I went to Copenhagen to see a friend – it was my third trip there, and my first time during the warmer months. And to get ready, it’s also my first time reading through some old travel narratives about Denmark. Here are the books about Copenhagen I read prior to my trip. I have to say, I’m surprised I was able to get through so many in a month before my trip! I didn’t read all of them but mainly focussed on the Copenhagen, Elsinore and Roskilde portions.
I’ll list them first in chronological order, and then in the order in which I read them:
Travelogues about Copenhagen
- 1683: The Present State of Denmark by Gideon Pierreville
- 1692: An Account of Denmark as it was in 1692 by Robert Molesworth
- 1774: A Trip ’round the Baltic by Nathaniel Wraxall
- 1784: Travels into Poland, Russia, Sweden and Denmark by William Coxe
- 1795: Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark by Mary Wollstonecraft
- 1830: Letters from the North of Europe by Charles Boileau Elliott
- 1859: Unprotected Females in Norway by Helen Lowe
- 1860: A Residence in Jutland, the Danish Isles and Copenhagen by Horace Marryat
- 1865 (published in 1884): Driftwood from Scandinavia by Lady Wilde
- eary 1900s: Capitals of the Northlands: Tales of Ten Cities by Ian C. Hannah
Analysis and novels about Copenhagen
- Representations of the North in Victorian Travel Literature by Dimitrios Kassis
- The Cheerful Danes by Elettra Carbone
- Kerrigan in Copenhagen by Thomas E. Kennedy (novel)
Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark by Mary Wollstonecraft
I actually started reading this by accident. We went to Geneva a few weeks ago, and since it was a spur-of-the-moment thing, I didn’t do much reading beforehand except one travelogue by Mary Shelley and her classic Frankenstein, both of which feature Geneva Who knew she had spent time there? I’m going to watch the 2017 movie about her crazy romantic life soon too. Anyway, it turns out her mother’s life was even crazier. Mentioned in her daughter’s travelogue is that they are reading this very book on their travels. I saw that it featured Denmark and dove in.
It turns out this is a very interesting work written by a fascinating woman. Her thoughts are often quite advanced compared to the period she lived in — and Mary Wollstonecraft is actually the first person to assert that women are an oppressed class, and to discuss feminism in this light. And she lived in the 18th century!
This collection of letters was written to her semi-ex lover, Gilbert Imlay, who was father of their child. The baby was only one year old when Mary undertook this trip alone with her and a maid. That’s it. Two women and a baby traveling to the North in 1795. Wow!
There’s a whole background to this, and it is a very sad story. But anyway, for her descriptions of Denmark, this was the first travelogue I read prior to my Copenhagen trip. She was not impressed with the city. It seems she had only just visited after the huge fire of 1795 which made many people homeless and burned down the palace. The city wasn’t showing itself off that nicely.
Travels into Poland, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark. Interspersed with historical relations and political inquiries by William Coxe
Written ten years before the above work, Wollstonecraft mentions referring to Coxe in her own letters. He seems to have been somewhat of a mainstay on the subject of the North. I only read the Denmark portion. Fairly dry but the oldest depiction of Copenhagen I initially read about (1780s). But as I started reading this, it pointed me in the direction of even older texts, which I write about below.
Finding more things to read…
I’m not sure why Copenhagen was a hard one to find dedicated writings on. Perhaps it is because it is usually lumped in with the read of Scandinavia from what I can see. Also it seems that the North just wasn’t really a part of the general tour of Europe that British travel writers tended to undertake. It was actually viewed as a sort of uncivilised wilderness! Copenhagen was the boundary of this: one of the last places for civilisation (albeit on a small scale) before heading into the majesty of Norwegian or Swedish nature. Anyway, after my first few travelogues, they started pointing me in the direction of even more works, naturally going back farther and farther in time. It would of course make sense to start with the oldest first, but it doesn’t really work out that way when I’m doing my research on what to read.
Representations of the North in Victorian Travel Literature by Dimitrios Kassis
I found this interesting essay which had a lot of mentions of travel pieces which feature Copenhagen, although none are solely about the city. I love this kind of research! And it’s often a good way to gather names of works to read.
So from the above, I decided to just read the Denmark portions:
A Trip ‘round the Baltic by Sir Nathaniel Wraxall
This was written even earlier than the above, in 1774. The queen of Denmark, Matilda, who was sister of the British king, had already been betrayed by her court and confined at Hamlet’s castle in Elsinore – but hadn’t yet passed from scarlet fever (at only 23). This whole thing was dramatised in the 2012 film, A Royal Affair, with Alicia Vikander and Mads Mikkelsen. Incidentally I had worked on the distribution of this in the UK during one of my first jobs! And completely forgotten the plot although I’d had to watch it for hours and hours before we shuttled it off to the cinemas in London.
My personal favourite from Wraxall’s work is when he mentions with absolute certainty that Boston and the Americas will certainly not be emancipated, although all the Danes are sure that Boston will prevail. One year before America’s Declaration of Independence.
