Saturday, May 12, 2012

Helsingør and Humlebæk (Denmark)

The pretty little harbor town of Helsingør, or Elsinore, is less than an hour's journey north of Copenhagen. In medieval times, the fortress and castle of Kronborg Slot protected an important waterway between what was then western and eastern Denmark (the latter is now southern Sweden). The very narrow sound controlled access to trade routes for Germany, Poland, the Baltics, Finland, and Sweden. When the Danish kings decided to toll everyone coming through, the money started pouring in. In the ballroom, kings and queens showed their munificence by hosting week-long parties. The food and drink were so abundant that guests took little sips of a sweet alcohol and forced themselves to throw up just so they could keep on eating (à la Hunger Games). No one could or would leave the party, of course, so the men took care of business just outside, and the women just squatted in their hoop skirts in the alcoves. Boy, times were different then.

Medieval comforts being what they were, most of the interior of the castle itself is pretty stark. It is really hard not to draw Game of Thrones comparisons when the mock-up of the castle looks just like the cog-y title sequence in the HBO series and the tour guide tells you that people needed professional sleepers to warm their beds just to survive the cold ("Winter is coming!"). It didn't help that later, back in Copenhagen, our waiter was a dead ringer for Theon Greyjoy (but don't worry, he didn't make us pay the iron price for lunch).

But the biggest draw to Kronborg Slot comes from another author - Shakespeare. He took an old tale about a prince of Jutland, made him a prince of the entirety of Denmark, and moved the story of Hamlet to Kronborg Castle... and the castle has been putting on performances of the Bard's works since 1816. The Shakespeare at Hamlet's Castle summer performance series has allowed Kronborg to name drop some of the most famous actors - Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Christopher Plummer, and Jude Law - in the title role.

Another stop for the cultured crowd is the hamlet of Humlebæk. About 30 minutes north of Copenhagen, it is home to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. The property - originally owned by some guy whose three wives all happened to be called Louise, hence, the name - doesn't look like any other contemporary art museums. No sweeping structures. No soaring glass facades. Not even a single minimalist restroom with uber-cool sinks. The place looks like a rambling country house. There are unseen basements and sub-basements and low-ceilinged passageways covered with ivy that integrate with nature so smoothly that it feels like a Frank Lloyd Wright design. Random doors open onto nook gardens with sculptures or terraces with a view of Sweden across the water. The art itself is top-notch. Picasso, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Alexander Calder are some of the artists in the permanent collection. One of the coolest exhibits during our visit was by Andreas Gursky, whose massive photographs can mesmerise like an ultra-high def Where's Waldo in real life. While Rich didn't care for Gursky's mislabeling of his Supernova piece, the physicist was really taken with the photographer's image of the sci fi-like Kamiokande detector in Japan.

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