In Love

Since I've been back in the States, I can't help but notice how in love certain segments of America seem to be with Copenhagen, Denmark and Scandinavia in general. Here's a general survey. I still can't decide if it makes me more or less 'hjem'-sick...

A search of the New York Times website turns up no less than nine articles that reference the world-renowned Copenhagen restaurant Noma in the past few months alone. You can practically hear the sound of Mark Bittman's drool hitting the pages of the magazine section as he lauds head chef Rene Redzepi as the 'Prince of Denmark' and dishes out Noma-style recipes like Whitefish with Grilled Cabbage and Langoustines with Oysters and Seaweed.



Replace dude in the suit by the window with Me!



A mere month after my return, imagine my surprise to discover that I'd beaten Mr.  Bittman himself to the punch, having had one of my last, best meals in Copenhagen at Restaurant Paustian. To add to the entire feeling of deja vu, the photograph featured in the article shows the exact table I sat at. And my very same waitress!



And not to single out NYT or Mr. Bittman for their unabashed obsession, other food magazines have similarly jumped on the bandwagon. The January 2012 Food & Wine magazine features a love-fest between the aforementioned Mr. Redzepi and California chef Daniel Patterson in which they tinker around the kitchen creating new recipes. 


This is how exciting it is to be Danish!



I found the whole article a bit alienating. Despite my love of cooking and food, I couldn't quite muster up the same high-five slapping enthusiasm for dishes like Brown Butter Chicken Jus with Citrus and Greens, in which each diner is allotted exactly three walnut pieces and about six leaves of parsley as garnish. According to Redzepi, "A recipe is like when you buy an Ikea closet with maddening instructions. You need to bring some common sense to it." An interesting parallel, given that a meal at his restaurant including wine will cost you about as much as Ikea's most expensive closet... though it also explains why there are so many courses as it must take a lot to fill up if you replace all the meat with a suggestion or hint of meat.

Interesting for entirely different reasons was a September 2011 Bon Appetit article on an obscure restaurant in the wilds of Sweden and yet another chef obsessed with scraping things off the forest floor and eating them. The article didn't entirely convince me of the chef's overall sanity, however I did come away with an appreciation for his up-front honesty, a characteristic I've found universal among the many Scandinavians I've known and encountered:

'A rickety old ice cream maker was delivered to the center of the dining room and loudly cranked. Again, we all looked. "I deliberately don't take care of my ice cream maker so it will make a lot of eeer-awww, eeeeh-errrkk sounds," Magnus Nilsson says with a sly, faint smile.'

The entire Viking-worship phenomenon isn't just limited to food and restaurants. Here's a bunch of other stuff I've run into:

Town & Country's December 2011 issue featured a small article on blogger Mikael Colville-Andersen and his championing of the 'citizen cyclist'. Copenhagen Cycle Chic is a fun blog that gives a great sense of Danish bicycle culture, fashion and the amazing number of things that can be done with, by or on a bike. While it did bring back my nostalgia for riding on the back of a bicycle through the city, it did not convince me that drop crotch pants should be as universally adopted.

Elle Decor's November 2011 edition features a Stockholm apartment that could be similarly found in the tonier 'burbs of Copenhagen. Good move not featuring the bathroom in the photo shoot as there's nothing glamorous about showering standing over your own toilet.

An article on a Danish art collective's recent project in New York City caught my attention, not so much for its daring, as for the name of the artist interviewed - Bjørnstjerne. For a country with such strict naming rules, I'm surprised they let "Bear-Star" fly...

The entire Design Within Reach catalog is like taking a stroll through a Danish design museum, though I'm not exactly sure whose reach they're referring to by carrying a $15,000 sofa.


Why all this love? My favorite explanation comes from journalist and author Joel Stein's column for Food & Wine magazine's Nordic trendspotting piece:

Nordic Food: Ikea is Forever

Humorist Joel Stein ponders our Scandi-centric moment, as we eat skyr, watch Nordic chefs and worship prefab furniture.

When money is flowing and times are like a Jimmy Buffett song, we tend to think of heading south. To less stressful places with charmingly lax laws, fruity cocktails and warm azure water lapping upon us. These are cocky thoughts. They are 2006 thoughts. In 2011, we find ourselves thinking of all things Nordic. Of mittens and mutton. Of stylish sturdiness.

So we are hunkering down, longing to eat at places like Copenhagen’s Noma—easily the most influential restaurant in the world, converting chefs into micro-localists, foraging lichen in their basement and curing musk ox. Platters of toro sashimi might not be around in 10 years, but you can be sure there will be lichen and musk ox after the apes take over.

Scandinavia is about resilience, hardiness, a cool edginess. It all makes sense right now; we want to simplify. To drink clear, hard liquors (aquavit) and listen to spare pop songs (Lykke Li). We trust these things in times of trouble. Because no matter how low the NASDAQ falls, you can always buy things at Ikea. And when they break, you can buy more.

