristine beaches means it is covered up in summer with holiday merry-makers. We managed, however, to find a remote bit of coastline with some beautiful challenging sand dunes and nice walking paths.

And a selection of the usual pix – animals, food and flowers

From here we take a ferry across to Sweden. More later!