after another hotel breakfast: (ps- scandinavians drink more coffee than anywhere else in the world, and my favorite thing about copenhagen was the endless, endless pots of coffee....)
we went to roskilde, (pronounced ros-killa) which is about a 30 minute train ride. so we walked to the station:
and we passed tivoli gardens. i've been told that this is a very unique, not to mention old, amusement park. it'll open in april, so maybe someone else can let me know.
we stopped by this men's store so ryan could try on a sweater (he didn't get it). have you ever seen a mannequin head with glued on facial hair? it's pretty gnarly.
this is the cutest dishwaher ever. gnome candles. i love it.
uh.... what???
view from the steps of the roskilde cathedral, which has been on this site since 960 (no big deal). most of the kings of denmark had funerals and were entombed here. roskilde used to be the capital city of denmark.
and here's the cathedral. can you see ryan?
some people build play sets....
and some work with what nature provides, ha ha.
ryan and danish ducks.
finally we go to the viking ship museum.
these boats were deliberately sunk in 1070 at fjord here to block the fairway and protect roskilde. they were discovered in 1962, excavated, and carefully reassembled. then, scientists use the clues they had uncovered to build a replica viking ship, and sailed it to dublin (which was founded by the vikings, in case you didn't know that.).
the frozen fjord.
ryan is being a viking, see his horned hat?
yup, people are ice skating. on the ocean.
replica of what the smallest boat, a merchant's ship, would have looked like at harbor.
ropes made of various materials. they even had one made of toilet paper, which was surprisingly strong!
sample cargo from a viking ship.
weaving woolen sails as the vikings did.
and guess what else? you can dress up like a viking. see?
ryan would only try out the weaponry and armor, however:
here is some viking poetry. still applicable.
okay, this is pretty awful. REALLY, IT'S AWFUL. DON'T READ IT IF YOU DON'T WANT TO HEAR SOMETHING AWFUL. there is an account from around 970 of the funeral of a great man. they "found a slave girl willing to die with her master" (yeah, i'm already skeptical about the willingness), and then after a ceremony in which she is given 2 big goblets of alcohol, she is taken into a shack. the men outside begin beating their swords on their shields to cover her screams as 6 men rape her. then, the "corpse-maker", an old woman, puts a rope around her neck and gives each end of it to a man to pull it tight in opposite directions. meanwhile, another four men hold her limbs. then, as the men pull the rope to strangle her, the crone stabs her repeatedly.
and also 6 horses and 4 dogs were killed violently to join their master.
remember that replica ship i was telling you about? where they sailed to dublin in the same manner that the vikings would have, in order to better understand viking life? this was the toilet. can you see the girl smiling in the second photo from the top? apparently, half the (volunteer) crew were so violently seasick that only the other half of the people on board could do any sort of work.
lunch. falafel. again.
ryan had fish and chips. he says it was ok. it was edible. not great.
this is city shaker, the party maker. basically the same as four loco. you have to be 18 to get it.
after we took the train back to copenhagen, we went back to the hotel, and actually, i wrote the previous 2 blogs. then we read, and went to sleep at 9:00. it's kind of boring here. and again, expensive and the food sucks. we're going back to holland 2 days early, yay!
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