Denmark

Denmark Tourism

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The smallest and most southern of the Scandinavian countries, Denmark offers an interesting mix of lively cities and rural countryside. Ancient castles, ring forts, jazz festivals, the sleekest modern design you'll ever see and the people who invented Lego - who could ask for more?

Danish Vikings once took to the seas and ravaged half of Europe, but these days they've filed down their horns and forged a society that stands as a benchmark of civilisation, with progressive policies, widespread tolerance and a liberal social-welfare system.

Given all the fun that there is to be had in this festival-happy scattering of islands, Denmark's status as the least bank-breaking country in Scandinavia deserves glad-handed shake-me-happy thank you letters from travellers all the way from the bottom of the beer glass.

Full country name: The Kingdom of Denmark

Area: 42,930 sq km

Population: 5,356,000

Capital city: Copenhagen (pop 1.8 million)

People: 95% Danish; 5% foreign nationals

Language: Danish; English & German are widely spoken

Religion: Lutheran

Government: Constitutional monarchy

Prime Minister: Anders Fogh Rasmussen

GDP: US$161 billion

GDP per head: US$30,150

Annual growth:1.5%

Inflation: 2.5%

Major industries: Agricultural products, grains, meat and dairy, fish, beer, oil and gas, home electronics and furniture.

Major trading partners: EU (esp. Germany, Sweden, UK, Netherlands, France and Italy), USA

Member of EU: yes

Euro zone participant: no

Facts for the Traveler

Visas: Most Western nationals, including Americans, citizens of EU countries, Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders, Malaysians, Singaporeans and most South Americans do not need a visa. Other nationals will need a visa and should contact the Danish embassy about obtaining one.
Time Zone: GMT/UTC +1
Dialling Code: 45
Electricity: 230V ,50Hz
Weights & measures: Metric

When to Go

Considering its northern latitude, Denmark has a fairly mild climate all year round. Still, the winter months - cold and with short daylight hours - are certainly the least hospitable. Correspondingly, many tourist destinations come alive in late April, when the weather begins to warm up and the daylight hours start to increase, and by October they again become sleepers.

May and June can be delightful months to visit: the earth is a rich green accented with fields of flowers, the weather is comfortable and you'll beat the rush of tourists. While autumn can be pleasant, it's not nearly as scenic because the rural landscape has largely turned to brown.

High tourist season is July and August. There are open-air concerts, lots of street activity and basking on the beach. Other bonuses for travellers during midsummer are longer hours at museums and other sightseeing attractions. The last half of August can be a particularly attractive time to travel, as it still has summer weather but far fewer crowds.

Events

Denmark's main events are the hundred-plus music festivals which run almost non-stop, covering a broad spectrum of music that includes jazz, rock, blues, gospel, Irish, classical, country and Cajun. Beginning with Midsummer Eve bonfires in late June, some of the most popular festivals are the Roskilde Festival, northern Europe's largest rock music festival, held in late June or early July; the Midtfyns Festival in Ringe, held in early July, which features international rock, pop, world, folk and jazz musicians; the Copenhagen Jazz Festival, held for 10 days in early July, which is one of the world's major jazz festivals; the Copenhagen Summer Festival, which features chamber and classical music concerts during the last week of July and the first two weeks of August; and the Tønder Festival, one of northern Europe's largest folk festivals, which is held at the end of August.

The nine-day Århus Festival, beginning on the first Saturday in September, turns that city into a stage for nonstop revelry, with music and drama performances of all sorts drawing hundreds of thousands of Danish and international visitors. The program also incorporates a Viking Festival complete with roving jesters, jousting and archery competitions, Viking-style ships, and traditional food, drink and merrymaking.

Money & Costs

Currency: Danish Krone

Meals

Budget: kr35-60
Mid-range: kr60-80
High: kr80-120
Deluxe: kr120+

Lodging
Budget: kr60-150
Mid-range: kr150-490
High: kr490-800
Deluxe: kr800+

By anything other than Scandinavian standards, Denmark is certainly an expensive country. Part of the credit lies with the 25% tax which is included in every price from hotel rooms to shop purchases. Still your costs will depend on how you travel and it's possible to see Denmark without spending a fortune.

