Karla & Dave's Ed May Sem 2012 Blog

May 27, 2012

Today is a free day for the students, so they decided to take the short train trip across the Øresund Bridge to Malmo, Sweden. Karla and I stayed in Copenhagen to visit The National Museum and do some paperwork.

A scary looking sculpture in the garden area of an art museum on our way to the National Museum.

Tivoli is just across the street from this garden.

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One of the canals that winds through parts of Copenhagen.

A posh looking joint.

Another steeple in Copenhagen.

A street performer getting through a tennis racket. Their are several street performers along the walking street, but most just play music.

This guy also did fire tricks and worked the crowd pretty well. After his act, we talked to him about street performing. He said he they all stake out their territory along the street and agree to take turns with their acts. Legally, they can perform two thirty-minute acts a day in the same place. He said he does three acts a day, tours different cities in Europe, and takes the winter off. At the end of his act he said "Don't listen to your TV's or your governments. They are all lying to you." When we were talking to him he complained that some musicians just down the street from him wouldn't agree with other performers to take turns and now they had been playing for over two hours straight and he wished the authorities would do something about them.

Entrance to the Prehistory of Denmark exhibit in the National Museum. We haven't been here before, but my uncle Dave B. happened upon it last year and highly recommended it. Excellent recommendation - we spent two hours there and barely scratched the surface. Interesting material and some very creative ways of presenting it.

Skeleton of an aurochs (larger than an North American bison), common game of prehistoric Danish hunters. This skeleton was found in a bog and dates from 8600 BC. These beasts would swim into lakes to try to escape their pursuers, but if they were injured, they sometimes drowned and sank to the bottom.. Over time these lakes turned into bogs. Aurochs survived until the middle ages.

Many fish hooks and spear tips have been found at the bottom of lakes. Hooks and spears were used for fishing pike. Smaller fish were caught with nets.

Mother and male child in a stone-age grave.

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Flint Ax Heads

A curved ceremonial sword from the bronze age, about 1550 BC. These ancient people sacrificed many objects to the lakes and bogs, so many artifacts have been well preserved until found in modern times.

Flint spearheads and axes.

Bronze Swords.

Horned Viking helmet from about 900 BC.

Bronze ax from about 1400 BC.

To the left of each of these displays (behind the man, behind the woman) was a room with artifacts and more descriptions.

A cacophony of ancient bronze horns. The lurs, the wind instruments of the bronze age, were produced from 1200 to 700 BC. After they were used for a ceremony, they were sacrificed to the bog in pairs. Johnny Rasmussen, one of the principals in Odense has a pair of these on the wall in his office. He climbed up on a chair, put his lips in one of the mouth pieces, and blew it for us.

A temporary exhibit in the museum, entitled Europa, was about the history and formation of Europe. The name Europe probably comes from a Greek word for evening since the sun sets in the west in the evening and Europe is to the west of Greece. This is a bust of Socrates in an area tracing some of the roots of Europe to ancient Greece.

Europeans traded with and tried to colonize much of the world.

Karla next to a large shield of Islamic origin. It repeatedly says "The Wise Sultan" on it and is made of fine silk. The cross was added later in the 1600's. It was likely taken during a crusade.

Each main theme in the Europa exhibit was in a separate circular enclosure, with pictures and text projected onto the enclosing curtain. Items were on display within each enclosure. It was a clever presentation.