Ten Things I Loved About Denmark: Number Four... Museums

Since I've done no creating in the past month and have another week of vacation with my family planned, I'll be posting some of the highlights of my trip....

Danish National Museum, Copenhagen

The first day of our visit, we were "Tourist Animals" and saw every Copenhagen attraction possible in an 8 hour time span.  The medieval knitting in the Danish National Museum caught my eye...  I've seen some of these pieces before in Piecework magazine and knitting books by Nancy Bush.  I find it fascinating that the hole in the thumb of the mitten looks exactly like the hole in my own mittens...  This was my favorite museum!

Freelands Museum, Lyngby 

 (Open Air Museum of the Danish National Museum Family)

As a child, I'd always been told that my great grandfather's home from the island of Romo had been moved to the Open Air Museum outside of Copenhagen.  We had a pen and ink drawing of the farm on our wall, and loved to imagine going inside one day and exploring our ancestors' past.  Day two of our visit included a trip to Lyngby and as many hours as we wanted in the birthplace of Hans Magnus Hansen Sr.  I had contacted the museum staff in advance to make sure we would have access to the building, but that wouldn't have been a problem - we spent several hours uninterrupted in this wonderful old farmhouse.  I'll tell about all of the trouble we got into later!  This was my favorite museum of the trip.

Viking Museum, Roskilde

Set in a lovely rural landscape, Roskilde is the "holy grail" of Viking enthusiasts.  The town was the center of trade for the Viking community, and lies at the base of a fjord about 35 km NW of Copenhagen.  In the 1960's, the pictured long boat and several other merchant and trading vessels were excavated from the bottom of the fjord, and painstakingly preserved.  Archeologists and skilled craftsmen have been able to recreate all of the boats and have sailed them in Denmark, as well as taking the longboat with more than 60 crew members on an oversea voyage to Ireland.  This was my favorite museum on the trip - and the one we saved for last.

So many museums, so little time!  In the ten days we spent in Denmark, my sister and I found so many wonderful museums, and yet we had to skip some of the ones we had been looking forward to seeing.  More later about the Danish Design Center, Hans Christian Anderson house, Randers Museum and public art.  Sadly, we missed the modern icons:  Louisiana Museum, Arhus MOMA, as well as all of the castles.  We'll just have to go again...