A loose collection of Copenhagen spots for lunches, free afternoons,
and spontaneous excursions. Not scheduled — just recommended.
Beaches and islands — Several very good beach
destinations are reachable from Copenhagen without a car, ranging from
easy day trips to longer weekend excursions.
The nearest options are within the city or just north of it.
Amager Strandpark is Copenhagen’s largest beach — a
man-made sandy island a short metro ride from the centre (M2 to Amager
Strand), with a sheltered lagoon on one side and open sea with dunes on
the other; popular for swimming, kayaking, and kite surfing, with a
promenade running the full length. Hellerup Strand,
just north of the city and a short S-tog or bus ride away, is small and
sandy with shallow water and a wooden pier — quiet by Copenhagen
standards, and particularly good for an easy early-evening swim.
Bellevue Strand at Klampenborg is the classic
Copenhagen beach: 700 metres of sand with Arne Jacobsen’s blue-striped
lifeguard towers and kiosks (1932) still in place, grassy lawns behind,
and views across to Sweden. It is a short walk from Klampenborg S-train
station, and conveniently combined with an afternoon at Dyrehaven next
door — which the seminar visits in Week 5 anyway.
The simplest option for a longer excursion is the north
Zealand coast, sometimes called the Danish Riviera.
Hornbæk is the most popular: a large sandy beach backed
by dunes, a pretty harbour, and a small town with cafés and ice cream
shops. Get there by regional train to Helsingør (~55 min) then the local
Kystbanen along the coast to Hornbæk (~25 min further).
Tisvildeleje is more remote and more bohemian in
character, with white sand, coloured bathing huts, and the atmospheric
beech forest of Tisvilde Hegn (Troldeskoven) just behind the dunes. It
has been a favourite summer retreat for Copenhagen artists and
intellectuals for generations. Reach it via S-tog to Hillerød (~40 min)
then the local train to Tisvildeleje (~40 min). Both destinations make
easy day trips and are well worth the journey on a warm afternoon.
Samsø requires more planning but rewards it. The
island sits in the Kattegat between Zealand and Jutland and is known for
its long beaches, quiet roads ideal for cycling, and its distinction as
the first carbon-neutral community in Denmark. The route without a car:
train from Copenhagen to Kalundborg (~1.5 hrs), then Samsølinjen ferry
from Kalundborg to Kolby Kås or Ballen (~1h 50 min), with only two daily
departures — so check the schedule at samsoelinjen.dk and plan
backwards from the last return ferry. The total journey of about 3.5
hours makes this a genuine weekend trip rather than a day excursion. For
accommodation options including hotels, B&Bs, holiday apartments,
and camping, see the official directory at visitsamsoe.dk/en/accommodation.
Bornholm is further still — a rocky Baltic island
with a very different character from the rest of Denmark: round medieval
churches, a great ruined fortress (Hammershus), herring smokeries, and
stretches of granite coastline unlike anything on Zealand. The overnight
ferry departs from Køge, south of Copenhagen, with a crossing time of
about 5.5 hours to Rønne — reachable from Copenhagen by S-tog. The
faster option is the train across the Øresund Bridge to Ystad in Sweden,
where Bornholmslinjen’s high-speed ferries cover the crossing in 1 hour
20 minutes, with multiple daily departures in summer. Either way,
Bornholm needs at least two nights. For students with a free weekend
mid-seminar it is worth considering, but requires advance booking in
summer.
Møns Klint — the dramatic white chalk cliffs on the
island of Møn — is not primarily a swimming destination but belongs in
this list for sheer natural spectacle. The cliffs rise over 100 metres
above the Baltic and the beach at their base is one of the strangest and
most beautiful in Denmark. Reachable by train to Vordingborg (~1 hr)
then bus to Stege and onward (~1 hr further); the logistics are fiddlier
than the north coast options but manageable for a long summer day.
Harbour swimming — Copenhagen’s harbour has been
clean enough to swim in since 2001, and the city has built a series of
free harbour baths along the waterfront. The closest to the seminar area
are: Islands Brygge Havnebad (metro: Islands Brygge),
the original and most popular, with five pools including two 50-metre
lanes and a diving tower with 1, 3, and 5-metre platforms — open all
year, lifeguarded in summer; Copencabana (metro:
Havneholmen), on the Vesterbro side near Fisketorvet, a slightly smaller
complex with three pools and springboards up to 3 metres; and
Kalvebod Bølge (Kalvebod Wave), directly across the
water from Islands Brygge on Kalvebod Brygge, a public waterfront
structure with open decks and dipping areas. There is also a small
bathing zone at Søndre Refshalebassin on Refshaleøen, a
short walk from Reffen — convenient to combine with an afternoon at the
street food market. Water quality is monitored daily; a red flag means
the bath is temporarily closed. No charge at any of these
facilities.
