Our Journeys Around the World: Denmark- Vikings and Copenhagen

What is a trip to Denmark without a study of Vikings? We were fortunate to come across a viking ship museum. The Danish government had excavated 5 ships from the bottom of the bay, and pieced them together over a long period of time. This gives us an idea of how the ships were made and constructed, and why Viking ships were so much faster than other countries ships at that time. It was most fascinating.

What a treat it was to be able to walk around on a Viking ship

replica, and try on their armor and clothing. We loved playing dress up.

We did learn that the Vikings had very few swords. Swords was a sign of wealth because they were typically bought off of the Germanic people. There came a point where the Germanic people forbid sales of swords to the Vikings because the Vikings would then take their German swords and pillage the Germans. The Vikings just weren't very good at making swords themselves. But they were really good at making and using axes. These weapons were not open to the public, but because we mingled in with a school tour group, we were able to reap the benefits of the weaponry exhibit, and an English tour.

Copenhagen (København as the Danes call it) was one of the most organized cities we have been to so far. It is filled with bicycles. Oodles and oodles of bicycles! This is a picture we took, when we got off the train that brought us into downtown. Copenhagen was great in the fact that everything is so centrally located. Most of the sites are all in the middle of the city, so it is easy to get around and see things. This also makes rent and property prices high. This city was extremely expensive for everything.

This is one of the houses of King Christian IV, Denmark's warrior king. He spent his time warring, and fornicating, and doing many other kingly things. He was also very devoted to building structures and doing other things to glorify himself. We spotted his trademark C with a 4 inside of it all over the city. Below Max posed with the king's store of alcohol. The metal seal read the barrel was built in 1598.

Christian IV had an amazing treasury to show off how rich he was. He had all sorts of exotic and expensive pieces of art and history. Here is a ship made completely of ivory.

Tessa stands below a portrait of Christian IV. We feel Max

also has a certain "kingly" quality about him.

Here are the thrones of the king and queen. In front of the monarchy they had life size lion made completely of silver. Judging by the published weights of the lions, about 40 kilos, we figured they had to be hollow.

This is the original Christus that all of the replicas have been copied from. It was a beautiful little church with statues of Peter and the other apostles as well. To add to the magic an organist was playing throughout our visit and was absolutely incredible.

Since Denmark is the home of Lego, Copenhagen's Lego store was a great little visit. True to Denmark, everything is extremely expensive, but luckily, to play with the Lego was free. The kids loved it. Everyone except Maggie said it was the highlight of the day. For Maggie the highlight was our stop at the local bakery.

As you can see, one of us had a meltdown moment, so

we took a little break, and a photo in this amazing city.

We did Copenhagen entirely on foot, there were so many sights to see that were so close to each other. The little legs in our group couldn't quite make it over to these towers, however. It's good to have more things to see as I would love to come back to this amazing city.

Nyhavn is the scenic place to see in Copenhagen. It has the beautiful buildings from the 1600s that are all different colors, with the restaurants and ships out front on the canal. This is a must stop for all tourists. We noticed that there are a lot of different ways to eat herring in Denmark as per the restaurants.