Scandinavia Trip: Day 11 – Trips from Copenhagen
It was cloudy and windy this morning due to the lingering storm, so I decided to wait out the bad weather on public transport. My strategy was a partial success: my journey to Helsingør did pass some time, but it was not until around ten o’clock when the weather really started to clear up. By then, I had already walked through the town centre and the harbour. With my arms fighting against the coastal wind, I took a few pictures of the remarkable Hercules and Hydra statue before walking towards the town’s castle.
Kronborg Castle dates
to a stronghold built in the 1420s. It was originally built to guard the way in
and out of the Baltic Sea, and to extract fees from passing merchants. In the
seventeenth century, it burned down and was pillaged by the Swedes, but this
did not stop the castle from being converted to barracks later on. The most
famous historical tidbit about Kronborg, however, is that its walls set the
scene for Shakespeare’s Hamlet: It might grate the ears a little, but the name
“Elsinore” does bear some resemblance to Helsingør.
As I was making good
time, I decided that on my way back to Copenhagen, I would stop by the
Hermitage Hunting Lodge just north of Klampenborg. I did not originally intend
to visit this place, but I saw it through the window as I was travelling to Helsingør
and decided I would go there on my way back. The lodge seemed familiar to me; I
soon realised that I had seen it on my UNESCO smartphone application as the
cover picture for North Zealand’s “par force hunting landscape.” While the lodge itself was not open, the
walk through the grounds was quite pleasant. I happened on several groups of
deer but fortunately managed to navigate through the minefield of deer
excrement.
From Klampenborg, I
took the train again, passing through central Copenhagen on my way to Roskilde.
There, I visited the famous Roskilde Cathedral, which has served as the burial
site of the Danish royal family for hundreds of years. Allegedly, Harald
Bluetooth is buried at the Cathedral, but evidence has recently been unearthed
of his possible interment in Poland. Harald Bluetooth did, however, found the
original wooden church in Roskilde, and he is memorialised for uniting Denmark
as well as converting it to Christianity. Of particular interest at the
cathedral are the numerous frescoes of various ages depicting floral motifs as
well as mythical creatures.
These past few years,
I have been on a quest to try out a new flavour of ice cream every time I want
to buy one. Roskilde was a very good place to tick flavours off the checklist:
I got one scoop of hawthorn and one scoop of apricot. Soon after finishing them
on the platform, I boarded the train back for Copenhagen, where I connected by
bus to the neighbourhood of Emdrup – a neighbourhood known above all for
Gruntvig’s Church, an impressive expressionist building whose soaring façade
looks like basalt columns or clusters of organ pipes.
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