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My wife, Chris, and I have just returned from Copenhagen in Denmark. It was our second visit to Scandinavia in consecutive years. Last year we were in Norway. So what’s so special about Scandinavia? In one way, it’s our reaction to global warming and the extreme high temperatures and wild fires being experienced in the holiday playgrounds around the Mediterranean. Heading to the north of Europe would hopefully give us cooler, more comfortable weather, ( it did), but would still provide lots of interesting sight-seeing opportunities. You might describe us as culture -vultures rather than sunbed seekers. So north it was this July when we visited the Danish capital. Some people, programmed by travel brochures, were bemused by the length of our city visit. Surely a city break is only for 2 or 3 days they pointed out. The trouble is that a couple of days would have given us only a brief, blurred snapshot. So we decided to go for nearly a week, and even that only faintly scratched the surface. There was lot’s to see and do. It was full -on and my step-counter went into over-drive but it was a great adventure. We didn’t pick up many words of Danish because everyone spoke fluent English. However we did learn “tak” ( thanks) and “hygge”. The latter means a good time spent with good people. This is my second blog about our time in Copenhagen. It served us a real hygge of a city break.

Another Danish word we quickly learnt was “kunst”. It means “art.” Wherever we go, we seek out the local art gallery. The biggest one in Copenhagen just happens to be the National Art Gallery — Statens Museum for Kunst. To get there we walked to the north of the centre and through a quiet park ( Orstedsparken), centred on a lake with lovely flower beds and weeping willows drooping gracefully over the water. Refreshingly, it wasn’t a tourist hot spot so we got a tiny glimpse of Danish life — strollers, joggers, dog walkers and people just sitting on benches watching the world go by. We walked past the Botanical gardens and on to the museum which is in the corner of another big park. This part of the city is very leafy. The paintings and sculpture of the national collection are housed in a late 19th century temple of a building which we gained access to up a flight of steps between classical pillars. In front of the museum is a pool and a fountain. The collection was originally amassed by King Christian II. It consists of European paintings from Denmark, Scandinavia, France and the Low Countries. At the side is a modern extension from 1998 featuring a sculpture gallery with a large glass wall, and visiting exhibitions of modern art.

We mounted a grand staircase to the first floor. It would have been impossible to view every one of the 9000 works of art on show so we were strictly selective. We controversially ignored the earlier paintings from the 14th to 18th century, although on a quick walk through I happened to notice masterpieces by Rembrandt and Rubens. We concentrated on stuff from the Danish Golden Age ( 19th and early 20th centuries) which was a mixed bag but we saw some memorable pieces. Many of them depicted social history such as a poor family being evicted, farmers working in the fields and a team of men hauling in a fishing boat. One of the most striking was of a large painting of a flock of dark geese flying off into a spectacular pink sunset. Then there were the enigmatic pictures of Vilhelm Hammershoi which I had been previously introduced to in a Michael Palin -presented BBC documentary. A woman sits working at a desk with her back to the viewer, in subdued light. The interior is grey and plain and illuminated by just a shaft of sunlight coming through the window. Who is she? What is she doing? The viewer is left to guess. We next explored a series of rooms featuring an outstanding collection of French impressionist and post-impressionist art — Corot, Monet, Manet, Cezanne , Dufy, Derain, Gauguin and most impressive of all — an extensive selection of early paintings by Matisse, one of my favourites.

Our walk back to the centre took us through yet another park. This was a Royal one. In the middle of Renaissance style gardens divided up by low hedges in geometric patterns, stands Rosenborg Slot ( Palace — there’s another Danish word for you.) It’s a classic, fairy-tale palace completed in 1634 in decorative red brick. This Renaissance fantasy is crowned with spires, towers and ornate Dutch gables. It was built as a summer palace for Christian IV and was opened to the public from 1834. Unlike at the Amalienborg Palace which we had seen earlier, it was nice of them to let the plebs in. People in fact were queueing because Rosenborg houses the Crown Jewels including the Crown of the Absolute Monarch which sports 2 enormous sapphires. I wonder if the ones on show are just replicas like the jewels in the Tower of London?

