ON THE VIKING TRAIL (PART 2 of 2) - SCANDINAVIAN MUSEUMS Guest Post by Caroline Hatton

My friend Caroline Hatton, a children’s writer and frequent contributor to this blog, took the photos in this post in June and July 2025. 

Roskilde (R), Denmark (D). Stockholm (St), Sweden (S). Oslo (O), Norway (N).

This second and last post on Viking history is about visiting three relevant museums, in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. Part 1 appeared last week.

THE VIKING SHIP MUSEUM IN DENMARK

Less than an hour drive or ride in public transportation from Copenhagen, what is left of five ships, after a thousand years under seawater, is expertly displayed at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde. The website tells the impressive story of the excavation, and provides details about each original ship and its present-day replica.

Ship.

Archeologists believe that local Vikings intentionally sunk decrepit ships in a fjord channel to form a barrier, to protect their town, Roskilde, from enemy attacks. Piles of debris embedded in the sea floor contained the remains of a fishing boat, a small coastal trader (above photo) that could carry up to four tons of cargo, a large ocean-going cargo ship, and two speedy longships to carry warriors into battle, up to 70 armed men in the larger vessel.

Scientists determined not only what kind of wood the ships were made of (pine, oak…), but where they were made (the location in Norway or Ireland…), where else the big cargo ship stopped for repairs, and that two of the ships were sunk 20 years after the first three. In the museum, the original wooden planks are mounted on the appropriate boat skeletons, made of metal strips.

Model of above ship.

Tabletop models show what the ship once looked like.

We didn’t ride, row, or sail in the replicas floating in the harbor, or watch boatbuilders, sailmakers, ropemakers, or the blacksmith at work. But seeing the museum ships on a tour guided by a costumed archeologist gave us insights into Viking society.

The different specialized ships hint at the fact that not all Vikings were warriors. Most Vikings were farmers. Some were traders, others fearless explorers. They relied on genius shipbuilders and specialized craftspersons. Warriors were a minority and they went on raids only part of the year.  But even farmers used boats to move cows between pastures, and to bring goods to and from markets, because it was easier to travel over water, including by sled when it was frozen solid, than land.

Over time, better ships carried more load, faster and farther: warriors, for swifter, deadlier raids and conquests. Explorers searching for new lands and resources. Traders seeking greater wealth and larger networks. From their Nordic homelands, Vikings spread east, west, and south. It is easy to imagine Vikings enamored with their ships, often referred to as “sea-steeds” or “wave-horses” in Norse poems.

THE VIKING WORLD IN SWEDEN

In Stockholm, the Swedish History Museum’s Viking World is the world’s largest Viking exhibition. The website offers online exploration of this exhibition, with hi-res photos better than the one below, articles, old Norse myths, and stories of Viking age people, including children. The best webpage for a virtual visit has buttons by theme, such as “Family and hierarchy,” leading to sub-themes, leading to more info and hi-res photos of many objects.

On site, in the courtyard, a staff blacksmith had visiting children pumping the bellows. Some visitors shot arrows, others played a Viking board game. Staff bakers made flatbread on a griddle for us to taste with butter, honey, and cumin or fennel seeds. The Vikings made rye or spelt flatbread, but only on special occasions or perhaps as grave gifts. Their daily meals included porridge, meat, fish, and vegetables.

Inside, we followed a stellar tour guide, an archeologist, before wandering independently through the exhibition for hours.

Keys.

I love Viking keys. They unlocked chests or cupboards containing valuables, and hung like pendants on necklaces around the neck of the woman who was the head of the household. They symbolized her authority and power. She ran and controlled the place. Today, replicas are widely available and hugely popular in Scandinavian museum shops.

THE VIKING AGE EXHIBITION IN NORWAY

The Oslo Norwegian Historical Museum’s Viking Age Exhibition webpage links to a 17-minute video Guided Tour with Closed Caption available in English. Displayed in 19 glass cases were some of the finest Viking objects found in Norway. This exhibition was smaller than the Viking World in Stockholm, Sweden, yet just as interesting.

Treasure.

Above, Norway’s largest Viking gold treasure, the Hon Hoard. It was found in 1834 by a farmer digging a ditch. Dating from the 800s, it includes more than 2.5 kilograms (over 2.5 lbs) of gold. With gold necklaces, Frankish jewelry, Arabian coins, North African beads, a Roman gemstone, and an English ring, “The hoard is a reflection of Viking journeys and contacts.” At its greatest, the world of the Vikings stretched from today’s Iran to today’s Canada, and from the North Atlantic to the Mediterranean and North Africa.

The photo at the top of this post shows the best preserved Viking helmet ever found anywhere, the Gjermundbu Helmet. It was found on a farm, in the grave of an elite equestrian warrior surrounded by numerous weapons and abundant gear. Note the absence of horns on the helmet. Horns on Viking helmets exist only in popular culture.

 This temporary exhibition ends in December 2026. The objects will move permanently to the new Museum of the Viking Age when it opens in 2027.

Across the different places we visited, our expert guides agreed that Víkingr, the Old Norse word for Viking, was what people called themselves—but not all Norse people--only seafaring warriors and travelers. ”Vik” meant “bay” and a Viking went about his business in a bay, sailing or crewing a boat. “Viking” was an occupation, like “farmer” or “archeologist.” Now, the word Viking refers to anyone of Norse origin who lived during the Viking Age (~750-1050).

 

 

THE KAREN BLIXEN MUSEUM NEAR COPENHAGEN, DENMARK – A WRITER’S HOME Guest Post by Caroline Hatton

At the Blixen Museum near Copenhagen, Denmark.

My friend Caroline Hatton, a children’s writer and frequent contributor to this blog, took the photos in this post in June 2025.

When the movie Out of Africa came out in 1985, I saw it in a big-screen theater. As an epic love story between a Danish woman who had a farm in Africa and a British big-game hunter, it won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, and four more.

Forty years later, my husband and I planned to visit Denmark. By then I had learned that the book, Out of Africa, on which the movie is loosely based, is a memoir by Isak Dinesen, the pen name of Karen Blixen (1885-1962), an icon in the culture of Denmark. (Isak means “he who laughs” and Dinesen was Blixen’s maiden name.)

 

Blixen Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark (D), Norway (N), Sweden (S)*.

An online search for her name found the Karen Blixen Museumhttps://blixen.dk/en/ at Rungstedlund, her farm near Copenhagen. The museum is a park-like estate. In the photo at the top of this post, the farmhouse (on the left) is her former home. The former barn (on the right) is the Cultural Events Centre with meeting room, café, and gift shop. Imagine attending a writer’s conference there! The property contains a pond, bridge, orchard, former cow and horse pasture, and woods with trees centuries old. Part of the property is the Bird Sanctuary she created as a haven for migratory species.

Our self-guided visit began through ground-floor rooms full of info (in Danish and English) about Blixen’s life, photos, and objects such as her Corona typewriter and original editions of her most famous works. This large farm is where she was born in 1885 and grew up privileged, enjoying nature and animals. She loved stories, listening to them and telling her own. By age 8, she wrote her first fiction piece. By age 11, she wrote and performed plays. 

She wanted to achieve something remarkable, not just marry a rich man. Her family was supportive of her quest as a writer. Her first publication was a tale (submitted by her aunt) in a literary magazine the year Blixen turned 22. But she published only two more tales, so she endured years of despair because she didn’t know what to do with her life.

At age 28, she married a rich man after all and started managing a coffee farm owned by family members, in British East Africa, a colony which included today’s Kenya. While reading the museum posters, I liked comparing facts in her real life with fiction in the movie and finding matches (married the day after she arrived in Africa… diagnosed with syphilis…). I gazed at the black-and-white photo of Denys Finch Hatton, the love of her life. “He was the most intelligent man she had ever met, and he was a good listener when she read aloud to him from the stories she wrote.”

After 17 years, the farm, which had never made any money because the area was too cold to grow coffee, was shut down. This left Blixen to despair again, about what she was going to do with her life. She started writing a book, hoping to finish it after going home to Denmark. Finch Hatton did die in a plane crash not long before she left Africa. 

Green room.

She came home emotionally, physically, and financially devastated. Finch Hatton’s favorite chair (the second chair from the right in the above photo), in which he sat by the fireplace at her farm in Africa and listened to her stories, went in the Green Room on the ground floor, not far from her winter writing desk (on the left in the photo). This room stayed warm in cold weather.

She finished writing her book in English. U.S. publishers rejected it. London publishers rejected it. Finally an American author, who was a friend of Blixen’s aunt, gave the manuscript to her own publisher. He published Blixen’s first book, Seven Gothic Tales, in 1934 when she was 49. It was a hit in the U.S. and the U.K., but the Danish version she produced got mixed reviews in Denmark.

African collection.

Our visit led us past a room full of Blixen’s cherished African mementos. This was where she wrote in the summer. While in Africa, she had proposed a travelogue—unsuccessfully. Yet she kept working on it. Finally, in 1936 it was published as a memoir, Seventeen Years in Africa, in a newspaper Sunday supplement. Months later, a new chapter moved her London publisher to accept the book: Out of Africa got rave reviews in Denmark, England, and the U.S. in 1937, the year she turned 52.

