Well, the smørrebrød was just the start of the great Danish food we got to try.
Morten and I went to the local bakery to pick up items for breakfast, including bread and…
Danish, of course.
I got my favorite, the cinnamon rolls (Kanelsnegl or cinnamon snail) while Morten picked up the cream filled kind. After a few cups of coffee we headed west and north to see some of the sights near here.
Let's go back a second.
After dinner last night we took Simba, the dog, for a walk from their home through the woods to a beautiful open park that was actually the grounds of the Modern Art Museum. What a great place to walk around. As we wandered across the grass, self guided lawnmowers, like the Roomba vacuum cleaners, scuttled by us bumping into bushes and turning around. The lawn slopes down to the sea, which is really the fjord here. We saw the rich, modern homes overlooking the fjord, and the more traditional, low homes with the grass roofs. These roofs are supposed to last 100 years or more, which is amazing considering the weather. My “modern” roof is about 25 years along, no way it will go another 75.
There is a new wooden pier that has been build out into the fjord so you can sit and drink, or go swimming, and in fact the second day there was a “swim across the fjord” event going on in the balmy 19 degree (66 F) day. However, they did have a hot tub and sauna for when you got out. We all agreed we wanted to skip the swimming and just do the sauna part.
Anyway, that evening we saw a nice looking building down the shore a ways. It is the old mental hospital, which was closed and restored into a nice hotel. So we stopped by to see it. Rooms are about $180 a night, pretty typical for the Nordic countries. Nurse and meds, not included.
We drove about an hour fifteen north and west to the Søndervig Strand (beach), to see the German bunkers abandoned after WW2. They litter the beach here, slowly being buried by the wind, a sad reminder of 75+ years ago. When the Germans were defeated in the war, the Danish made the prisoners of war go out to find and dig up all the land mines they had buried across the countryside. Even so, the occasional mine or bomb is still uncovered.
On Søndervig it was windy and cold at first, but the sun came out and we shed our coats. We looked for amber, which washes up along these North Sea beaches, but we didn’t find any. There are really big wind turbines softly grinding in the constant, cold wind.
Directly across from us (if we could swim that far) is Edinburgh, Scotland. That is a pretty amazing thought to me. There is a section of the beach marked out for swimming, with lifeguards and all. A couple people were swimming in spite of the 18 degree temperature.
We walked through the little beach resort town, with one street of cafes and trinket-beach shops, and sat on the bench in the main square to eat a picnic of home-made sandwiches and drink a nice French Brut Rose wine they brought along.
We all had a coffee after, and decided to move on to the next town.
Søndervig was the furthest point north we went.
Along the way I was interested in the many low, large traditional houses with their thatched roofs. A lot of the homes are painted in the traditional black or red, with white shutters. The Danish flag, beautiful dark red with white cross, snapped sharply in front of many of the homes, adding a nice contrast to the blue sky.
Hvide Sande has a lot of fish stores, bakeries and sports stores. We looked in a few, stopped for coffee and to sample a really good sweet chocolate bread with coconut.
I was pretty tempted by the fresh fish, but dinner was coming up soon.
There was a funny sign on the door of the WC telling you to NOT clean your fish in the bathroom sink, and circus posters hung up around town advertising an elephant on the flying trapeze.
We stopped to see an unusual black windmill with slotted blades, and a mermaid on a swing tried to tempt us over to a gift shop.
We headed out to Henne Strand to eat dinner at the Mølle Å Badehotel. A famous architect has taken over this old hotel on the seaside and turned it into a fantastic restaurant. Morten and Minea treated us all to a fantastic dinner of traditional fish and potatoes. The potatoes were served with a parsley cream sauce that I have never had before, and the fish was breaded, cooked perfectly and had a topping of caviar. A crisp white Chardonay from Sicily really went well with the meal. This was probably the best fish I have had this trip, but Minea scoffed at the parsley sauce.
She can make better, and she proved it the next night.
After dinner we walked out to look at the ocean. The light here in Northern Denmark is particularly soft, making the flowers and sand dunes and waves seem so in harmony. I could spend a day just wandering around aimlessly shooting photos.
We headed back to their home, had another coffee and then a gin and tonic, and soon we were all asleep.
While we were driving I learned that the letter Ø is “you” and that Å is “oh.” J is most often “Y.” This helped me get the pronunciation of place names as we drove.
We were heading north towards Billund (famous for the Lego headquarters) to a place called Kongernes Jelling, "The Home of the Viking Kings.” This is a cool place that has Denmark’s most famous monuments, the Rune Stones or Jelling Stones. They are two big rocks from about 965 AD, and they are chiseled with pictures and ancient writing called “Rune.” You can read more about it here and here.
This is the National Museum of Denmark, and it is free to go in and see everything. Besides the real Jelling Stones there is a reproduction, colored as the original would have been, so you can see the inscriptions.