If you take advantage of Denmark's extensive network of camping grounds or stay in hostels and prepare your own meals, you might get by on US$30 a day. If you stay in modest hotels and eat at inexpensive restaurants, you can expect to spend about US$65-75 a day. Some of the cheapest places to eat are those that specialise in Mediterranean buffets, pizza or Greek food. Car rental is expensive in Denmark; if you want wheels, it might be worth hiring a car in Germany for about one third of the price, and taking it across the border.

Restaurant bills and taxi fares include service charges in the quoted prices. Further tipping is unnecessary, although rounding up the bill is not uncommon when the service has been particularly good. Bargaining is not a common practice in Denmark.

Attractions

Copenhagen

Copenhagen has been Denmark's capital for 600 years. It's an appealing and largely low-rise city comprised of block after block of period six-storey buildings. Church steeples punctuate the skyline, with only a couple of modern hotels marring the view.

The city's seemingly interminable pedestrian mall, Strøget, has great shopping and entertainment, from street theatre to the parade of passersby. The famous Tivoli funfair serves up fun in more traditional forms while the cosmopolitan Latin Quarter will tempt you with its coffee aromas.

Egeskov Slot

Egeskov Castle, complete with moat and drawbridge, is a Renaissance gem. Built in 1554, in the middle of a small lake, Egeskov rests on a foundation of thousands of upright oak trunks. The expansive park includes century-old privet hedges, free-roaming peacocks, a topiary and manicured English gardens.

The interior has antique furnishings, grand period paintings and an abundance of hunting trophies. For those who enjoy labyrinths, there's a 200-year-old bamboo maze. Also on the grounds is an antique car museum, which displays about 300 period cars.

Legoland

Legoland, a kilometre north of the small Jutland town of Billund, is a 10-hectare theme park built from plastic Lego blocks, and is not recommended to anyone who fears having their childhood writ both large and Lilliputian in 42 million pieces.

Møns Klint

These spectacular white chalk cliffs rise 128m above sea level, presenting one of the most striking landscapes in Denmark. Created 5000 years ago, the cliffs were formed when calcareous deposits were lifted from the ocean floor. You can walk down the cliffs to the beach and directly back up again in about 30 minutes, or walk along the shoreline in either direction and then loop back up through a thick forest of wind-gnarled beech trees for a hardier walk of about one and a half hours.

Møns Klint is located on the island of Møn, south of Zealand, to which it is connected by bridge and serviced daily by bus.

Ribe

Ribe is the oldest town in Scandinavia; recent excavations have unearthed a number of silver coins, indicating that a market town once existed on the site as far back as AD 700. Incessant wars with Sweden strangled regional commerce, resulting in Ribe's decline as an important medieval trading centre. Its economic decline has, nevertheless, spared it from modernisation. With its crooked, cobbled streets and half-timbered 16th-century houses, visiting Ribe is like stepping into a living museum.

The town's dominant landmark, Ribe Cathedral, stands as a fine testament to Ribe's prominent past. For a lofty view of the countryside, climb the cathedral's 14th-century tower. Ribes Vikinger is a huge museum with displays of Ribe's Viking and medieval history. One exhibition hall has a reproduction of an AD 800 marketplace, complete with a cargo-laden Viking ship; and there's also a multimedia room where you can explore the Viking era via computers, light and sound. Just south of the town centre is the Vikingecenter, which has attempted to re-create Viking-era Ribe through various reconstructions, including a 34-metre (1112ft) Fyrkat-style longhouse. Ribe is in southern Jutland, accessible by trains from Esbjerg (35 minutes) and Tønder (50 minutes).

Århus

The commercial and cultural centre of Jutland, Århus is a lively university city with one of Denmark's best music and entertainment scenes. It has the added attraction of an open-air museum with 75 restored buildings brought here from around Denmark and reconstructed as a provincial town.

History

Nomadic hunters followed the lichen and moss-eating reindeer into post-glacial Denmark. The reindeer heard 'go north' voices, but the Stone Age hunters stayed put, sowing seeds in the ash of slash-and-burn fields, fencing in stock animals and burying their dead vertically. Skill and artistry flowered in the Bronze Age from 1800 BC, trade routes paddled all the way south and the most beautiful and valuable objects were buried in bogs as sacrificial offerings. Iron clanged in from 500 BC and was domestically available, leading to the development of large agricultural communities. Present-day Denmark can trace its linguistic and cultural roots back to when the region was settled by the Danes, a tribe that is thought to have migrated south from Sweden around 500 AD.