Rosenborg Slot — The Dutch Renaissance palace built
by Christian IV in the early seventeenth century, set in the Kongens
Have (King’s Garden) just north of the city centre and a short walk from
Torvehallerne. The palace houses the Danish crown jewels and regalia in
its basement treasury, and the upper rooms contain an exceptional
collection of royal furnishings, portraits, and decorative arts from the
sixteenth through eighteenth centuries — including the throne room and
the winter room. For this seminar the connection is minor but real:
Kierkegaard walked frequently in the Kongens Have, one of the oldest
public parks in Copenhagen, and references to these gardens appear in
his journals. The park is free and open daily; admission to the palace
is charged. See kongeligeslotte.dk
for current hours.
Tivoli — The pleasure gardens in the heart of the
city, open since 1843: Kierkegaard knew them well, and they appear in
the background of several texts as a symbol of the aesthetic life at its
most accessible and most shallow. We are tentatively planning a group
evening here; details to follow.
Christiania — The freetown on a former military base
in Christianshavn, founded in 1971 and still there: about 850 residents,
hand-built houses, studios, music venues, and cafés governed by
consensus. Worth a slow wander — the architecture is extraordinary and
the community has produced genuine culture. The outdoor café Nemoland
and the concert venue Loppen are both worth knowing about. Main entrance
on Prinsessegade, a short walk from the metro or the Royal Library. The
connection to the seminar is oblique but real: this is the most
sustained experiment in living outside the structures of bourgeois
society that Denmark has produced — exactly the possibility Kierkegaard
both craved and doubted.
Reffen — The large open-air street food market on
Refshaleøen, east of Christianshavn. A good destination for a free
afternoon or a Saturday: dozens of stalls, a relaxed waterfront
atmosphere, tables that fill up fast in good weather. The easiest way to
get there is the harbour bus (route 992), which stops a 5-minute walk
from Reffen and runs on the same ticket as the regular bus — 24 DKK. You
can pick it up at Nyhavn, among other stops along the harbour.
CopenHill (Amager Bakke) — The waste-to-energy plant
in Amager doubles as one of the more unlikely recreational destinations
in northern Europe: the roof is a working ski slope in winter and a
year-round hiking and running trail, with a via ferrata on the north
face for those who want to use their hands. The reward for the climb is
a panorama of the city — harbour, spires, Øresund, and Sweden on a clear
day — that is hard to match from ground level. There is a rooftop bar at
the summit. Take the metro to Christianshavn, then bus 37, which stops
directly in front of the slope. See copenhill.dk for current hours and
climbing sessions.
Broens Gadekøkken — A street food market on the
Christianshavn side of Inderhavnsbroen — the Inner Harbour Bridge,
nicknamed Kyssebroen (the Kissing Bridge) for the way its two spans
slide apart and back together to let ships through. Good for lunch
before an afternoon visit to Christianshavn or the Royal Library, with
harbour views and a solid range of stalls. See broensstreetfood.dk for current
opening times and stalls.
Folkehuset Absalon — A community house in Vesterbro
with a large communal dinner served every evening — affordable,
informal, and genuinely mixed in its crowd. A good option for students
on any night of the week. See absaloncph.dk/en/food for the
current menu and times.
Torvehallerne — The covered food market at Israels
Plads, a short walk from the lakes. An easy lunch stop on any day, with
high-quality provisions if you want to put together a picnic for
Frederiksberg Have or Dyrehaven.
Lund, Sweden — Easily reached by train from
Copenhagen via the Øresund Bridge (about 40 minutes, including a short
metro connection to the main station). Lund is a small university city
built around its Romanesque cathedral, one of the finest in Scandinavia
— consecrated in 1145 and still the architectural and spiritual centre
of the city. The university itself dates to 1666 and gives the place the
particular atmosphere of a town that has been thinking for a very long
time. For a seminar on Kierkegaard, who was acutely aware of the Danish
church’s Scandinavian context and whose attack on Christendom resonates
differently when you are standing inside a medieval cathedral that has
never stopped being used, a few hours in Lund can be rewarding. The
Historical Museum (Kulturen) is also worth a visit.
