Bornholm, Denmark
Our exploration of the history and culture of southern Scandinavia continued on several time scales. In Grebbested, Sweden we viewed carvings etched into hard granite Bronze Age people. (See the Daily Expedition Report for August 22.) Yesterday we visited Copenhagen, one of northern Europe’s oldest and most beautiful capital cities, filled with buildings and monuments dating from the 15th, 16th, and 17th Centuries. Many of these date from the reign of Denmark’s great builder, King Christian IV (1588-1648). Today we visited Bornholm, an island in the Baltic Sea that is actually closer to Sweden than it is to the rest of Demark. During the Middle Ages Bornholm was an important trading center, producing and trading, especially, smoked Baltic herring. Our tour of Bornholm took us past a famous round church that was built in the 12th Century, reconstructed in the 1950s, and used, this very day, for a wedding. We wished the happy couple good fortune and drove on. We climbed to the ruins of Hammershus Castle, dating from around 1250. There we imagined life in medieval Bornholm and debated over bird tracks in the mud.
Returning to our ship, we explored history of another time, as Robert Mac Neil interviewed Lech Walesa: founder of the Solidarity movement, former President of Poland, winner of the Noble Peace Prize, and guest aboard the Endeavour. We had the rare opportunity to hear reflections on history from one of the makers of history, as guided by one of the leading contemporary chroniclers of history. We were, indeed, privileged.
Our exploration of the history and culture of southern Scandinavia continued on several time scales. In Grebbested, Sweden we viewed carvings etched into hard granite Bronze Age people. (See the Daily Expedition Report for August 22.) Yesterday we visited Copenhagen, one of northern Europe’s oldest and most beautiful capital cities, filled with buildings and monuments dating from the 15th, 16th, and 17th Centuries. Many of these date from the reign of Denmark’s great builder, King Christian IV (1588-1648). Today we visited Bornholm, an island in the Baltic Sea that is actually closer to Sweden than it is to the rest of Demark. During the Middle Ages Bornholm was an important trading center, producing and trading, especially, smoked Baltic herring. Our tour of Bornholm took us past a famous round church that was built in the 12th Century, reconstructed in the 1950s, and used, this very day, for a wedding. We wished the happy couple good fortune and drove on. We climbed to the ruins of Hammershus Castle, dating from around 1250. There we imagined life in medieval Bornholm and debated over bird tracks in the mud.
Returning to our ship, we explored history of another time, as Robert Mac Neil interviewed Lech Walesa: founder of the Solidarity movement, former President of Poland, winner of the Noble Peace Prize, and guest aboard the Endeavour. We had the rare opportunity to hear reflections on history from one of the makers of history, as guided by one of the leading contemporary chroniclers of history. We were, indeed, privileged.
