City of rivers, bikes, beers and museums. Beneath the neat and shallow archetypes, there was a real sense of tolerance for diversity than most places, and a beer can be consumed on the move in the streets (unlike in some cities). The travelers’ experiences of rivers (and riverbanks and boat-houses), bikes (and safe biking-lanes), street-side beers (as opposed to a street-side meal), and museums provided a pleasant if slightly touristy ambience, while another legion of residential life carries on within the enclaves encircled by neat pastel or brick-red building blocks, the latter a world of prams, sticky cookies and grubby hands, jogging lanes, laundries, small takeaways in neat packets and more bikes.
The National Gallery of the city and its painted history of Copenhagen life is counter-poised with Kronborg Castle‘s Hamlet in Helsingor (‘Elsinore’), 45 km to the North. Here the daily grind of providing to a public gallery of tourists in shorts and sneakers, jostling for a front-seat view of the ‘To be or not to be’ recital in the Ballroom of the castle is etched in the intensity of a Prince of Denmark. Hamlet (~1600), William Shakespeare’s longest and perhaps most significant play was performed in the castle for the first time to honor the 200th anniversary of his death (1816), with a cast consisting of soldiers from the castle garrison. The stage was in the telegraph tower in the southwest corner of the castle. Portraits of past-greats who had taken on the role (e.g,, a picture of Laurence Olivier in his full vitality) draw visitors to the attractive enigma of life-imitate-art, where a strategic strong-hold from the Middle-Ages is re-immortalized for the modern-day for its cultural significance than its witness of the history of the Kingdom of Denmark and the fabled contributions of King Christian IV (“C4”).
Other Reads: When did we ask art to imitate life?
Back in Copenhagen, the National Gallery or Statens Museum for Kunst (“SMK”) curators present the city of the Golden Age of Danish Art, in the post-Napoleonic War early 1800’s for what it was then: a population of 100,000 for which a 1000 lived in wealth, approximately 10000 enjoyed tolerable conditions, while the remaining 90,000 lived in varying degrees of poverty. This period of Danish art history portrayed life with realism and a tinge of melancholy for the stoic past. This was after all ‘Viking’ country. Later contemporary art would see the world through the lens and frames of a more universally disruptive departure from an orderly world. Compared to the wealthy then who were the only ones to enjoy the Arts, the present Nordic world has become a model of egalitarianism, equality and equanimity.
Wilhelm Bendz, A Sculptor in his Studio Working from the Life, 1827, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen. © Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen.
Michael Anchar, The Lifeboat is Taken Through the Dunes, 1883, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen. © Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen.
Harald Slott-Meller, The Poor The Waiting Room of Death, 1888 Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen. © Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen.
Lumix G85 & Lumix 12-60 mm lens, 2019.