Today was a simply wonderful day. My words can barely describe it, but, as always, I’ll do my best.
This week in my class we are focusing on contemporary works that reflect Viking culture. Today was spent discussing and watching Game of Thrones. If you didn’t know, I am a fan of both the show and book series, and had a lot to say about it! Until today in class, I hadn’t really considered A Song of Ice and Fire (the series title for the Game of Thrones books) to have been influenced by Norse mythology or the Vikings. Today my mind has been changed. There are many aspects of the story that has ties to some of the sagas we have been reading. It’s so cool to see how so many of my interests overlap with each other.
The afternoon was very warm. When I first got to Copenhagen, all of the Danes kept telling us how lucky we were to be here for the one week of warm weather. They have been saying that for the last month. The heat has yet to break, and the Danes are getting restless and warm. I spent the hot day in my room working on my paper. I am on page 7 of 8 for those of you that are keeping track. It will be done by tomorrow and submit by Thursday.
So the day was okay, but let’s talk about the night. Today I had the great pleasure of attending Disney’s Den Lille Havfrue – The Musical. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s The Little Mermaid. I was over the moon! The Little Mermaid is one of my favorite Disney princess movies, and the original Hans Christian Anderson story was written in Denmark. Why wouldn’t I go to see it? The show was in Danish, but it was performed in an opera house, so there were English subtitles for the whole thing. It was done beautifully. The choreography, the music, the overall performance, I had very few criticisms. (One of which being Prince Eric is not in fact blonde, despite the hair on the actors head, and that King Triton should in fact be bearded) Not that I let any of these criticisms truly get in the way of my experience.
So getting back to it being in Danish. I know the film forwards and backwards, but in the stage production they have additional songs. With the help of the subtitles and context clues I was able to follow along just fine. The thing that struck me the most was how beautiful the language sounded. While walking around the streets of Copenhagen I hear plenty of Danish, but I have never thought of it as pretty. I suppose that’s because I only hear bits and pieces of it, never full conversations. When the actors were singing, I was blown away. Granted the English words were playing in my head, but the songs were beautiful and moving. I would go see it again and again if I could. Unfortunately that’s not in the cards for this trip.
The opera house in Copenhagen is beautiful. If you are ever here, make an effort to see it you won’t regret it. If you go to a show there, prepare yourself. The Danes are very weird about clapping and applause. In America you applaud the scenes, acts, and final bow. You don’t typically clap in rhythm to musical numbers while seated at a musical. Danes do. It threw me off a bit. I wanted to soak up the performance and they wanted to be a part of it. At the end of the show during the bow, they were not applauding (meaning everyone clapping at their own speed creating a roar of sound). They all clapped in time together, to the beat of the song. It was a little weird, but I went with it.
I had a fantastic Tuesday, it doesn’t get much better than this.