There is a lot of information about the two big burial mounds, the oldest church in Denmark (between the mounds), how the stones are arranged to make this burial site a giant Viking Ship sailing the dead to Valhalla, and the palisades and long houses on the site.
You can learn to write your name in Rune.
For instance, l↑ is my name, ED, in Rune.
I can’t find font symbols to make GAIL, so you will have to look at the photos below.
There are found items in the burial chamber, that are in a glass display case. Somehow, through good lighting, you see the item, then it slowly fades as blue lines are traced on a glass screen over and around the item. Then the item totally disappears and the blue lines quickly extend into a drawing of what that item was, and how it was used. Then poof! The item reappears.
Many of the displays have sections written in English so it is easy to follow along.
There is a high viewing platform so you can look out over the entire complex; mounds, church, palisade, ship-shape stones.
The Rune Stones themselves are outdoors, in big glass display cases to protect them in situ. It was overcast so we had poor shadow and contrast, and I myself could barely make out the scratchings, carvings and inscriptions, but the displays in the museum showed it all in great detail.
There are displays about Norse Mythology, good enough that I want to go home, buy the book “Norse Gods For Dummies" and brush up on my own religious education.
Just reading all this makes me wish I had known some of these names back when we were ready to name our own kids.
Here is why this is so important to the Danes, besides just the historical aspect: This rune stone is the first actual written record of the name “DANMARK.” So this is the first actual naming of the country that anyone knows about.
Lest you think this is all “ancient history” of a small country of five million people, and so what could it possibly have to do with me?
Consider this little tidbit:
Look at your cell phone or computer.
See the little “Bluetooth” logo? Like this ➜
Those are the Rune letters H and B combined, standing for Harald Bluetooth. Every time you use the technology you should thank the Danish.
Thursday? Thank Thor. And so on.
And all of this is totally free.
I have to say it is one of the best, most interesting and modern exhibits I have seen.
Miscellaneous things as we drove around:
Tallinn, Estonia, used to be part of Denmark. Morten says the real name is, “Here the Danish flag fell." We get a laugh out of saying that at random times.
Filp-Flops are called Clip-cloppers in Danish.
I saw some of the work of a quirky artist named Michael Kvium; Morten and Minea have some of his work. I think he is pretty clever, really interesting.
We had a big laugh when Minea was teaching Gail how to say “Hygge.” It sounded like “huy-gay” to me and it sounded like that is what Gail was saying but somehow the emphasis was wrong. Over and over she said it, and over and over Minea corrected the slightest inflection or pronunciation. It was like a comedy movie.
Finally the wine loosened up her tongue and she got it.
As a note, hygge has to do with well being and contentment.
Well let me tell you this is an addicting, street-food delight. You can get dogs, frankfurters, sausages, red hotdogs… wrapped in bacon or plain, cooked on the grill or boiled. Then the toppings: onions, cucumbers, mustard and so on, including something new for me called Remoulade.
Wow was that great.
We all stood around outside the little yellow stand, chowing down on the dogs, and considering a second or third one...
Back in Kolding, Morten and I went to see the castle, Koldinghus, while Gail and Minea shopped. The Koldinghus is the castle; built in the 13th century it was destroyed by fire in 1808, and then abandoned. In fact, when Morten was a kid they used to play in the ruins of the castle.
But it has been restored and what a great restoration they did. The standing parts were preserved and supported, and the destroyed parts replaced with a clever and very beautiful combination of wood and metal that enhances the castle, actually making it better in a very artful and intriguing way. We climbed the tower for the view over the city, and walked through the Prince of Denmark’s Jade collection. (I would collect cool sports cars if I were the prince. Or king. King Edvard CoffeeTooth.)
We found Gail and Minea, and stopped at the store to pick up ingredients so Minea could make the potatoes and parsley sauce the right way (as opposed to what we had last night at dinner). And by god, she made a great sauce, way better than the restaurant which I previously thought was so good. We had the potatoes and Danish meatballs, for a fantastic last dinner.
After dinner we piled in the car to head across the local train/car bridge (161, not E20, on the way to Odense) to the next town called Middlefart. This waterway between island is called the "Little Belt," and there is another, bigger passage between Odense and the island Copenhagen is on, called the "Big Belt." These are the two shipping lanes connecting the North Sea to the Baltic, and all shipping passes through here, including ships from Russia. At one time the US had people here, watching and reporting the shipping.
Anyway, we went to Middlefart for the ice cream. Just over the bridge, in the woods on the right is a little ice cream stand with the best dark deep chocolate ice cream.
We cruised around the area, seeing a huge filed full of deer that looked like reindeer, the sunset and bridges over the sea lanes, and yet another grand old hotel. This is a really peaceful, interesting area, and you could spend a nice day here just walking the circuit.
It was a great end to a wonderful day. We have had two really nice days here in Kolding, and it has been great seeing another side of Denmark.