Museums in Copenhagen / Denmark

General Note

Copenhagen is a wonderful city. On a sunny day you shouldn't go into museums (with the possible exception of the Carlsberg brewery beer museum) but walk around and look at all those people (including dragons) hanging around on the top of buildings, palaces, fountains, and so on. To my amazement I also learned that due to some oversight it wasn't my ancestors who last destroyed Copenhagen (they only occupied it) but the British Admiral Nelson in 1801 for some obscure reason.


People on buildings in Copenhagen
Source: Everything here was photographed by yours truly

There are fantastic museums, too, and I spend many hours in the National Museum, Denmark's largest museum of archaeology and cultural history.
To make a long story short: it is a great museum.

As far as metals are concerned, they have plenty of copper and bronze objects, either right from Denmark or from Egypt, Greece or elsewhere. Those old Danes in the 19th century have been out and collecting, just like anybody else from the more advanced countries, whenever they didn't kill each other.
As far as iron and steel is concerned, they also have a tremendous treasures right from Denmark (or what used to be Denmark): the bog treasures, covered elsewhere in more detail.
In short, old Danes (or whatever they called themselves) that lived up there before the Vikings, sacrificed huge amounts of war booty, including many fancy pattern-welded swords, in their local bogs .
Here is an example:


Pattern-welded (Viking type) sword with elaborate hilt.

Parts or most of what is known as the Nydam treasure is now in the "Landesmuseum Schleswig-Holstein in Schleswig, Germany" and the Danes want it back. What they still have, however, is plenty. Alas, as usual, the artifacts are neither displayed in a particular good way nor do the explanations justice to what you see. It might be a tad better than most exhibits of this kind, but there is plenty of room for improvement.
The rather unbelievable Lindholmgård sword, for example, is displayed in the back of a case and kept rather in the dark.



A pile of (badly lit) sword blades from the Nydam treasure.

They way those swords are displayed and illuminated makes it hard to see details. It makes it even harder to take good pictures because it is almost impossible to avoid reflections from the commom glass used for the display cases.
It was clear that many of those swords were pattern welded but no information about that was given.

But then there were compensations. For example one of the oldest Nordic wood sculptures. It makes quite clear that those guys knew what their swords symbolized:


One of the oldest wood sculptures

There is the world famous Gundestrup silver cauldron and probably the world's largest collection of lures , a simple wind instrument but far more difficult to make than a bronze sword; and so on.


Bronze lures

Not to forget: There are innumerable Greek vases and other objects from the early Mediterranean region, Roman stuff, things from the Pacific areas, from Africa an so on. Noteworthy are the Egyptian artifacts, including what must be the world's first barbie doll: