My small group of North Carolina educators were somewhere around the third floor on the edge of the Ancient Egypt exhibit when the rumors began to swirl. Amy’s message drifted across the telephonic æther* “...make sure you do the Viking exhibition.” Moments later Kevin, one of our fearless leaders, chimed in moments later to confirm the interest of the exhibit, writing “Yes the viking sorceress exhibit is a trip. Don’t skip it.” Suddenly, our splinter group had a new mission. Namely: Find the Viking Sorceress. With that goal in mind, we breezed through the (in this lowly travel writer’s opinion) labyrinthine rooms of the Danish National Museum, passing by recreations of sixteenth century home interiors and artifacts dating back three-thousand years, looking for this recently mythologized historical presentation. Dear reader, very little could have prepared me for the interactive exhibit, nay experience, that unfolded over the next forty-five minutes. After we had actually found the correct location of the exhibit we donned our wireless headphones and entered another world: that of the Völva (pictured below).
The exhibit on the Völva consisted of (often dramatically intoned) pre-recorded messages that were triggered by geographic location of the user wearing the headphones. The museum-goer then learns about these Viking sorceresses by walking through the various rooms, interacting with the exhibits, and looking at the artifacts and information posted on relevant placards. In all, I personally felt like I learned quite a bit about a subject (medieval and early modern magic) that I was only loosely familiar with. More importantly, however, my experience at the National Museum seemed to confirm something that I have been noticing that is culturally important to Danes, or perhaps just Copenhageners: the pursuit of excellence. The Carlsberg beer company’s stated longtime guiding principle, I learned in another museum tour, is the pursuit of perfection. I am beginning to think that is something that is quite common in this country. To that point, the Völva exhibit felt nearly perfectly executed. The interactive elements genuinely evoked emotion in me. There were stories, pulled directly from historical Scandinavian sagas, that were then animated and played on televisions controlled by the user that I am sure would delight a wide range of museum-goers. Towards the end of the exhibit there was an entire room to just display artifacts related to magic and magic-users in the Viking world. In all, the exhibit was excellently curated and wonderfully crafted. Again, I attribute much of this to a Danish interest in doing things well with the resources available to them.
To that point, I found myself pleasantly surprised by the wide-ranging exhibits throughout the museum. As long as one has an interest in something historical, the National Museum probably has a collection that connects to it. As an example, my cultural focus for this trip was on sports and recreation in Denmark. While moving through the collections on Denmark throughout the past century, I found the below exhibit on sports in the twentieth century and how those sports showed some of the changes that were happening to culture and society here. In contrast, there was an entire exhibit on dolls and doll houses that was decidedly not directed at me but others in my group found fascinating.
I was also very happy to spend quite a while on the third floor, trawling through the Ancient Hellenic, Egyptian, and Roman worlds. Some of the pictures that I took are below and I plan on using several of these artifacts to teach my World History class next fall. In fact, I took pictures of several captions next to these exhibits because they were such excellent examples of historical writing that I would like to use as mentor texts for my students. Now, I admit that these particular uses are highly specific to my interests. I believe, however, that the collections are expansive enough, and so well-curated, that any reasonably inquisitive person will find a room, a floor, or a section that entirely captures their interest.
I must admit, dear reader, that I love museums. Growing up, it was my mom’s practice to read every word on every placard in every museum we spent our time in. This was a habit I quickly picked up, much to my siblings’ chagrin. I say all of that as qualification because I am, at baseline, favorable towards museums in general and history museums in particular. That being said, I think this museum is excellent. Its excellence, however, comes from the approach and execution of the exhibits (as opposed to the breadth and depth of museums like the Louvre or the Smithsonian). Exhibits and rooms are laid out logically (provided that you actually go in numerical order, which I did not do several times). Informative placards are succinct and historically rigorous. There are a wide variety of exhibits in both subject matter and in approach. The museum-goer can learn about such diverse topics as pre-historic bog mummification to the arrival of telecommunications in Denmark. There are, of course, exhibits that consist of the traditional artifact and explanatory placard. But one also finds an eighteenth century naval cannon that, when a nearby button is pressed (available in Danish or English), booms throughout the exhibit room and plays a clip-art animation of a naval battle on the wall. In all, I found this a delightful museum experience that was masterfully carried out. In fact, I might just go back on one of my remaining free days; perhaps I’ll ask a Völva for next week’s lottery numbers.
*By this I mean, Amy texted our Whatsapp group chat.
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