Copenhagen Episode 3

Hello again, and welcome to episode 3 of An English Fool Abroad With His Sketchbook, Summer 2023 edition. So nice of you to drop by.

I was awoken by sunshine filtering into my room this morning.- Hello.- I thought – What’s that all about? – By the time I’d got out of bed the clouds and wind were back. Okay, enough of that. This is not going to be another installment where I drone on about the weather. Well, only a little bit and that comes later on.

Cards on the table, I’ve had a great day. Honestly. Whenever I stay in a city I’ve never been to before, I can never tell how long it’s going to be before I really ‘get’ it. I ‘got’ Berlin straightaway. It took me about half a day in Malta. I never found that I quite ‘got’ Warsaw possibly because I came home early. I would say that I didn’t quite ‘get’ Copenhagen. Until today.

So, with no rain evident I set off to try to make up for some of yesterday’s missed sketching opportunities. On the way to the Metro I popped into the supermarket for some essentials. The lady behind the counter was, shall I say, not in the first bloom of youth, in fact I guess she could even be as old as me. So when she handed me the change and said a few words of Danish as she did so I said, “Cheers, me darlin’.” As you do. Well, I don’t in the UK, but this is Denmark. Once again, I had forgotten how well a lot of Danish people speak English. She looked at me, giggled coquettishly, and winked! No, I did not go back in on the way home.

Foolishness alert. When I got to Kongens Nytorv station to change lines, there were two escalators in front of me. One,bringing people down, was working. The other next to it was switched off. -Oh – thought I – it must be not working and we’re supposed to walk up it. And indeed I had gone maybe 10 steps up it when the berk who switched it off switched it back on again. Suddenly I was walking up yet going down. True story.

Right, first missed opportunity put right was to produce the sketch of Rosenborg Palace you see on this page. You might just be able to make out a couple of splotches from the slight rain. It turned out that as well as being ‘all slots are booked up Wednesday ‘ yesterday, it turned out that this is ‘all slots are booked up Thursday’ as well. Never mind. Now, it’s not that much of a walk from the Rosenborg to Langelinie, where Lille Hayfrue (see Tuesday) stands – er – sits. However, although I did pop down and have a look again, this was not the bare statue that I wanted to sketch. No, I wanted to sketch the bear statue – yeah, that pun doesn’t really work in print, does it? – I mean the Polar Bear statue. It’s a short walk from the Mermaid and was made in 1929. I think that I read that it commemorates a real polar bear shot at the time by a sailor, but I’m not sure.

Now, my Rough Guide to Copenhagen does not seem to like the Little Mermaid very much. However, it strongly suggested taking a walk further along Langelinie, to see, well, how should I put it? In 2000, the sculptor Bjorn Norgaard made a work called The Genetically Modified Paradise for Expo 2000 in Hanover. Most of it is now installed in a fountain and consists of seemingly grotesque figures with titles like The Pregnant Man, Jesus, Adam, Mary and others. One figure, though, is actually in the water beside the quay on which the fountain stands. This piece is The Genetically Modified Mermaid. And yes, it is a definite play on Copenhagen’s most famous statue. Like the original it too sits on a rock, and is the same green verdigris colour, and has a pose a bit suggestive of the mermaid. But it’s limbs are grossly exaggerated. Now, you might think that the good people of Copenhagen might have taken exception to this seeming mockery of the most famous symbol of their city. But that would be wrong. That is not the Copenhagen way. It was actually unveiled in situ by the Crown Prince. If this is a Danish sense of humour, then I really like it.

So, I mentioned Hans Christian Andersen yesterday, and the next part of today after sketching the alternative mermaid, was devoted a little more to the lad himself. Although Andersen himself was born in Odense he made his fame and fortune in Copenhagen, and you would have thought that as the city’s most famous adopted son, they would have made a fuss of him. After all, Mozart was from Salzburg, but when I visited Vienna you couldn’t go far without his name, his fizzog or his music greeting you. Chopin’s name was pretty evident around Warsaw, and he buggered off to Paris. Andersen does have a street named after him in Copenhagen, but that’s it. Later in the day I found that of the two houses he lived in on Nyhaven (more of that later) one is now a private dwelling and the other is a souvenir shop. No museum in either. Okay, you can visit the Hans Christian Andersen experience in Ripley’s Believe it or Not, but that’s not exactly what I was thinking of.

