Travel writing on Denmark: Jutland, Ribes, Skagen, Aarhus and more
It’s always a pleasure to receive author copies of guidebooks. I had the unexpected but very welcome chance to go to Denmark late last year and research the Jutland chapter of the new-look Denmark Lonely Planet guide. What a place! If you're in UK (or Europe) and fancy a city break, check out Aarhus - incredible art, dining, museums, and cheap direct flights out of Stansted. Other highlights included Lego fun in Billund, the wandering dunes of Skagen, North sea seal safaris, and hiking up Denmark's not-so-famous peaks, including the wonderfully named Himmelbjerget ('Sky Mountain') at 147 metres high.
Here are a couple of excerpts from the guide, covering some of my favourite places in Aarhus, Denmak’s ‘second city’ behind Copenhagen:
Danish History Comes Alive
EXPLORE THE DENMARK OF YESTERYEAR
A ‘living museum’ with costumed actors might sound twee, daft or only for little kids, but take it from us: Den Gamle By (‘The Old Town’) is a brilliant day out. Some 80 buildings are arranged into a town that glides through three eras: 1864, 1927 and 1974. You might go from chatting to a superstitious candlemaker to sampling alcoholic bitters in an apothecary to answering a rotary-dial phone in a gynaecologist’s office! The immersive detail is hugely impressive and great fun, and it's real history, too: the buildings are mostly all original, transplanted from other parts of Denmark, while the museum itself has its origins in the Danish National Exhibition of 1909.
One highlight you might otherwise miss is Aarhus Story, which tells the saga of the city since the Viking age; you'll find it tucked away in the basement of the 1970s cinema.
Be the Rainbow Over Aarhus
YOUR ART ADVENTURE STARTS HERE
ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum is both the city’s top attraction and it's most eye-catching landmark, thanks to the magic of Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson. Crowning the top of the redbrick gallery, Eliasson’s Your Rainbow Panorama is a 150m-long looping skywalk of multicoloured glass from which you can soak up dreamy, Kodak-filtered panoramas of the city. Inside sit nine floors of art, from Golden Age works through Danish modernism to bold contemporary art. You can't miss Boy, an astonishingly lifelike sculpture of a crouching child by Australian artist Ron Mueck – particularly as he stands 5m tall!
At time of research, a vast subterranean expansion entitled The Next Level was being built, to be furnished with epic-scale installations by American artist James Turrell. Budget for at least half a day here, or make an evening of it: ARoS opens until 9pm on weekdays (closed Mondays).
Moesgaard Museum
AN UNFORGETTABLE HISTORY LESSON
The ingenious, multisensory exhibitions at Moesgaard Museum make for an affecting foray into prehistory. Five permanent exhibits manage to imbue Denmark’s distant Stone Age and subsequent eras with real pathos by steering the narrative towards relatable human stories. Stealing the show is the Graubelle Man, whose body was found in a peat bog near Aarhus in 1952, still looking much like he did when he died (albeit a bit more leathery) over 2000 years ago. Was he a sacrifice to Iron Age fertility gods, an executed prisoner or a victim of murder?
Partly concealed in the landscape, the spectacularly Modernist museum buildings have a good restaurant and plenty of picnic spots in the surrounding countryside, where you’ll also find reconstructed historic buildings – including a wooden Stave Church, the earliest type in Denmark.