Sunday, May 2, 2010

May-Day May-Day The Vikings Might Attack

May 1rst is another holiday in Denmark where hundreds of thousands of people flood the park down the street and listen to union leaders and politicians speak about I don't know what. It's some sort of labor day. Even the Danish people I know couldn't give me a good description of how it started or it's purpose...something about rallying together and demanding 8 hour work days..you get the picture. It has since turned into an excuse for everyone to sit out in the park boozing it up and chowing down on McDonald's. There were McDonald's wrappers and beer cans all over the city! I counted at least 7 garbage cans with vomit in, on, or near them. I would say the average age of the drinkers was 16 and there was plenty of public displays of affection. It was a mess....


Joey and I decided we had done enough boozing lately and decided to take the sober approach to a cultural experience and took the train out to Roskilde, about 30 minutes west of Copenhagen. Roskilde is famous for 3 things: their summer music festival (in June or July), the cathedral, and the viking ship museum.




We missed the summer music festival but we were able to catch an outdoor talent show. The boys were dancing around with guns to Michael Jackson's "smooth criminal." A lot of the Danish kids play with toy guns which seemed so wrong. Apparently guns are completely illegal in Denmark so no one is worried about distinguishing a real gun from a toy gun. If you walked into a Danish bank and tried to rob them at gun point they would just think you were playing around.




Later we toured the Roskilde Cathedral where all the dead Danish Kings and Queens are buried in tombs and coffins.




Below is Christian IV's tomb. He's my favorite Danish king. I couldn't tell you what he did or what he looks like. But his initials C4 are on all the cool buildings in Copenhagen.



I thought this room was pretty amazing...All the artwork below is painted on a flat surface. They really did a good job of making that C4 shield look 3-D...



After the cathedral we mosied on over to the Viking museum where we got to go out on a replica 10-man viking ship and sail into the harbor. Joey and I were the only customers so we had to use two of the museum staff as extra man power. Good thing we borrowed those guys because in order to get back to shore we had to row all the way back against the wind. I would never have survived being a Viking. The museum was slightly disappointing. I expected big huge Viking ships and cool artifacts. But they didn't really have any of that stuff. There were some people carving wood and painting shields and boats in the same way that the Vikings probably did back in the day. Inside they made up some stories about how a Viking attack might have happened if the Vikings attacked Roskilde. The Vikings never attacked Roskilde though. They found 4 or 5 boats that the Roskildians had sank in the harbor to prevent the Viking ships from getting to land and pillaging the village. I don't think there's too many detailed historical accounts of what went down during the Viking era. So the museum was a bit of a stretch I thought. But at least we could see ourselves as Vikings....






Yes, they have real swords and axes in the children's play area...

Here are the boats they found in the water:


The end.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

No, not the end!!!!

Trevor said...

I feel bad for the lonely teenagers working at McDonalds on quasi-labor day. Those politicians should mandate they get time-and-a-half.

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