Nerd’s Eye View: 12 things you need to know about Copenhagen

1. Copenhagen, the capital and largest city of the kingdom of Denmark, lies mainly on the island of Zealand, although some of the eastern suburbs are on the much smaller island of Amager. Both are separated from Sweden by the narrow Øresund strait, which links the North Sea to the Baltic, and lie a good 120 miles away from the sticky-out peninsula one may be most minded to associate with Denmark, the aptly named Jutland.

2. The foundation of Copenhagen, like much of Denmark’s early history, is lost to the mists of time. (Honestly, there clearly were Danish kings before the accession of the historically verifiable Gorm the Old around 936, but most of the records get a bit Beowulf-y.) But archaeology suggests that fishermen and merchants seem to have realised the natural harbour would make it a good place for herring fishing some time before the earliest written references to the Portus Mercatorum – “Merchants’ Harbour” or, in medieval Danish, Købmannahavn – some time in the 12th century.

3. If you’ve ever wondered why Denmark put its capital so far to the east that it almost falls out of Denmark altogether, that’s because at its medieval territorial height the kingdom was significantly bigger. At various points, it included Norway, Schleswig and Holstein (now in Germany), large chunks of Sweden and even, for a few decades of the 11th century before the Normans showed up, England. Alas for the Danes, Scania, the region that lies directly across the Øresund, was ceded to Sweden in the Treaty of Roskilde of 1658.

4. For much of its history, Copenhagen was surrounded by a ring of defensive ramparts. These are long gone – except for a brief stretch of raised earth in the eastern suburb of Christianshavn, and the capital at Kastellet – but their path did provide the city with sites for a series of parks, museums and the City Hall when they came down in the 19th century.

5. The ramparts had, in any case, done little to prevent the Royal Navy from bombarding the shit out of the place in both 1801 and 1807, so as to make it clear to the Danes that they really did not want to ally with Napoleon.

6. Among the things visitors without cannons may wish to check out is the Tivoli Gardens, one of the world’s oldest amusement parks, which opened in 1843. Today its attractions include four rollercoasters (including one dating, a touch unnervingly, from 1914), a dozen other rides, concert halls, theatres, a pagoda, and extensively landscaped and beautifully lit gardens.

7. Those who attend in summer may also wish to check out the Copenhagen Jazz Festival, one of Europe’s largest. By the time of the creation of the formal festival in 1979, the city’s popularity with US jazz musicians had already created an extensive jazz scene, and inspired the name of pianist Duke Jordan’s 1974 album Flight to Denmark.

8. Since 1947, the city’s urban development has followed the Fingerplanen (“Finger plan”), with development to meet demand for homes and offices following five “fingers” along S-train commuter rail lines extending from the “palm” of the city proper. In between lie green “wedges” (the hand metaphor rather breaks down here). This is Copenhagen’s answer to the green belt, land intended to provide space for agriculture and recreation, and to ensure residents have access to the countryside.

9. The pleasing five-finger pattern has also been disrupted by the addition of a sixth finger, along the line to the Øresund Link to Sweden’s third city, Malmö. Since 2000, as fans of the hit crime drama The Bridge (Bron/Broen) will know, the combination of a fixed link shared by a motorway and frequent commuter trains, and the fact that the two countries speak closely related languages, has allowed the two to function largely as a single metropolitan area.

10. The bridge, incidentally, is not just a bridge. The 4km of the link closest to Copenhagen is actually a tunnel, connecting to an 8km bridge. The two meet at the artificial island of Peberholm, named to be a pair with the naturally occurring Saltholm.

11. In 1971, artists and activists broke into an abandoned military barracks on an island to the east of the city centre – right next to those surviving ramparts, actually – and declared the area independent of all Danish government laws and regulations. The resulting anarchist commune, Freetown Christiania, still occupies the site half a century later, as a land of colourful streets and informal architecture – although residents worked with the authorities to clear the drug dealers out of the thoroughfare known as Pusher Street in 2024.

12. And finally, should you fancy a taste of the traditional Danish cuisine Smørrebrød – a sort of open-faced sandwich on dark rye bread, whose name translates as “butter bread” – you could do worse than go to the excellent all-you-can-eat buffet under the Workers Museum. The two sides of Danish life in harmony, there.