Start in Copenhagen. Roskilde, Helsingør and the north Zealand coast are all inside an hour of it by train. Give the second half of the week to Jutland, with Aarhus as the base and Ribe, the Wadden Sea or Skagen as the reason to keep going. Bornholm is a trip of its own, not a day out, and Funen is the easy middle, best taken slowly on a bike.
4 Denmark city guides
Fun fact
Bakken, in the deer park north of Copenhagen, has run since 1583, the oldest operating amusement park in the world. Tivoli, in the centre of the capital, opened in 1843 and is the second, half an hour away on the same train line. Walt Disney visited Tivoli often before Disneyland opened in 1955.
Stereotypes, sorted out
The realityJutland holds more than half the population and two of the four largest cities. Aarhus has the university, the art museum with the rainbow walkway on its roof and a food scene that answers to nobody in the capital, and the North Sea coast an hour west of it behaves like a different country.
The realityThe word is old, ordinary and closer to "cosy" than to a philosophy. What is real is the behaviour under it: candles on café tables at four in the afternoon in November, and dinners that run long because nobody is going anywhere. The exported version with the branded blankets is the invention.
The realityRain arrives as showers under a moving sky and seldom settles in for the day. Daylight shapes a trip more. It runs to about seventeen hours in June and about seven in December.
The realityFlat helps. The infrastructure is the reason. Copenhagen counts close to half of all trips to work and study as bike trips, on separated lanes with their own signals and their own rush hour, and among people who live in the city the share is higher still.
The realityHerring is real and worth ordering. It is also the starting point of a lunch table that runs through smørrebrød, roast pork and cheese, and the country that wrote the New Nordic manifesto in 2004 now has a bakery culture and a produce culture to match the tasting menus.
Cultural notes that actually help
- Janteloven, the Law of Jante, is the shorthand Danes use for a real instinct: do not present yourself as better than the group. It reads as understatement in conversation and as a flat, first-name tone in offices.
- Tipping is not expected. Service is in the price, and rounding up a bill is a compliment, never an obligation.
- Never stand or walk in a bike lane. It is a road, it moves faster than it looks, and stepping into one while leaving a bus is the classic visitor mistake.
- Dinner is early. Kitchens fill from six and many stop serving by nine or ten outside the biggest cities. Book a late table.
- Cards and phones cover almost everything, and Danes settle debts between themselves with MobilePay. Cash is rare enough that some places no longer take it at all.
- Shoes come off inside a Danish home unless the host says otherwise.
- Sankt Hans on 23 June is not a public holiday. It is a bonfire on a beach with singing, and the most Danish evening of the year to be invited to.
Famous Danish faces
Hans Christian Andersen
Søren Kierkegaard
Karen Blixen
Niels Bohr
Mads Mikkelsen
Jørn Utzon
Arne Jacobsen
Carl Nielsen
Tove Ditlevsen
Peter Høeg
Tycho Brahe
Ole Rømer
Hans Christian Ørsted
Knud Rasmussen
Bjarke Ingels
Hans J. Wegner
Poul Henningsen
Verner Panton
Lars von Trier
Susanne Bier
Sofie Gråbøl
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau
Lars Ulrich
MØ
Agnes Obel
Jonas Vingegaard
Caroline Wozniacki
Peter Schmeichel
Christian Eriksen
Frederik X
Margrethe II
Anders Fogh Rasmussen
René Redzepi
Claus Meyer
Must-try Danish food
Smørrebrød
Open rye sandwiches built in a fixed order, eaten with a knife and fork, never stacked.
Rugbrød
Dense sour rye, the base of nearly everything on this list, sold in every supermarket.
Sol over Gudhjem
Bornholm smoked herring on rye with a raw egg yolk, named after its fishing town.
Wienerbrød
What the world calls a Danish. Danes say Viennese bread, after the bakers who brought it.
Risalamande
Christmas rice pudding with almonds, hot cherry sauce and one whole almond to find.
Rødgrød med fløde
Summer berry compote with cream, and the pronunciation test every visitor gets.
Pølsehorn
A sausage in pastry, at every Danish child's birthday and every football match.
Stegt flæsk med persillesovs
Fried pork belly, boiled potatoes and parsley sauce. Voted the national dish in 2014.
Frikadeller
Pan-fried pork and veal meatballs, the weeknight dinner of the whole country.
Flæskesteg
Roast pork with crackling. The Christmas centrepiece, and a smørrebrød topping all year.
Hakkebøf med bløde løg
A beef patty under a heap of soft onions, with pickled beetroot and a fried egg on top.
Tarteletter
Puff pastry cases of chicken and asparagus in white sauce. A family-lunch starter.
Stegt rødspætte
Fried plaice with remoulade and lemon, best on the Limfjord and the North Sea coast.
Marinerede sild
Pickled herring, plain or in curry cream, and the first plate at any proper lunch table.
Fiskefrikadeller
Fish cakes, the everyday cousin of the pork ones, usually with remoulade.
Kanelsnegl
The cinnamon snail, standard mid-morning currency in every bakery queue.
Æbleskiver
Spherical pancakes from a dimpled iron pan, eaten in December with jam and icing sugar.
Drømmekage
Dream cake from Jutland: sponge under a caramelised coconut topping, cut into squares.
Ristet hotdog
The roasted pølsevogn hot dog, with remoulade, crisp onions and pickled cucumber.
Flæskestegssandwich
Roast pork, crackling and red cabbage in a soft bun, from the same wagons.
Akvavit
Caraway spirit, drunk ice cold with herring and chased with beer.
Gløgg
Mulled wine with almonds and raisins, from the first week of December until Christmas.
Danish pilsner
Carlsberg and Tuborg first, then the microbreweries that make beer worth an evening.