Later that day, after a rest in our hotel room, we trekked to the south of the centre for a complete contrast to all that high culture and Royal pomp. We headed along the waterfront of the inner harbour and over a bridge on to the island of Christianshavn. Soon we reached an area of narrow cobbled streets along a pretty canal. The canal had colourful houseboats moored along its banks. This area is sometimes called “Little Amsterdam” but that’s perhaps stretching the imagination a bit. It would have been nice to linger but it was raining again and the scene had become rather bleak. We were heading for “Freetown Christiana”, a bohemian, hippie enclave based in an old army barracks. We had been to a similar centre for the counter culture in Ljubljana when we were in Slovenia, also based in a former military base. It’s ironic that the current residents preach peace and love while they are living in a place that was originally built to propagate war. Anyway, even in the rain it was wonderful, taking us right back to our flower power days in the late 60s. It was originally an area of 17th century fortifications which were later abandoned as the city outgrew them. The area became run down and neglected after the army left and then, in 1971, squatters moved in and set up their “free town.” They have had an uneasy relationship with the city authorities ever since, but surprisingly have been able to thrash out a deal in which they pay a subsidised rent for the site. People from all over the world can buy shares to help pay the rent and other running coasts. This has been controversial as the hippies are sitting on top of a couple of acres of prime city centre land that would be ripe for profitable real estate development. But for now it is a refreshing throwback to those heady days of peace and love. It still has the feel of a traveller hangout on the hippie trail to Kathmandu in the 60s or 70s. The roads are unpaved, vivid murals decorate the old buildings, prayer flags flutter and wooden buildings sell vegan food, T Shirts and souvenirs. Slogans such as “All you need is love” and “free Palestine” daub the walls of many buildings. My favourite was: “Delete your local Fascist.” Nearly a million tourists visit every year. The smell of cannabis pervades the air, but the notorious “pusher street”, where hard and soft drugs where sold openly, has now been closed because of gang violence. As we wandered around enjoying the atmosphere and the amazingly colourful murals we heard a rock band strike up. Just by chance we had arrived in time for one of the free rock concerts that are staged every Sunday tea-time in Christiana. This was a very accomplished Queen tribute band — Keen on Queen. Freddie Mercury’s lot were never my favourite band but the raw, live rock music was exciting and we joined a sizable crowd to listen for a while and be taken back in time. The rain eventually relented and we walked back to the hotel, soggy but happy. As we left Free Christiana, a sign announced — ” You are now entering the EU.”

Art continued to be a feature of our holiday as Copenhagen seems to be rich in galleries. Near the Central Station and beside Tivoli Gardens, is the wonderfully named Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. It was founded by the brewing magnate Carl Jacobsen in 1897 and is a reminder that in the 19th century, industrialists were the nouveau riche and were starting to take over the roles previously filled by royalty who were retreating to their palaces. Glyptotek is based on ancient Greek and means “sculpture collection.” It is another neo-classical building with grand, marble staircases and beautiful stained glass panels in the ceilings. It contains a fabulous collection of Danish and French sculpture and paintings including a Danish version of the 3 Graces, Rodin’s “The Kiss” and a collection of impressionist and post impressionist paintings. 2 rooms are devoted to the paintings and sculpture of Degas for example. Another section contains a rich collection of antiquities from Mesopotamia, Palmyra, the Etruscans, and Ancient Romans. It’s like a wing of the British Museum or the Louvre. It is a great place to explore and now includes a beautiful modern extension. At its centre is a palm -filled, glass-domed, winter garden complete with statues, pools and fountains. There are plenty of windows as the original intention was to have an art collection lit by natural light. The only problem was that is was quite humid inside. We enjoyed our visit but it was really nice to get back into the fresher air of the streets.

We had a double dose of art that day because a plane cancellation at the start of our trip meant we had one day less in Copenhagen. So it was that soon after the Glyptotek experience, we were on a train north to Humlebaek, a small town north of the capital and just south of Helsingor. Here, just a 10 minute walk from the train station is the impressive Louisiana Museum of Modern Art centred on a 19th century villa with light -filled modern extensions. It got its name, not because it has been twinned with the American southern state, but because the original owner of the villa married 3 times and bizarrely, all his wives were called Louise. Later, the property was owned by a cheese magnate, Knud Jensen, who established the museum in 1958. He wanted it to be a modern building full of space and light, in contrast to the grand mansions of other museums in Copenhagen. It is in a beautiful setting, on a wooded hillside that slopes down to the sea. His vision was ” to show the interplay between art, architecture and landscape.” The paintings and sculpture are displayed in glass filled corridors and rooms that look out on to lovely green lawns. The lawns have been transformed into a sculpture park. We saw modern pieces by Max Ernst, Jean Miro and Henry Moore, to name but a few. There’s a lot of abstract, squiggly modern art which is not to our taste and some,( in my opinion), pretentious photography and films. But everyone to their own. We enjoyed the gaunt, sculptured figures of Giacometti and a wonderful exhibition of portraiture and other paintings by Lucien Freud. Ironically we had gone all the way to an obscure town in Denmark to see an exhibition from London’s National Portrait Gallery. But it was really enjoyable. Afterwards we had coffee and cheesecake at one of the outside tables of the cafe and enjoyed views of the woods, the sculptures and the shining sea. ( it was another sunny day.)

Unfortunately, lots of others had had the same idea of visiting Louisiana that day. Droves of people got off the train with us and the car park was crammed. It is now a bucket- list destination and so the one thing we didn’t experience was peace and quiet. It was still great though, and the walk back to Humlebaek station, through a little housing estate, gave us a tiny glimpse of ordinary Danish, small town life, with well tended gardens and cars parked in the driveways. We struggled with the ticket machine at the station but a fellow passenger in the queue kindly helped us using perfect English. By the way, you cannot usually buy return train tickets in Denmark because each ticket is only valid for 2 hours from the time of purchase. Our train back came almost immediately and was right on time, like every train we caught in Denmark. There was no talk of Delay-Repay. Soon we were back in Copenhagen to rest up. We had had another a great day of art viewing and were feeling both sated and happy. We had really enjoyed another hygge day.

( NB This is the second of my blogs about our visit to Copenhagen. It is not meant as a travel guide but instead, is an impressionistic overview of our experience. I hope you have enjoyed it.)