Ten, nine, eight, seven … it’s the lift-off sequence we all once associated with launching lunar modules, but today, unfortunately, it’s more likely some kind of missile – to cause needless human destruction or kill James Bond.
It is fittingly reproduced here because we now have only ten days until the opening of Cold War Museum REGAN Vestthe new Cold War Museum at Aalborg in northern Jutland, on 13 February.
Interest is so high that 40 percent of available tickets for a 2023 tour of the complex were sold by February. In fact, 22,000 were snapped up within just an hour of the sale starting.
For the museum, North Jutland Museums has meanwhile put together some fascinating exhibitions about the Cold War, the history of the atomic bomb, Denmark’s preparedness level and how the bunker was made.
We may be at the beginning of a new cold war and live in times when 20 percent of Danish adults deliberately avoid the news, but that has not destroyed the majority’s interest in learning fascinating, albeit frightening, insights.
A 300 meter long tunnel awaits
A 90-minute tour around REGAN West will eventually take you 60 meters underground to the bunker itself, which was carved out of the ground over 60 years ago, between 1963 and 1968, to house the government and monarchy, should the unthinkable should ever happen.
The entrance to the bunker is at the end of a huge 300 meter long tunnel, which begins at the engineer’s quarters, the engineering and surveillance center.
Powered by a large diesel generator, the bunker is maintained as it would have been in the early 1980s with period furniture, medical equipment, crockery, oxygen cylinders, telephones and computers etc.
The tour allows you to spend time in the living and sleeping quarters and imagine what it would have been like to live there permanently: from playing the video game Pong to dressing up in 80s clothes to take a selfie.
Among the curiosities are a cafeteria with a giant poster of a spring forest and sound to complete the effect, a whole catalog of 80s magazines and TV programmes, Ministry of Defense meeting rooms and a special regent’s room with a bespoke ashtray.
Thousands of students mark Auschwitz Day at an event in southern Denmarkk
Around 3,600 pupils from 98 different schools took part in a seminar at the Frøslevlejrens Museum near Padborg in southern Denmark to mark Auschwitz Day on 27 January. Held in collaboration with Batavia Media, the topic was ‘With war in Europe, it is more important than ever to prevent the atrocities of the past’, and students learned how at least 99 Danes played a role in the Holocaust but escaped punishment. They were among the 6,000 Danes who joined the German army. The students learned how one of them, Hans Friedrich Petersen, was among the soldiers who in April 1945 removed 48 Jews – 28 adults and 20 children – from the Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg and oversaw their executions at Bullenhuser Damm. Close to liberation, the executions were carried out on guinea pigs that had undergone medical experiments to find a cure for tuberculosis – knowledge the Nazis wanted to erase from the history books. The children were drugged with morphine and hanged, while the adults were shot. Most of the students attended the seminar online, but 200 physically present quizzed panel members on obscure details related to Petersen and other Danish war criminals.
The work on the excavation of Viking Hall is believed to go back to Bluetooth
Just before Christmas came the news of the discovery of the remains of a large Viking hall at Hune in Northern Jutland, which can probably be dated back to the time of Harald Blåtand/Bluetooth (958-986). The hall was 40 meters long, 8-10 meters wide and supported by “enormous” support beams, according to archaeologists from the North Jutland Museums, who hailed the find as the “largest Viking Age find of this kind in more than ten years”. They conjecture that the hall belonged to Runulv den Rådsnilde, the same name inscribed on a surviving runestone at Hune Kirke, which dates back to 970-1020. The rune reads: “Hove, Thorkild, Thorbjørn set their father Runulv den Rånilde’s stone”. Excavation of the hall is underway and results are expected by the end of the year.
Denmark’s foray into the Architecture Biennale to concentrate on maritime defence
Denmark’s contribution to the 18th Architecture Biennale in Venice, which runs from 20 May to 26 November, is entitled ‘Coastal Imaginaries’. Visitors to the Danish Pavilion will learn how nature-based design solutions can contribute to solving coastline challenges such as rising seawater and storm surges. The Danish Architecture Center is responsible after the appointment of the Ministry of Culture, and the landscape architecture firm Schønherr is among the institutions lending their expertise. “We are in the middle of the Anthropocene Age – also called the Age of Man – where geologists have named humans as a geological force on a par with volcanoes, meteor impacts and shifting tectonic plates,” commented curator Josephine Michau. “People contribute to many of the crises we face today. We not only have the opportunity, but also the duty to act and turn the tide, and here the architects who design our physical framework have a decisive role.”
Experience center honoring the life of the ‘Tango Jalousie’ composer
An experience center dedicated to the life and career of the Danish composer Jacob Gade is being established in Assens on Funen. Gade, who died in 1963, is best known for ‘Tango Tsigane’/ ‘Tango Jalousie’, which is undoubtedly one of the most played Danish songs in history. No doubt everyone reading this will have heard it before. The dedication to his life, named ‘Tsigane’, will be housed at the Tobaksgaarden cultural centre. Collections have targeted DKK 14.9 million to make the vision a reality, and already DKK 4 million has been donated by the Augustinus Foundation and the Fynske Bank Foundation. The experience center can be completed in mid-2024.
Museum collaboration thrives in central Copenhagen
The Parkmuseerne, a collaboration formed by six museums in central Copenhagen in 2019, has record high visitor numbers, which enables guests to buy a joint ticket to visit them all. Last year, the number exceeded the pre-corona level with 1,386,000 visitors – an increase of 163,000 compared to 2019. While the number of visits to Rosenborg Castle and the Davids Collection has fallen, and the Arbejdermuseet has remained stable, the number of visitors to the Hirschsprung Collection, the State’s The Museum of Art and the Norwegian Natural History Museum have almost doubled in size.