Letters from the North of Europe;
or, A journal of travels in Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Prussia, and Saxony by Charles Boileau Elliott
Written in 1830, this one piqued my interest because it starts in Amsterdam, where I live. Not much else to say but it is interesting to go through each region with him, having built a solid knowledge of the area from the ones I had read before this.
Unprotected females in Norway;
or, The pleasantest way of travelling there, passing through Denmark and Sweden. With Scandinavian sketches from nature by Helen Lowe
What a great name. From 1859. This one didn’t make much of an impression on me other than by being fairly readable. I also noticed that the author is at pains to compare herself and her traveling companions a few times to Danish women… showcasing how adventurous and willing to explore they, the Englishwomen, are. Apparently the Copenhagen women wouldn’t even wander into Amager, the isolated Dutch community nestled right next to (within?) Copenhagen.
I earmarked this to finish another time to read about their whole trip… we’ll see!
A Residence in Jutland, the Danish Isles and Copenhagen by Horace Marryat
This 1860 travelogue is a long and thorough journey through Denmark: rare for these narratives, since the majority seem to have been written as a part of a trip to the north in general. Marryat ends up spending six months in Copenhagen (over the winter) and explains in detail about the various things to see. He references the British ambassador who wrote a piece in 1692… which led me to my oldest work yet.
An Account of Denmark as it was in 1692 by Robert Molesworth
The British ambassador didn’t seem to like Denmark much, and he caused a bit of an uproar with his tellings about the country. By this point in my travel history journey I was starting to skim through some things, or read about them from secondary sources. This essay goes into the impact his work had.
You can find the original here. I read a bit of it. It is quite interesting to read his take on the importance of travel, and how he talks about how it helps men ‘unlearn’ certain ‘dangerous passive doctrines’ they imbibe at school (as opposed to what he terms ‘good learning’ via the classics, that doesn’t have an ulterior motive associated with it). A case for travel today, too!
I will read this whole book later — just not enough time before the trip.
The Present State of Denmark by Gideon Pierreville
‘Present’ being 1683. I keep being taken back in time as I’m going through all of these works! This one was brought to my attention by one of the essays discussing Molesworth, above. I didn’t even get a chance to read it, but it is described as a straightforward, friendly account of Denmark.
Driftwood from Scandinavia by Lady Wilde
Published in 1884, but I think this was from travels around 1865, based on some of the people she meets. At this point I was definitely running out of time before my actual trip! But I was surprised to find that finally we have an Irish perspective and this one is Oscar Wilde’s mother! This is a ‘good’ travelogue in the sense that it gives a lot of description of what traveling was actually like in the mid-19th century – explaining their train to steamer to horse-drawn cab transfers, and what the people they met with were like.
Capitals of the Northlands: Tales of Ten Cities by Ian C. Hannah
Early 1900s — this is more of a history than a travelogue. I couldn’t work out the exact publication date, although it was after airplanes were invented. Maybe 1910s?
The Cheerful Danes: Henry Clarke Barlow’s ‘Revelation of a Writing-Case’ (1856) on Copenhagen
This is a modern analysis of two unpublished essays from 1856. It deals with a topic I love: the evolution of culture. Denmark then and now and how outsiders viewed it. It also provides some context for how Denmark developed historically into the nineteenth century. Reading this after all the travelogues predating this period, it’s interesting to see how much of the history I was already familiar with. What I didn’t necessarily know was the context surrounding all of that, i.e., the broader implications that these events had in Denmark’s identity itself and also amongst British travellers.
Novels set in Copenhagen
There were of course many Danish novels to choose from that feature Copenhagen and have been translated into English. For me though the language of a book really matters to me, and knowing it’s in the original — that I’m getting transported right into that author’s mind — makes me want to read these books in English (or Dutch, or Japanese, or whatever other language I’m struggling with at the moment).
Choosing books that were not originally written in Danish is also a way to see an outsider’s viewpoint of a place: which is exactly what all these travelogues are, anyway. I love that kind of perspective and cultural gap. Often it includes a more fine-tuned understanding of a culture than if you were really part of it.
So the novel I chose is by an American author who lived in Denmark for many years.
The Copenhagen quartet features one season per novel, and the one I read was Kerrigan in Copenhagen. Written in 2010 but set in 1999, it features a heady mix of alcoholism and literary references, while the narrator takes us on a tour through his adopted city. There’s a lot of nostalgia in the way he depicts exploring a city without social media or mobile phones. It was quite satisfying to read this whilst I was in Copenhagen and helped add another dimension to the trip. Is it a good book? I don’t think I would have read this if it wasn’t for my impending travels. But I would recommend it for anyone who is traveling there. I must say I’m really curious now how much of this was biographical on the author’s part, and because of that I’ll probably read another one of his books too – probably In The Company of Angels, which is set in summer (whereas this one was set in spring).
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