So this is why I decided to seek out his grave in Assistens Kierkegard (-Churchyard- Cemetery) I like a cemetery now and again. I mean, I wouldn’t want to stay in one, but in the middle of a bustling city they are little islands of calm. The way to his grave is actually signposted in small, respectful signs, and his grave is marked by a relatively small and tasteful stone pillar. That’s the Copenhagen way. On the way to the cemetery I crossed over a bridge, and found where the Danes have been hiding all the benches. Tons of them, but only on one side of the bridge. Not really sure why, considering that both views from the bridge seemed equally picturesque to me.

So, from there to Nyhaven to look for his houses. Now, if you’ve never been to Copenhagen but only seen photographs of it, then if it has a statue in it, it will show the Little Mermaid, and if it shows houses then it will be Nyhavn. Nyhaven – or New Harbour in English – isn’t new at all, which is rather the charm of it. It’s charmingly pretty, especially considering that it was all built by Swedish Prisoners of War. These Danes, eh? Now, you may struggle to believe this, but I found another bench! I quickly took up squatters rights and sketched the boat and buildings you should be able to see. Now, in the interests of truth I should not keep it to myself that while I was making the sketch a lady tapped me on the shoulder, painted to the one I was making, which also had the Rosenborg sketch above it, and she said, and I quote, “Excuse me, but your drawings are beautiful.” (Then her keepers put her back in her straitjacket and took her back where she came from. I though I’d say it before anyone else did.) Trumpet duly blown.

About 50 yards from where I was sitting there was a canal tour booth, and since I was feeling very good about myself after being told that about my drawings I decided to reward myself with the canal tour. To be fair I thought it was reasonably priced for Copenhagen. And I have to say, I really enjoyed it. There are parts of Copenhagen which are a little reminiscent of Amsterdam and it turns out that this is no accident. One of the Fredericks was very taken with the Dutch capital and he used some of his own capital to emulate it. Well, parts of the city, anyway. Another thing we did was sneak up behind the Little Mermaid. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a photograph showing this side of her before, and if I’m honest I think I do understand why the view from the shore is used on all the posters. I like boat tours anyway and I felt that an hour’s tour was just about right. It was interesting, informative, and the fact that the Danish for 60 minute guided tour seems to be Havnerundfart added just that little bit more to the entertainment value. If all else fails a little injection of toilet humour just helps the day along, I find.

Mind you, once we were out of Nyhavn, the wind really hit us. It had not been at all warm all day so far, and I’d been sitting sketching for the best part of an hour before getting on the boat. I’m sure there have been other August days when I’ve been as cold as I was on the boat. . . but not many. Then, just as we were mooring up, the sun came out. And it was almost as if Copenhagen itself shone. Honestly, you would not have thought that it was the same place. And if I hadn’t quite ‘got’ Copenhagen before, I did then.

Last week I painted a Whitby fishwife based on a black and white photograph from the turn of the 20^th century. As far as I know this is something my Clark 3x great grandmother would have been doing. Well, on the boat we passed a statue of just such a person. I made a note of where it was – gammel strand – which my knowledge of Old English identified as meaning Old Beach. Actually, thinking of that, I recall Henrietta, my tutor for Old English and Old Norse at Goldies once said that she spoke both with a Danish accent. However, back to the point. I walked back down to have a look, and although I was all sketched out for the day I made a note to myself that if there’s time before I go to the airport tomorrow, I’ll do it then.  I took a walk down the longest pedestrianised shopping street, Stroget, and thoroughly enjoyed it. So much so that I thought – d’you know what, I’d really like to see what The Little Mermaid looks like in the sunshine. So I went and took the photo. The difference between the statue in dull, overcast weather is the difference between Copenhagen in the same, only in microcosm.

To complete the day, when I got the Metro back to Vestamagr, for the first time since arriving in Copenhagen I got the front seat on the Metro. And I was amazed, as we emerged from the tunnel onto the long, straight open section, just how close the stations are, and more importantly, that I could actually see the train ahead of us. No wonder they don’t need timetables.