FEATURE

FEATURE 15 A tour guide truly worthy of being an ambassador for our wonderful capital

Listen and learn while the Wonderful Wonderful Walks Copenhagen app cracks jokes at a distance while keeping the intimacy closely in your ears

BEN HAMILTON

NOBODY was ever going to be confused by the names Lepin and Lego, but by using the same font and colouring, the Chinese imitator was onto a good thing with the chronically short-sighted. We’ve all been there: a special offer for a kitchen contraption made by a company beginning with ‘B’ … just not the one we thought it was. Or waking up in bed with a dealer from WP Morgan …

In Greenwich there used to be a furniture store called ‘No Ikea’. It wasn’t long before they got a telephone call from Stockholm. They changed the name to ‘No Idea’. That’s Greenwich, London, by the way, not Greenwich Village, New York – it’s funny, but nobody ever seems to object to somebody ripping off the name of your town.

Taking the biscuit

HEATHER Gartside, the owner of the Wonderful Wonderful Walks Copenhagen app – which offers users warts-and-all virtual tours around the city, which can be enjoyed on the route or from the armchair – is adamant she didn’t rip her name off from Wonderful Copenhagen.

Like the capital’s official tourism company, she borrowed it from Danny Kaye, she insists, and besides, it’s not like she wants the association. In the wake of the pandemic, the experienced walking tour operator is taking a more upbeat approach to the dwindling numbers of tourists in the city, and she’s had enough of all the pessimism.

“It’s time that we breathed some life into the dispirited tone that the tourist bureau Wonderful Copenhagen has set,” she contended.

“It’s really taken the Danish butter cookie over the past few months with its lacklustre, scared, half-finished or downright defeated campaigns and articles on social media about the financial catastrophe that has hit so many hotels, companies, bars, restaurants … and yes, self-employed tour guides.”

Scintillating wit

GARTSIDE’S answer to the pandemic, which overnight prevented her from meeting her clients, was to go virtual: “The new normal is uncharted territory, with much in the tourist business now becoming, and in the near future, virtual.”

She spent the spring researching and then writing a new 17,000-word script packed full of informative, witty and often salacious details about the less frequented and unusual parts of the Danish capital, which is complemented by music, video and some standout photography.

Available via Google Play and the App Store, the result is the kind of guide everybody secretly wants but never gets. It’s so evocative of the capital, you could just listen at home and then cross Copenhagen off the bucket list – an approach taken by Liam from CTO Virtualtrips.

Huge applause

“JUST WHEN you think it’s becoming predictable there’s a wacko piece of music or some indecipherable Danish word thrown at you. Highly recommended, even from my apartment in London!” he enthused.

“I really enjoyed the humorous and well modulated commentary, and I love the tips on all the free things to do – oh and when you’re nearby public conveniences!” concurred Patricia Agnew from Toastmasters CPH North.

“WWWalks is very different and full of fun and original content. My kids liked it too, and all the music and funny voices had them enjoying the history so much that they forgot that they were learning!” added Mariska Volkers, the founder of Nordsjælland International Community.

Gartside in action

is advocating a more sustainable approach to tourism, not only with her virtual tour, but through the observations she includes about present day innovation and values in the city.

“Those that can adapt are the only ones that will weather the storm. This is an exciting time, where we can rise in beautiful, user-friendly and sustainable new ways. After all, Copenhagen aims to become carbon neutral by 2025,” she said.

“So where is the fight, Wonderful Copenhagen? Great ideas are born out of adversity - be brave! And no, we don’t want the stinking cruise ships back!”

Busy schedule

GARTSIDE also live-streams from Copenhagen every two weeks via virtualtrips.io. Catch her next performance, ‘Danish Divas’, on Saturday 22 September at 18:00. Other recent escapades included a stand against the overblown global concept of Danish hygge.

WWWalks is clearly gathering steam. Just this Monday, Gartside held court at the ongoing International Citizens Day with a speech entitled ‘What is it with all these Christians and Frederiks’.

Catch her on Saturday (Sep 19) when she takes a complementary taster tour around the sights with the WWWalks app at 10:30.

Something fishy about the sinking of the Danish king's ship 525 years ago

When the Gribshunden caught fire in Swedish waters, the monarch was conveniently absent, but had he forgotten his fish supper?

BEN HAMILTON

AS FAR AS medieval conspiracy theories go, it’s right up there with what really happened on the White Ship that sank with the heir to the English throne onboard in 1120, was Joan of Arc actually a man, and who really faked the Shroud of Turin.

Back before Novichok

THIS ONE is a Scandinavian sizzler that has been perplexing historians for over 500 years – which probably explains why Ken Follett hasn’t jumped on it yet for another Middle Ages romp, but give him time!

Like most destructive events in those days, it involved fire and possible regicide.

But the cause of the blaze – which consumed the Dan ish king’s 35-metre long ship, Gribshunden (griffen hound) and sent it and most of its occupants to the depths of the Baltic in 1495 – remains unknown.

King Hans was fortunately not onboard at the time as the ship was anchored off Ronneby near the southeastern tip of Sweden.

Together with the Danish fleet, the Gribshunden was taking the king to high-level negotiations with the Swedish regent Sten Sture the Elder.

Pesky 'stone' in king's shoe

STEN WAS a constant thorn in the side of the Kalmar Union set up by Danish Queen Margaret I in 1397, which Sweden would eventually leave in 1523 after playing second fiddle to the Danes for 126 years.

Was that motive enough to assassinate the Danish king, or was it possibly even an inside job orchestrated by Hans to avoid meeting Sten?

After all, the next time they met was across the battlefield two years later. In the meantime, peace was the last thing on Hans’ mind. He backed a failed Russian invasion of Finland, influenced the Swedish nobility’s ejection of Sten as regent, and then marched to Stockholm to engage him.

With only peasants in his ranks, Sten was no match for the Danish forces.

Fluff divers

IT WAS with great excitement, therefore, when archaeologists learned of the wreck of Gribshunden in Swedish waters in 2000. It had been discovered by a local diving club in the 1970s, but they hadn’t thought to tell anyone!

And in 2015, the wreck garnered worldwide attention when the almost perfectly preserved ship’s figurehead was brought to the surface. As the ship’s name

The downside of ships back then was that they made excellent kindling

suggests, it is a crocodilian-like dog, with human remains protruding from its teeth.

Its eyes are somewhat closed, like it is the bearer of a great secret: would its embers finally resolve what happened aboard its timbers on that fateful day in 1495?

The remains of an enemy missile, perhaps, or the fag-end of whatever they used to smoke before Sir Walter returned with some finest Virginia?

Would it heck!

A fish for fanden!

FIVE YEARS passed … and

nothing. Sure, they’ve found chainmail, crossbows, bones, glass and capstans, and a few historians are excited because the ship was made in the same era as Christopher Columbus’s most famous vessel, the Santa Maria.

But the best they can come up with in the area of conjecture is why was there a two-metre Atlantic sturgeon onboard in a barrel?

Lund University believes the fish, a huge delicacy at the time and quite prestigious, was a “propaganda tool” – a sign of status heading to the Kalmar Union negotiations, and even a possible gift for the Swedish regent and court.

The Danish National Museum disagrees, calling Lund’s suggestion “absurd” according to videnskab.dk – a retort straight out of the Mette Frederiksen playbook, used recently to turn down Donald Trump’s offer to buy Greenland.

The sturgeon, claims the museum, was just as likely being kept for the king’s `fish supper.

Aha … but why didn’t Hans take it with him when he abandoned ship? Like most conspiracy theories, there’s clearly something distinctly fishy going on.