Dining room.

We saw the dining room as it was when Blixen staged enchanting dinner parties—for no more than seven carefully selected guests. Her conversations with great minds from all fields of thought inspired her. She viewed gastronomy as an art form. “Babette’s Feast,” the tale she wrote about a French master chef who wowed her guests, was published in 1952 and made into a 1987 Danish movie which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

Kitchen.

Kitchen.

In the kitchen, Blixen’s housekeeper prepared the famous dinners. In the adjacent room, Blixen arranged flowers from her cutting garden for every room in her house. Menus and bouquets provided extra outlets for her creativity.

Library.

Library.

Blixen loved to read broadly across many genres. In her library, we saw some of the books that inspired her.

Bedroom.

Upstairs, we walked through Blixen’s bedroom, as it was when she lived there and died in her bed in 1962. All the rooms look as they did then. 

Looking out the bedroom window.

Outside the bedroom window, beyond the lawn and across a public road, is the sea corridor that separates Denmark from Sweden. Today, the view is filled by a marina, which didn’t exist in Blixen’s lifetime.

Porch.

When we were done visiting the house, we strolled through the manicured grounds.

Grave.

In a far corner of the park, Blixen’s grave, marked unobtrusively by a flat stone under a magnificent beech tree in her Bird Sanctuary, was honored by a single red rose. She chose the site and pre-arranged her funeral consecration ceremony. She also founded the non-profit that still owns the estate. What an uncommon mind and drive she had!

* Credit for the globe image: Rob984 - Derived from Germany on the globe (Germany centered).svg, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

 

Read CarolineArnold’s post about Copenhagen.

MODERN ART AT THE EDGE OF THE SEA: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark

Two piece reclining figure by Henry Moore, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark

One of our four days in Denmark was devoted to an excursion to the stunning Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, about 40 minutes north of Copenhagen by train. It is built at the edge of the sea (you can see Sweden on the other side of the water!) with art both inside and out. The museum, actually a series of interconnected structures (some underground) is built around large outdoor spaces, where a variety of sculptures are installed. The permanent collection includes paintings and lots of sculpture and a room of Giacometti figures. 

As Long as the Sun Sets, sculpture by Alex da Corta

When we visited the museum in late September, one of the featured exhibits was the work of Alex da Corta. Perched on the top of a hill overlooking the water was his large red stabile/mobile, "As Long as the Sun Sets". Big Bird sat in a swing suspended on a wire swaying in the wind. In a special room for children in the museum (the Bornehus) kids could make their own mini-versions of the sculpture and decorate them with found materials.

Humdrum Days by Swedish artist Mamma Andersson

The museum begins and ends in the gift shop. From there we proceeded to a series of underground galleries featuring paintings from the permanent collection--by Picasso, Warhol, Rauschenberg and others.

Frame, Catherine Opie, photographer

The next room was an exhibit of objects in Elizabeth Taylor's house photographed by Catherine Opie, appropriately book ended with a portrait by Andy Warhol.

Elizabeth Taylor by Andy Warhol

Half-way around the museum complex we stopped for a delicious lunch (gazpacho with bufalo mozzarella and chorizo) at the museum restaurant. Although there is outdoor seating, we opted to sit inside, out of the wind and rain. Through the glass we had a view of a large work of art by Jean Dubuffet.

Manoir d'Essor by Jean Dubuffet

Walking Man by Giacometti

After lunch we proceeded through a long corridor, stopping at a room filled with Giacometti sculptures—skeletal figures silhouetted against the forest.

Mr. Remember exhibit by Alex da Corta

The final exhibit, titled "Mr. Remember", filled numerous rooms, and featured work by Venezuelan/American artist Alex da Corta with all kinds of neon, brightly colored paintings and objects, plus a few geese.  He uses an array of different materials and references: from low-cost, mass produced objects to high-end design; from children's TV to the masters of art history; from French poetry to American pop music. The net result is both fun and a bit unsettling. Families with kids loved all the video. 

Peeking through neon lit windows to view objects inside the hut.

The lower level of the exhibit felt like a Halloween fun-house, with dark passages lit by flashing neon,  revealing hidden objects inside small cabin-like structures.

Pars pro Toto by Alicja Kwade

To get to the Louisiana Museum from Copenhagen, we took on of the regional trains from the main station to Humlebaek, then followed the signs for a half-mile walk to the museum.

For information about visiting the Louisiana Museum and links to its history, click HERE.

