Museums Gratis

You know what is nice? Updated, informative and interesting museums that are free. That's right in a city where a cup of drip coffee is 5 dollars, some of the best museums are free.

While in Copenhagen we visited two stunning museums, the Post and Telephone museum (my favorite) and the National Museum of Denmark. 

Post and Telephone Museum 

Exterior of the Post and Tele Museum

This museum is not listed in the Rick Steve's Denmark snapshot. I am starting to think him and I have very different interests in tourist attractions. He is great about art and history museums but seems to have little interest in science or just unusual cool things. I read about this museum on the visit Copenhagen website. I saw that it was free and located in a cool neighborhood. I expected it to be a small kitchy museum full of random telephones but instead was amazed to find it was a large updated museum that talks extensively about the history of the Danish post office.


As I mentioned before, the Danish people are very proud. They believe they have the oldest flag, the oldest national anthem, and they are very proud of their long running postal service. The postal system started in the early 1600s. It was largely used for war communications and then for trade. The postal service was part of the King's service and members wore elaborate uniforms and delivered via carriage to merchant trading posts.

Danish postal carriage

Another view of the museum and carriage

Through time the postal system evolved and the museums shows many different service uniforms, carriages, bicycles, and has an extensive collection of stamps from around the world dating back to the late 1800s. Then the museum focuses on the development of the telegraph, a Danish invention. Morse code. And finally the telephone system. It was a Tuesday morning so the museum was largely empty. Sean and I enjoyed calling each other or trying to with phone that you have to crank. After doing it incorrectly and unsuccessfully several times, one of the museum docents informed us we needed to crank then call the operator. She played operator for us and using a switchboard connected my call to Sean who was 4 feet away. It was cute and we had a good time. They also had a wall of telephones of the ages.

Crazy Telephone

 And little vignettes set up of different Danish people throughout the years using telephones and technology. You could peak into a 1960s teenager's room and her mother's kitchen. There was a huge display of an old switchboard. If we had kids, they had an entire floor of this old 5 story building dedicated to a play space. They let us walk around it had a ball pit, 5 slides and all these play houses where kids could pretend to deliver mail including Hans Christian Anderson's house. It was a fun couple hours and best of all free!

One of the vignettes

Awesome sculpture of a sheep made out of phones and phone cord

Phone Sheep!

Sean's Best Look

Look, I am the Little Mermaid!

The roof of the Post and Tele Museum offers wonderful views of the city and has a gourmet restaurant and cafe. It was a drizzling day so we only got a cup of coffee but it would make a wonderful outdoor lunch in the sunshine.

On our way to the next museum we were startled by what appeared to be an impromptu parade. Have no idea what this was about but it was pretty flipping cool.

This was Random.

The National Museum of Denmark

Main Entrance of the National Museum of Denmark

On the same drizzling Tuesday, we went to the National Museum of Denmark. This museum covers the history of Denmark from prehistoric times to the present. Although their largest collections are from before 900AD and the 1700s. This museum located in an old palace is also free. In Denmark any artifact related to Danish history or culture is the property of the Danish government regardless of who discovers it. So while they encourage amateurs to look for historical artifacts any that they find would belong to the Kingdom of Denmark.

Prehistory

Most of the prehistoric artifacts of Denmark were recovered from bogs. Bogs are largely anoxic, which means they have little to no oxygen and therefore preserve items and bodies well. This works out well since it seems that in ancient Denmark items were ritualistically thrown into the bogs as part of a sacrifice. So this means the museum has an extensive collection of gold and amber jewelry, weapons, and household goods that were given over to the bog from before 900AD.

Prehistoric musical instruments thrown into the bog

Enemy ship chopped up and thrown into the bog

 The museum also had 4 or 5 well preserved bodies and grave items from graves that were built in an almost pyramid structure. They would bury two people side by side and then build a mound over them and later another person would be buried on the mound and then a bigger mound built over all three bodies and so on. A few of these mound graves were located and were so well preserved you could see the clothing on the skeletons. Below is a link to the museum article on this impressive specimen that was so well preserved it had clothing, hair and stomach contents despite being 2000 years old.

The woman from Huldremose

As I mentioned before, Denmark is very proud of its flag. It is the oldest flag and the story goes that while battling in Estonia in the 1200s, the flag fell from the sky. It seems that battling was a major part of Danish history. Denmark was once a lot bigger as they at various times had conquered much of Sweden, parts of England, and Germany. I know later in the museum they were saying the longest Denmark and Sweden had not been at War was 80 years.

The museum had a temporary exhibit on Vikings. It was well regarded online but I have to admit I was disappointed. It was a lot of flash and not a lot of substance. Instead of placards to describe the items it was all done with ipads that were crowded by people so it was hard to see and long waits. There wasn't a lot of information. The main piece in the exhibit was a large life-size replica of a Viking ship. Which admittedly was pretty cool but it felt kind of shallow without the historical information.

One whole floor of the museum was dedicated to artifacts from around the world presumably acquired by Danish explorers or traders. The section felt very dated and almost disrespectful of many of the indigenous cultures they had items from. Sorta felt a little bit like the Disneyland ride Its a Small World but in museum form.

Overall it was a good few hours of history. And again, the fact these museums are well funded and free to the public really shows Denmark's priorities.

My next post will be all about one of the oldest amusement parks in the world, Tivoli Gardens. This place is the original Disneyland and quite full of magic. My final post on Copenhagen will be all about the fabulous restaurants of the meat packing district and across the city.