Roskilde; Sunday, 28 July, 2024

I had another late breakfast then checked out of my room, leaving my luggage with the hotel, before heading back down into town to visit the former church of Saint Laurentius.

Today all that remains of the church above ground is the tower, which was repurposed as the tower of a new town hall which was required after the previous one burnt down. The tower also served as one of the towns prisons as well as a watchman’s post, from where they could keep a lookout over the city, mostly to act as an early warning system for any fires that might start in the mostly wooden city. Today you can explore the tower up to the watchman’s tower, but also descend below it, under the main square, into the area where the rest of the church once stood and today the ruins of the base of the church are still visible, including in places the intricate tiles of the alter.

Having looked round the tower and the church ruins I headed over to the nearby Roskilde Museum which, keeping up with a theme in the city, is housed in the former firehouse. The museum charts the history of the city from pre-history up to the current day, but with a bit of a focus on the role fire has played in the life of the city having caused destruction on multiple occasions, including the fire of 1968 that caused significant damage to the cathedral.

From the museum I headed into the centre of town to grab some lunch from a supermarket before heading down into the large park running down the hill behind the cathedral and home to the ruins of yet another church, though this one is more easily seen from an aerial map rather than on the ground as so little of it remains. I had lunch on a bench by the ruins before having a wander around them and then heading further down through the park and down to the Roskilde Miniby

This large model shows how the city would have looked around 1400, complete with the cathedral and the large defensive walls that encircled a large part of the town centre. From the model it was a short walk onto my main destination of the day the Vikingeskibsmuseet or Viking Ship Museum.

In 1962 five original Viking era ships were excavated from the waters of the fjord in Skuldelev. The ships had already had long lives before their final job was to be deliberately sunk into a channel of the fjord cutting it off for passing ships. Two of the three channels in this area were cut off this way, with the third much longer and more complex to navigate channel left open, ensuring attackers would have a much more difficult job to reach the then Danish Capital.

With the ships being excavated a purpose built museum was constructed hanging over the edge of the fjord that they had lain in for a millennium already, over the course of more than 25 years the wood was soaked in Polyethylene Glycol to drive out all the water and let them dry in a preserved format before being reassembled piece by piece in specially created frames that show exactly how each ship would have looked in it’s prime. I spent quite a bit of time looking round the museum, also taking in the views up the fjord, before it was time to start making my way back to the hotel to collect my luggage. On the walk back I diverted by a couple of the springs that pop-up all over the city taking in both the most and least voluminous ones.

Having picked up my luggage I headed back down to the station to catch the train heading back into Copenhagen (and onto Helsingør). My previous experiences of using trains in Denmark on a Sunday suggested that they can get very busy, so I was taking advantage of the train starting in Roskilde to ensure I got a seat, and as the slightly earlier train from much further west across Denmark pulled into the neighbouring platform already full and standing, I was proved right in my decision.

Thankfully the train I was on didn’t get that full, but I knew the train onto the airport would also be packed, so I stayed on for a couple of extra stops from København H to Østerport where the Øresundståg trains heading to the airport and on into Sweden start from and once again I was able to get a seat in an empty train, two stops later as we pulled out of København H it was standing room only, though most people did get off, with me, at the airport.

Given the time it took to get through immigration on the way in I had given myself 3 hours from arriving at the station until my flight was due to leave, and whilst it was a little bit more than I needed, it did mean I wasn’t too troubled when I saw the size of the queue to exit the country, again taking about 30 minutes just to get stamped out and through to non-Schengen departures and my flight back to London.