FOUR DAYS IN COPENHAGEN, DENMARK: Old and New Along the Canals

Copenhagen in Danish is Kobenhavn ("Koben Harbor")

Why Copenhagen? 1. We had never been there before. 2. We are big fans of Danish TV—Borgen, The Bridge, Seaside Hotel, The New Nurses—and 3. Copenhagen is an easy train ride to northern Germany where Art was scheduled to attend a conference in Hanover. With a nine-hour time difference between Los Angeles and Denmark, we needed a place to spend a few days to recover from jet lag before the conference started. So in early October, my husband Art and I spent four days in Copenhagen, Denmark--visiting museums, eating delicious food, immersing ourselves in Danish culture.

Drawbridge tower on the Knippel Bridge and
our hotel, the NH Collection, a modern glass structure at the side of the canal.

On our first morning, after a lavish breakfast at our hotel--eggs, meat, cheese, fruit and, of course, Danish pastries--we set out, crossing the Knippel Bridge into the center of the city. I had not previously realized that Copenhagen is a city of canals, much like Amsterdam, crisscrossed by bridges and waterways. 

Glass topped canal tour boat, Copenhagen

Tour boats circle through the canals and this seemed like a good way to get an overview of the city; so we bought tickets and joined the crowd waiting to board the next boat. The tour was narrated in English, which turns out to be the universal language in Denmark, since few people outside of Denmark speak Danish.

Colorful Nyhavn

The boat made two stops during the one-hour tour, one of them in Nyhavn, with its colorful houses, once filled with rowdy sailors, now with tourists and canal-side restaurants. 

National Library, its windows reflecting the water and  a passing ferry.

Among the other sites we saw in the course of our boat tour were: the Queen’s residence; the Opera House (where we were told a diving competition is held once a year from its roof overhanging the canal); the Little Mermaid (less impressive than in pictures); rows of old warehouses, now turned into expensive apartments; the National Library (known as the Black Diamond because of the way light from the water sparkles off the dark glass). Later that day we visited the library, taking an elevator to the top to view the canal from the inside.

Display of the Royal Copenhagen Christmas plates.

In the center of the city, two long streets lined with shops are dedicated to pedestrians. While shopping was not our goal, we were drawn into the Royal Copenhagen Porcelain shop, where we discovered a display of the classic Danish Christmas plates. We have three (from 1967, 1970 and 1972)—they hang in our kitchen at home—given to us by Art’s aunt, Carolyn T. Arnold, who collected them on her trips around the world. (Portions of Aunt Carolyn's travel memoir have appeared on this blog.)

View from the top of the Round Tower, with the bridge connecting Denmark to Sweden in the distance.

Also in the city center is the Round Tower, where from the top one gets a 360 view of the city--a sea of tile-topped roofs punctuated by skinny, church steeples. Tourists walk to the top of the tower, but King Frederick famously rode his horse up the ramp.

Danish Design Museum. Model of collapseable housing for use in emergency centers. Exhibits at the museum include both state-of-the-art products made with new materials as well as historic examples of fabrics, furniture, and so on.

Over the next three days we visited several museums, including the Danish Design Museum; the old Natural History Museum, which was featuring an exhibit of Neanderthal discoveries; the Palm House and Butterfly House at the Botanical Garden; and the National Historical Museum, with exhibits beginning with prehistory and progressing to Vikings and beyond. 

Meteorite in courtyard of Natural History Museum. Inside was a Neanderthal Exhibit

At all of the museums, helpful explanatory labels were in both Danish and English.

At the Butterfly House in the Botanical Garden.

We devoted a whole day to the Louisiana Modern Art museum, a forty-minute train ride north of Copenhagen—worth its own blogpost.  It, like all of the museums, has a nice cafe—the perfect stop for lunch or afternoon coffee.

Walkway along the canal. Copenhagen is a mix of old and new.

Copenhagen is a very walkable city. By law, all the canals must have pedestrian walkways along the side and streets through the neighborhoods generally have little traffic. However, as a pedestrian, one has to watch out for both bicycles and cars. Bicycles are a preferred mode of transport and get a separate lane on main roadways.

As a major port in the North Sea, boats and shipping are at the center of Copenhagen's history.

We dressed in layers for the cool fall weather and always carried an umbrella for the occasional shower. But overall, the weather was perfect for exploring the city. 

King Frederick on his horse.

We didn't see everything on our visit to Copenhagen (for instance, Tivoli, the famous amusement park, was closed for the season) but we got a good taste of Danish culture. At the end of our four days we knew a lot more about Denmark than before and had significantly reduced our jet lag. 

Inside the dome of the Marble Church.