16 posts tagged “denmark”
It's that time of year again.
It's my favorite time of year.
I missed this while living in the tropics.
Colors and coolness,
bright light, crisp air and frost on the ground in the mornings.
The rosy-fingered dawn is no longer only heard of in myths... I get up in the dark now and watch her stretch those rosy fingers across the sky.
This museum was built for five fairly intact ships found in Roskilde Fjord.
They were sunk sometime in the second half of the 11'th century.
They were sunk deliberately, filled with boulders, to block one of three navigable canals
through the low waters of the fjord to protect Roskilde from enemy ships.
Roskilde was the capital before Copenhagen, and kings and queens were and still are buried here.
The ships are amazingly well preserved
- considering they've been on the bottom of the fjord for about a thousand years.
They are also very different styles.
The front one in the picture at the top of the page is an ocean going trade vessel.
It had a crew of 6 - 8 and could carry 24 tonnes of cargo.
It was built in Norway ca 1030.
The one right above here is a great longship, a slim, fast, maneuverable war ship that could take 70-80 men.
It was built in Dublin in 1042.
The one below is a small broad coastal trade vessel,
which would have 5 to 6 men on board and carry 4.6 tonnes of cargo.
It was built in Denmark ca 1040
The museum is a working museum. They reconstruct the ships.
They try out all the tools and techniques of the age and also sail the ships to find out how everything really worked.
The reconstructed Sea Stallion sailed to Dublin last summer and should come home this summer.
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Here's a finished ship.
They also have a whole setup for kids to try being vikings for a moment... we obviously had to try it too:
This is the Great Belt Fixed Link.
Storebælt (Great belt) is a bit of the baltic sea that lies between Fyn (Funen) and Sjælland (Zealand).
The fixed link consists of two bridges.
A low bridge between Funen and the tiny island Sprogø and then a high bridge between Sprogø and Zealand.
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Before the bridges, long ago, Sprogø, the little island in the middle only had a lighthouse and a "home for wayward young ladies". That's the little white houses with red roofs. This was where better society sent their knocked up or otherwise misbehaved daughters... and had them re-educated away from society.
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Horse chestnuts were flowering.
Fields of yellow everywhere. Rapeseed fields flowering.
Zealand, where I recently moved to, is a lot flatter than Jutland,
where most of the Danish "mountains" are and where I grew up.
To finish this random road post,
here's the moon rising over the beach in front of my new house.
(the old town)
This is a place I feel very attached to.
It's an open air museum - a museum of houses! in the middle of the botanical garden in Århus, my home town.
I grew up right next to the botanical garden, so I played here a lot.
When I was a kid the museum was open - like it was a real village.
You could just walk through it take a drink from the fountain, feed the geese
There used to be a mean old gander (male goose) by the pond.
When I was a kid, you had to buy tickets to individual houses to see the workshops or shops inside (each house is a museum of its own). Only a few weekends each year would some crafts expert come and explain the tools of the trade of each house. Now, the village is fenced in and you pay an entrance to get into the village, but then you can walk in and out of all the houses... and there are people dressed up like 150 years ago selling old books in the bookshop, oldfashioned cookies in the bakery etc. - but they don't show you how to make rope or buckets anymore.
This is the pharmacy.
Inside is the shop with a bazillion drawers in old dark wood with names of medicines in latin hand-painted on the front.
There's also a stuffed "mermaid"/monster on the window sill and a crocodile hanging from the ceiling.
In the back is the laboratory with mortars and glassware and equipment for rolling pills.
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Behind the house is the pharmaceutical garden... where they grow all sorts of toxic and spicy herbs.
They keep loosing the halucinogenic herbs....
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In th middle of the village there is a square with a well / fountain. This is where the BIG buildings are. There's a big merchant's house and then there's the ginormous mint master's house.
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This dude had issues... or maybe he just really really liked windows
On the outskirts are a few less show-off-y buildings a red woodstorage house and a white mill.
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Each of these buildings was "preserved". They were built several hundred years ago - most of them somewhere else originally. They were moved from all over the country and restored here. Every stone is numbered and every nail is recorded. Plaster and paint has been kept the way it was - or dug out from under layers of more modern paint. Interiors, furniture, tools were all collected and preserved with the houses. It's really a neat place. There are several small museums inside the village with clothes, toys, fine china, bicycles, and fancy clock-works.
Yeah, I know, it's not a falcon, but this lovely owl was trained and worked just as hard as the falcons.
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They had three different species of birds... The owl is a Bubo africanus and the striking falcon below is a Falco cherrug.
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They hunted in very different ways, so it was very interesting to see the difference in how they flew and how they struck their prey. This falcon struck birds from above, diving a million miles and hour. The falconer explained a lot about how they live, hunt, digest... and how relatively stupid they are.
After the falconry, camp was suddenly attacked by a band of christians trying to force baptize the pagans... "spontaneous" fighting broke out.
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Christians were defeated... Odin worship continued and peace was restored in the village.
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We continued to the actual market where crafts were shown off and shoppers strolled around and had bread with raw onions, goat cheese, smoked meat and honey (not bad actually - except for the vegetarians...).
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They sold all sorts of things... sheep skins, wooden spoons, armour, jewelry, clothes, tools, and food. All iron age style.
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but we visited this little newborn foal - one day old !
IN Denmark - Island of Funen to be more specific.
He was put out on grass for the first time.
His mom had obvioulsy seen grass before.
Mommy wasn't entirely happy with all the paparazzi humans...
and curious other horses and... leave baby alonez!
While she visited me Panemma scaled the highest mountain in Denmark: Ejer Bavnehøj.
She valiantly refused the oxygen offered at base camp,
and fearlessly proceeded to climb all the way to the very top within hours of landing on Danish soil.
Here's the view from the top:
170 meters and 98 cm
(= 560.96 feet)
There are these lovely rolling hills, however, none of them get very high up.
I have cherry blossoms in my window. They are SO pretty.
The reason I have them is a lot less pretty though.
There was a whole row of cherry trees in the grass outside the front doors on my street.
They were a bit over 10 years old... I can tell from the rings in the stumps.
One day they were all felled. I was very surprised because they weren't ill or old or anything.
I asked why they were cut and the guys told me - the way handy men explain handy stuff to
clueless girls - that they'd ruin the pavement if they grew any bigger.
I was too flabbergasted to say anything.
Those were living things!!! couldn't you have redone the pavement every 10 years if it buckled a bit over their roots???
I went over to the compost place and salvaged a few branches from the trees for my window... So I got cherry blossoms this spring in spite of the tree killers.