Den Gamle By

Sandy and I are trying to get out and do something every Saturday that involves a decent walk and something interesting to look at. Today we went to Den Gamle By, a living history recreation of an early modern mercantile or trading town, right near the center of Aarhus. Here is Sandy beside a couple of large grind stones in the entrance to a compound of carpenter shops and their houses.

Some of the interiors have been fairly extensively recreated so you can see what a workshop, or apothecary, or kitchen at any of several time periods would have looked like. Here is another carpenters' shop.
One thing Scandinavians are even crazier about than Americans or Canadians is living history sites. In fact, we looked at a book today that examined how they invented the idea and then it spread elsewhere. We have seen a couple now (and I will go back to others in other posts.)

At the very least they seem to gather together or rebuild/recreate historical buildings. Some add finished interiors, workshops, and frequently they have at least a few people acting out parts, like this guy who is the news drummer in Aarhus' Den Gamle By.

Den Gamle By is a very ambitiously recreated town. It has a lot of different kinds of shops that have been recreated. (We were seduced into buying at the bookshop and bakery.)

It has a lot of different workshops, even some small early factories for carding and spinning wool. It also has several very nice museums of toys, clocks, and a lot of houses, essentially done as museum pieces of different times and towns. They are pretty good about telling you where the houses and interiors are actually from.

The recreated town is built around a recreated mill pond and mill, shown here.

Very impressive place, although the featured entertainment for the day was a somewhat cheesy men's choir who sang a mixture of Danish songs and things like Danny Boy. It has different events, depending on the day. Today was a very popular brewing festival, the singers, and an odd but really charming exhibit with film on Danish made motorized bicycles and mo-peds (remember them?) from the 1960s and 1970s, featuring an old man whose passion was to rebuild the things. Reminds you just how many kinds of passionate hobbyists there are out there.