Sorø and Hauchs Physiske Cabinet — Sorø is a quiet
lakeside town in central Zealand, about an hour from Copenhagen by
train, built around a Cistercian abbey and one of Denmark’s oldest
boarding schools, Sorø Akademi. The town has a distinctly contemplative
atmosphere that makes it a worthwhile half-day excursion. Within the
Academy grounds is Hauchs Physiske Cabinet — a
remarkable collection of physics and chemistry instruments assembled
between 1790 and 1827 by Adam Wilhelm Hauch, purchased by King Frederik
VI in 1815, and bestowed to the Academy in 1827. It is one of the finest
surviving collections of early nineteenth-century scientific apparatus
in Scandinavia, and an evocative glimpse into the natural philosophy of
exactly the world Kierkegaard grew up in. Opening hours are limited —
check en.awhauch.dk before
visiting.
Medical Museum (Medicinsk Museion) — The medical
history museum of the University of Copenhagen, housed in the former
Academy of Surgery (Kirurgisk Akademi) at Bredgade 62. The collection
spans five centuries of Danish medical history, from anatomical
instruments and pharmacy equipment to surgical theatres and wax models.
The address has a double resonance for this seminar. Kierkegaard spent
his final forty days in the adjacent Frederiks Hospital at Bredgade 68 —
admitted on 2 October 1855 as patient no. 2067, cause of death still
disputed — and died there on 11 November 1855. The building at no. 62
was the childhood home of Niels, Harald, and Jenny Bohr: their father
Christian Bohr moved in as senior lecturer in physiology in 1886 and was
appointed professor in 1890, and Niels grew up here until he received
his doctorate in 1911, doing his earliest laboratory work in the
physiology institute behind the building. Since 1948 the house has been
the Medical Museion. For a seminar focused on anxiety, the self, and the
body’s relationship to spirit, a visit to this unsettling and
beautifully preserved complex can be more philosophically resonant than
it first sounds. See museion.ku.dk for
opening hours and current exhibitions.
Jutland — A long journey from Copenhagen, but one
that repays the effort for anyone who wants to understand the landscape
at the root of the authorship. Kierkegaard’s father, Michael Pedersen
Kierkegaard (1756–1838), was born in the village of
Sædding, near Ringkøbing on the west Jutland coast, and
spent his boyhood tending sheep on the surrounding heath — cold, flat,
exposed, and immense. At some point during those years, alone on the
moor and hungry, the boy cursed God. He carried that moment for the rest
of his life, and it formed the dark undertow of the melancholy he passed
on to his son. Søren knew the story, called it the “great earthquake,”
and understood it as the key to everything. The philosophy of anxiety,
guilt, and the self before God did not begin in Copenhagen drawing
rooms. It began on the Jutland heath.
The nearest natural counterpart today is the West
Coast (Vestkysten): the long, unbroken stretch of
North Sea shore running south from Skagen. This is the most exposed and
elemental landscape in Denmark — wide beaches backed by dunes, heavy
surf, the wind uninterrupted all the way from England. Nothing in the
gentler, more domesticated scenery of Zealand prepares you for it.
Standing on a beach at Blåvand or Hvide Sande, in weather that is rarely
quite calm, one gets a physical sense of what shaped the elder
Kierkegaard: a world without shelter, where the sky is very large and
human beings are very small, and where the question of what God owes us
or we owe God has an urgency it does not have elsewhere. The seminar
theme of existence as exposure, of the self as undefended before the
infinite, takes on a different register here.
At the northern tip of Jutland, where the Kattegat meets the
Skagerrak, lies Skagen — the furthest point of Denmark
and for a century and a half the gathering place of Scandinavian
painters drawn by its exceptional light. The artists’ colony that formed
there in the 1870s and 1880s — P.S. Krøyer, Anna and Michael Ancher,
Holger Drachmann and their circle — produced some of the most important
work in the history of Danish art, and the Skagens Museum holds the
finest collection of it. The landscape itself, the dune heaths and the
two seas meeting at Grenen, has changed little. Getting to Skagen from
Copenhagen takes a minimum of seven hours by train — south to Aarhus,
north to Aalborg, then onward to Skagen — and is most naturally an
overnight or multi-night trip, ideally combined with a night or two on
the west coast. For anyone with a free weekend during the seminar it is
strongly recommended.
Frederiksborg Slot, Hillerød — The great Dutch
Renaissance palace on the lake at Hillerød, housing the Museum of
National History. Reachable by S-tog in about forty minutes. Grander and
more dynastic in feeling than Kronborg, with a remarkable portrait
collection spanning five centuries of Danish history. A natural pairing
if you have a free Saturday and didn’t make it to Roskilde.
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