Highlights from Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

I have been wanting to visit this museum ever since I moved to Denmark but was told it is absolutely necessary to visit in conjunction with good weather, as the outdoor aspects are as much a part of the experience as the indoor. Sun has been an elusive character since it disappeared some time after June, so I lucked out last weekend when I happened upon the combination of a toddler-free day and late summer sunshine.

An enjoyable train ride spent reading Murikami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (why not go all the way and overload on modern) and I arrived in the town of Humlebæk on the Zealand coast. Contrary to my earlier assumption, the museum's name has nothing to do with the American state or anything Creole for that matter. It is derived from the name of the villa that housed the original museum. Built and named in 1855, its owner was (un)fortunate enough to be married to three women over the course of his lifetime, all named Louise.

The expansion of the museum beyond the original villa has been a work in progress since the museum's opening in 1958. Referred to as "a masterpiece of Danish modernist architecture" it showcases themes that reverberate through Danish culture and society, like human-scale design, creature comfort, texture and bringing nature inside.

Okay, I'm a little obsessed with stairwells...

 The landscape figures just as prominently as the architecture and a large lawn sloping down to the sea is complemented by a secluded Lake Garden and scattered small, quiet spots to sit and contemplate throughout the grounds.

Taking its cue from New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Louisiana's broad definition of modern art includes architecture, film, design, photography, music and other mediums. Originally, the museum opened with the purpose of showcasing Danish modern art, but it expanded relatively quickly to encompass international art and has since drawn artists whose reputation and renown solidifies its position as a well-respected exhibition venue.

The museum's own permanent collection comprises over 3,000 works of art from such artists as Picasso, Giacometti, Warhol, Calder, and Baselitz.

Giacometti sculptures

At the time of my visit, the museum featured a large exhibit called LIVING that took up the majority of the indoor exhibition space. The last in a series Frontiers of Architecture, this installation explores how we live from both an architectural as well as anthropological perspective. 'Case studies' highlight different themes and development within specific communities, while at the same time exposing broad and overarching concepts in how we live, communicate and create. The exhibit also featured an amazing diversity of mediums, from the recreation of physical structures, to photography, to video, to performance art, to electronic art and more.

Who says kids can't enjoy architecture?

Light cells as interactive art

West 57th, Danish-designed addition to the NYC skyline

Me, as a house.

Equally as impressive was the museum's attention to childrens' experience of modern art. The 'children's wing' was not merely an afterthought, but architecturally interesting and integrated with the rest of the museum. The activities were thoughtful and playful, engaging and educational. As with many of my experiences in Denmark, someone really took some time to consider things from a child's perspective.

Child's representation of their 'dream home'

One way to give your kid a 'modern perspective'

Spectacular weather, a thought-provoking exhibit and one of the most beautiful places I have had the pleasure of wandering through in a while. And finaly, if you're as into food as you are art, be sure to stop by the cafe... Well worth it.

Highlights from the Glyptotek

It is a general rule that people do not tend to behave like tourists in the places in which they live. I often wonder why that is - a grass is greener thing? An actual indifference to our familiar surroundings? Are the museums of other cities and countries inherently more interesting than the ones available to us on a daily basis? Or do we just assume that once we live somewhere we'll eventually get around to seeing the sights only to get swept up and carried away by life?

I figure my time as a Copenhagen "newbie" is due to expire somewhere around this summer so I have decided to try to apply myself to seeing "the sights" before the jaded enui sets in and I forget how to be wide-eyed and awestruck. In this vein, I set out to see the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. Below is some interesting information about this museum along with some of the highlights from my tour.

The Glyptotek owes its existance to Carl Jacobsen, the son of the founder of Carlsberg Breweries. A prolific of antique art and sculpture, he donated his sizable collection to the Danish State and City of Copenhagen in 1888. Currently, the museum's collection includes over 10,000 works of art, including the most significant collection of Rodin's sculptures outside of France, an extensive number of French Impressionist and post-Impressionist as well as Danish Golden Age paintings, and a wide array of antique sculptures from around the Mediterranean.

The day of my visit, the museum featured a temporary exhibit of 70 studies in bronze by the French artist Edgar Degas. While most famous for his paintings, he often used wax sculpture to study movement as it related to some of his favorite motifs such as dancers, horses in motion and women in their morning routines. Below, I believe he may have been the first artist to capture a woman trying to get into her "skinny jeans".

The museum is also home to an astounding number of busts covering a wide period of time. Eerily realistic faces peer at you from across time, so lifelike that you imagine they might start up a conversation at any time. In a room of Roman statues I swear heard, "So a funny thing happened on the way to the Forum..." Below, a bust of the Roman emperor Caligula - who knew a sociopathic tyrant could be such a hottie?

While Caligula managed to save his face - at least in the Glyptotek - many of the other statues did not. This has resulted in a small "nasotek" or collection of lost noses.

My husband has been threatening to grow a handlebar mustache. I suppose it could always be worse. He could have seen this guy and gotten inspired...



I came across this bust among the Egyptian antiquities. I have heard conspiracy theories that the pyramids were built by Martians and never gave them much credence... until now?



Stay tuned for my next tourist excursion - a walk to the top of the Round Tower, once one of Copenhagen's tallest building and a working observatory.