From Vikings to hipsters in Copenhagen

As a tiny Asian girl, the last place I expected to find myself was in a Viking sailboat. Make that rowing a Viking song.

I mean, I’m about as far removed from the Nordic race as Alpha Centauri is from Earth. The closest I’ve come to anything vaguely Viking is watching the DreamWorks Animation movie, How To Train Your Dragon, three times and meeting Game Of Thrones’ Danish actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau — coincidentally, also three times.

But once we were herded unwittingly onto a small, faithfully reconstructed vessel at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, just outside Copenhagen, I found my inner Viking.

I didn’t need a long blond beard to school that oar. And the view on the water — I thought I’d died and gone to Valhalla.

Sure, my performance might have been less Olympian and more drunken sailor. But, as our guide said, the Vikings were “the terrorists of everywhere”, and I think my haphazard rowing did terrorise the occupants of at least one other boat in the bay.

Inside the museum, I was told that in their day, the Vikings actually weren’t much taller than I was — they just happened to be taller than the peoples further south. How about that? Obviously, I would have fit right in as a Viking.

I mean, I love eggs — and so did the Vikings, apparently. I learnt that nugget when I partook of a Viking meal at Snekken, the museum’s restaurant: Aeggekage (pronounced “eggy cake”), a dish of several beaten eggs baked in a pan, with a consistency somewhere in between chawanmushi and kueh ambon, served with sausage and Danish mead. Yes, me and those Vikings: We would have gotten along just fine.

OLD NORDIC SIGHTS

But history waits for no man, and I couldn’t linger long in ancient times. Back in Copenhagen’s city centre, I was moved right along into the 1600s. The little port of Nyhaven is one of Copenhagen’s most picturesque spots and not only are its townhouses colourful; its history is, too.

It’s lined with establishments like Cap Horn, which started out as a brothel servicing the sailors, before morphing into a jazz club, and today, it’s a popular restaurant. Here, I had a smorrebrod lunch — open-faced sandwiches, the only food that is really uniquely Danish, as one Dane remarked to me.

Hans Christian Andersen lived in Nyhaven for nearly two decades (house Number 20) and, yes, the Little Mermaid sculpture at Langelinie Promenade had to be ogled and photographed. Sculpted by Edvard Eriksen, she was commissioned by Carl Jacobsen (he of Carlsberg fame). The Carlsberg Brewery, by the way, isn’t just a place to buy Denmark’s famous beer; it’s also an important historical landmark that commemorates Danish history’s biggest philanthropists: Jacobsen and his father, who founded the brewery.

The fairy tale mood persisted at the Tivoli Gardens downtown. Opened in 1843, Tivoli is the second-oldest amusement park in the world and served as the inspiration for Disneyland. It has a 1914 wooden roller-coaster and the world’s tallest carousel. The best part was that the pleasure garden is located just across the street from my hotel, the Radisson Blu Royal, which stands as a monument to its designer, that prolific Dane, Arne Jacobsen. His Egg chair, made for the hotel in 1958, is still highly coveted today.

In Tivoli’s Flying Trunk ride, meanwhile, I met the Little Mermaid again, this time in a different form, while riding in a treasure chest past adorable scenes from each of Hans Christian Andersen’s tales. No, I wasn’t Viking enough to go on the wooden roller-coaster.

NEW NORDIC EATS

But nearly as captivating as Tivoli’s old-world charms was its newest restaurant. Iconic Danish ceramics brand Kahler opened its concept restaurant in the heart of the park only a month ago, with a kitchen helmed by Thorsten Schmidt, and it was here that I was introduced to something called “The New Nordic Kitchen”.

Thanks to the success of Noma, Denmark’s two Michelin star offering to the culinary world, the New Nordic Kitchen is a rapidly evolving style of cooking that relies on organic local and seasonal ingredients prepared with freshness and simplicity.

We started with a beautifully done shrimp, cauliflower and poached egg salad; then the best veal I’ve ever had; followed by cheeses courtesy of the cows in Jutland and a dessert of strawberries with liquid nitrogen buttermilk ice cream.

I was a convert. The New Nordic Kitchen was clean, light and modern, as I would further learn to appreciate at Restaurant Marchal at the Hotel D’Angleterre, a beautifully refurbished historical lodging that is probably the most elegant hotel in town.

So what if Noma was closed when we were there? Restaurant Marchal’s Michelin-starred chef Ronny Embourg gave us a meal of Norway lobster with smoked cheese and cucumber; and fried monkfish with potatoes and parsley puree that was prefaced by champagne cocktails at the hotel’s Balthazar Champagne Bar. New Nordic, where do I sign up?

NEAT NORDIC NODS

But Denmark isn’t just redefining its traditional cuisine — it’s also opening up to international culinary influences, as I found out at Nam Nam, a surprising collaboration between Noma’s Claus Meyer and a Singaporean-Danish couple. Its offerings are like fusion hawker dishes but deliciously exciting in their own right, like Char Siew Free Range Porc BBQ, Asian Ceviche and coconut-pineapple ice cream.

And then there’s this phenomenon called Smushi: A hybrid of smorrebrod and sushi that’s served at the Royal Smushi Cafe at Amagertorv, where one eats off delicate Royal Copenhagen tableware from the flagship store next door. It’s fun, quirky and a cool twist on Danish tradition.

We had more foodie fun at the Torvehallerne market, where indoor and outdoor stalls offering fresh produce, pastries and food gave off an energetic vibe. I joined the queue of hipsters at Claus Meyer’s The Coffee Collective for a cuppa and scored excellent Danish cheeses at Arla Unika to take home as the perfect souvenir.

To cap off the night, I was taken through an unassuming gate on Vesterbrogade into the outdoor courtyard of what turned out to be the coolest hipster bar in the city, Lidkoeb. Yes, those impossibly beautiful hipsters with their ’50s coifs and ironic trousers were still seated at the picnic tables (vintage, no doubt) underneath colourful fairy lights, nursing their hipster cocktails.

How had I traversed through time, and gone from Viking sailboat to arrive at Instagram central? Only in Copenhagen, I guess.

Singapore Airlines flies five times weekly non-stop to Copenhagen.