In the late 9th century, warriors led by the Norwegian Viking chieftain Hardegon conquered the Jutland peninsula. The Danish monarchy, which claims to be the world's oldest, dates back to Hardegon's son, Gorm the Old, who established his reign early in the 10th century. Gorm's son, Harald Bluetooth, completed the conquest of the Danes, speeding their conversion to Christianity. Bluetooth's gob-stopping successors, Forkbeard and sons, got the wood on England, setting up shop and throne and living the sweet life of Anglo-Dane monarchs. They kept it together for half a century or so, but as Viking power waned, the borders of the Danish kingdom shrank back to Denmark.

Blackadderish strife, plots, counter plots and assassinations marked the medieval period. By the late 14th century, upstart dynasties intermarried, eventually forming the Kalmar Union under fair Queen Magrethe; Denmark, Norway and Sweden, now all bunked in together, started to exasperate one another. Sweden was particularly peeved by the profligate Danish spending on wars, and the union dissolved in 1523 when Sweden elected Gustav Vasa as its king. Norway, however, was to remain under Danish rule for another three centuries.

In the 16th century the Reformation swept through the country, leaving burnt churches and civil warfare in its wake. The fighting ended in 1536 with the ousting of the powerful Catholic church and the establishment of a Danish Lutheran church headed by the monarchy. King Christian IV ruled for the first half of the 17th century, undermining fabulous trade and wealth creation by leading his subjects into the disastrous Thirty Years War with Sweden. Denmark lost land and money and the king an eye. Even more disastrous were the losses to Sweden incurred some decades later by Christian's successor, King Frederick III. Denmark emerged slowly from these wars, focusing on civil development and reform.

During the Napoleonic Wars Britain attacked Copenhagen twice, inflicting heavy damage on the Danish fleet in 1801 and leaving much of Copenhagen ablaze in 1807. The Swedes then took advantage of a weakened Denmark, successfully demanding that Denmark cede Norway to them. The 19th century might have started off lean, dismal and dominated by a small Frenchman with a big ego, but by the 1830s Denmark had awakened to a cultural revolution in the arts, philosophy and literature. A democratic movement in Denmark led to the adoption of a constitution on 5 June 1849, which in turn led to the formation of a Danish constitutional monarchy. Germany took control of Schleswig in southern Jutland, after its inhabitants, people of both Danish and German heritage, revolted against the new constitution.

Neutral in WWI, Denmark reaffirmed its neutrality at the outbreak of WWII; but, on 9 April 1940, with German warplanes flying over Copenhagen, Denmark surrendered to Germany. The Danes were able to cling to a degree of autonomy, but after three years the Germans ended the pretence and took outright control. Although the island of Bornholm was heavily bombarded by Soviet forces, the rest of Denmark emerged from WWII relatively unscathed. Under the leadership of the Social Democrats, a comprehensive social welfare state was established. Denmark is still providing its citizens with extensive cradle-to-grave security.

When Norway broke its political ties with Denmark in the early 19th century, the former Norwegian colonies of Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands stayed under Danish administration. Iceland, under Danish rule since 1380, declared itself an independent state in 1918, although foreign policy was still controlled from Copenhagen. Iceland became completely independent in 1944. The Kingdom of Denmark still includes Greenland and the Faroe Islands, but both are essentially self-governing. The Faroe Islands has had home rule since 1948, Greenland since 1979. In part because Denmark retains responsibility for their banking, defence and foreign relations, Greenland and the Faroe Islands each have two parliamentary representatives in the Danish Folketing. Unlike Denmark, however, neither Greenland nor the Faroe Islands is part of the EU.

Although Denmark voted to join the European Community (now the European Union) in 1973, the Danes have been hesitant to support expansion of the European Union (EU). Indeed, when the Maastricht Treaty, which established the terms of a European economic and political union, came up for ratification in Denmark in June 1992, Danish voters rejected it by a margin of 51% to 49%. After being granted exemptions from the Maastricht Treaty's common defense and single currency provisions, the Danes, by a narrow majority, voted to accept the treaty in a second referendum held in May 1993.

In September 2000 the Danes signaled a deeper discontent with European integration when they rejected adoption of the euro, despite strong support for the pan-European currency by the government and business leaders. An election in November 2001 brought a centre-right, conservative coalition to power with a campaign that focused on immigration. Fears generated in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the USA were an important factor. The debate over Denmark's position in the world continues, especially in regard to Europe, immigration, Denmark's role in Iraq and the rise of the far right.

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