The Cope

A few blocks away from the Little Mermaid - who is even littler than you are imagining and bears no resemblance to her Disney sister - is more imposing sculpture atop a fountain of stone in Churchill Park. The statue is that of Gefjon, one of the goddesses of Norse mythology, standing on her chariot with a (not to be too judgy here) haughty demeanor, waiting for her four powerful oxen to pull her along.

Upon closer inspection, we find that it isn’t a chariot she’s standing on, but rather a simple plow, actively tilling the earth.And the oxen are bellowing and snorting under the strain, for it seems she will not let them rest for even a moment, as though time is of the essence.

In fact it is. Or was. For legend has it that King Gylfi, who ruled over Sweden at some point, having entertained himself with a peasant girl, proposed to give her any land she could demarcate in the course of a night. But Gylfi did not know the girl was Gefjon in disguise and the four oxen were her children birthed from a giant. Their plowing was so powerful as to break off a piece of Sweden, which drifted across the water to become part of Denmark.

This landmass. called Zealand, is where Copenhagen was built more than a thousand years ago by a group of fishermen looking to settle down. Because the land was warm for as far north as it is, houses begat houses and a city was born.

Looking carefully at the outlines of Zealand it would appear that the goddess Gefjon might have been drinking and driving when she took her oxen out for their midnight ride. Or perhaps she was tired after her romp with Gylfi, because she gave Zealand a strange shape indeed. And it is said that, in the place of this land she snatched from the king is a lake in Sweden in the shape of the land she claimed. This lake, Lake Vanern, does exist and does, if you squint your eyes and your imagination, does resemble Zealand.

It is the dream of every writer to do the same. To take the outline of the country and lift it up. To convey what it is that makes the place special. To carry the contours. To rebuild in words and pictures what happens in stones, and gestures and tastes and time. Words, of course, can be put to task to do many things. Can bring a place closer. Can give a sense of the wonder that is felt as you sit in the grass outside of a castle and watch the birds dance in the sky.

But the shadow is not the same as the city. So, I write this in hopes not of taking you to Copenhagen, but in inspiring you to go. And if I am very good, to inspire you to go twice, because Copenhagen is not one city but two. In the winter it is a mood more than a place. It is a huddle against an unending wind of darkness. It is a place that is made warm by the contrast of the inside to the out. It makes Hobbits of us all. In the summer, it is a libertine. Not a city of hipsters, but of their older cousins the hippies. There is a freedom with which they approach the air itself which Americans have a hard time understanding. What follows is a few places I enjoyed, but really, there is no wrong answer. Go to Copenhagen, after that, it will all take care of itself.

DRONNING LOUISES BRO: Connecting the two Copenhagens

Copenhagen is a tale of two hipsters Dronning Louises Bro connects the two. On the Eastern side of the bridge is the old city, the well-manicured hipster, with the waxed moustache and the shined shoes, smelling of Old Spice.

On the Western is Nørrebro, the angry young hipster with the aggressive beard full of spittle, late for his job as a barrista his Onitsuka tigers untied.

Bicycle traffic reaches insane proportions as the population moves back and forth between its two states. All of it recorded in a counter that sits at the end of the bridge

(on the well-manicured side) keeping track of the day and the year. It is the place where the students come to find the sun and is referred to by the foreigners as “the party bridge” because you can always find some- one having a party there. In the summer, the swan boats peddle past. In the winter, people walk across the lake instead. And every night, the glow of the neon signs (the organic chicken laying 6 eggs per minute) lets you know you’re in the right place.

If the city has a beating heart, it’s not in the tourist sites, it’s a little bridge through which all vitality flows.