Homedemo

Copenhagen’s Post War Nyhavn

Tor Kjølberg

August 23, 2017

The seaside and harbor front venue around Nyhavn is a part of Copenhagen’s cultural soul. The many colorful houses and exclusive buildings surrounding the Nyhavn canal on the “shady” and “sunny” side are nearly 350 years old.

We have dived into the Danish photo archives and collected some interesting black and white photos, which our contributor Lars Andersen has colorized with the help of colorize-it.

Colorize-it uses the Colorful Image Colorization algorithm that’s being developed by a team at UC Berkeley led by PhD student Richard Zhang. You simply paste a URL to a photo into their website and press the purple “Colorize It” button. After some processing and a short wait, the page displays a side-by-side comparison of the B&W and colorized photos that you can switch between.

Here’s an image in black and white, showing a sunken fishing vessel being raised from the bottom of the Nyhavn Canal. (Year unknown). Photo: Kurt Nielsen

And the colorized version:

Nyhavn 37
No 37 was a very nice building which was enlarged with one floor in 1791. In the basement was Tattoo Jack, displaying colorful tattoos on his signs and in the window, consisting of butterflies, naked women, flowers, and the seaman’s grave as well as snake and daggers.

The artist Jens Ferdinand Willumsen (1983-1958) was associated with the movements of Symbolism and Expressionism. His sculpture The Great Relief (completed 1928) is one of Denmark’s cultural masterpieces. Here he is photographed in Nyhavn together with Madame Michelle Bourret in 1951. He met the French dancer and painter in 1928 and they stayed together until his death.

The celebrated Danish actor Dirch Hartvig Passer (1926 – 1980) was greatly renowned for his improvisational skills and one of Denmark’s most prolific actors, with a filmography comprising 90 movies, He arrives at a birthday party in Nyhavn carrying Danish film actress Judy Gringer.

Danish poet Jens August Schade (1903-1978) posing in Nyhavn in 1955. His debut was the 1926 poetry collection Den levende violin, “The Living Violin”. In 1963 he received the grand prize of the Danish Academy.

Today the charming Nyhavn area is an authentic local melting pot, mixed with history and culture, – and placed right at the humming and eventful seafront of Copenhagen.

Feature image (on top): Two young boys watching a sailship in 1955. Photo: Allan Moe

Copenhagen’s Post War Nyhavn, compiled by Admin

Stockholm – The Vasa Capital

Tor Kjølberg

August 21, 2017

Stockholm’s history starts at Gamla Stan (Old Town), which still has the character of a medieval city. Its narrow lanes follow the same curves along which the seamen of former times carried their goods.

The best place to start a tour is Stortorget, the center of the original city, from which narrow streets fan out in all directions.

In medieval times, Gamla Stan’s Stortorget was a crowded noisy place of trade, where German merchants, stallholders, craftsmen and young servant girls and boys jostled and shouted. In the cobbled square today, people laze on benches or sit at one of the outdoor cafés, and it is hard to visualize that in 1520 the cobbles ran with blood during the Stockholm Bloodbath.

Despite a guarantee of safety, the Danish King Kristian II, known as The Tyrant, murdered 82 people, not only nobles but innocent civilians unlucky enough to have a shop or a business nearby. This gory incident triggered the demise of the Kalmar Union, which had united Sweden with Denmark and Norway.

Three years later, Sweden’s first heroic king Gustav Vasa, put an end to the union and made Stockholm his capital.

From the square, it’s a short walk to the Cathedral (Storkyrkan). The awesome Gothic structure is the oldest building in Gamla Satan, in part dating ty the 12^th century. It has high vaulted arches and sturdy pillars stripped back to their original red brick. Its most famous statue is St. George and the Dragon, the largest medieval monument in Scandinavia, a wooden sculpture carved by Bernt Norke in 1489, which has retained its original coloring.

The cathedral was the setting fot the June 2010 royal wedding between Crown Princess Victoria and commoner Daniel Westling; crowds of around half a million lined the streets to watch the procession.

Västerlänggatan is a favorite shopping street for locals and tourists alike. Here and on nearly every other cobbled lane in the Old Town you will find shops, restaurants and cafés to suit every taste. Particularly enjoyable are the cellar restaurants with their musty smell and stone walls. It’s easy to imagine the Swedish troubadour Evert Taube (1890-1976) raising a beer stein to his compatriots as he composed yet another lyric to the Swedish way of life.
Hint: See more and pay less with a Stockholm Card, available from the Stockholm Tourist Center. It offers free travel, free admission to museums and sights, discount and guidebook.

Stockholm – The Vasa Capital, written by Tor Kjolberg

Read also:
Waterfront Oslo
City Hall Square in Copenhagen

Scandinavian Flatfish

Tor Kjølberg

August 17, 2017

Flatfish are plentiful and extremely popular in Scandinavia. They live all over the north Atlantic and Baltic and are caught in vast numbers, even if the population of the most popular fish have diminished.

Some flatfish, such as sole and turbot, are madly expensive, but the less well known species, such as flounder and dab, are even cheap.

Flatfish hatch as ordinary-looking swimming fish, with an eye on both sides, and live like this for a long time, until they gradually lose the swum bladder, one of the eyes wanders on to the other side of the fish, and it sinks to live the rest of its life on the bottom of the sea.

Some species have both eyes on their left others on the right, and as some species interbreed, there are lots of exceptions to the rules. Flatfish are almost indistinguishable from the sea bottom, and some have the ability of a chameleon to alter their coloring; when bathing it’s not uncommon to step accidentally on a brill or flounder.

Related: Scandinavian monkfish

Flatfish have beautiful, firm, moist and sparkling white flesh, except flounder, whose flesh is grey-tinged. They are usually lean, except for Greenland halibut.

Turbot and brill
These luxury fish are stars and need no fancy preparation to take away the attention. Turbot (Psetta maxima) is celebrated all over the world, but the turbot from the Scandinavian waters is the best. The cold makes the fish grow more slowly, and the brilliant white meat is dense, lobster-like and flavorful. Its close relative, the brill (Scropthalmus rhombus) is almost as good, and at a quite different price.

Don’t be put off by a very large brill or turbot; luckily some people believe that they become coarse with age, but this is not true, and it keeps the price of giant turbot at a more accessible level than of smaller fish. Brill is best in autumn.

Turbot and brill need particularly gentle treatment. Often they are baked in the oven with a knob of butter, until the flesh is almost done. If you cook them too much, the delicateness is gone and they will be dry. Cook them at 200C/gas mark 6 until the meat is still pink at the bone. Let them sit on the counter, covered in foil for a few minutes, and the heat from the pan will cook them gently through. Take away the skin and serve them simply, or with a topping of horseradish or chervil cream, caper or hollandaise sauce and horseradish.

Halibut
There are two types of halibut, both giants of the north Atlantic. Halibut (Hippoglossus hippoglossus) can grow to an impressive ping-pong table size. The meat is delicious and meaty. Halibut is best eaten in winter.

Related: Scandinavian Garfish

The Greenland halibut (Reinhardtius hippoglossides) is small by comparison – up to 20kg, but usually weighing 1 – 2kg. It is not bottom-of-the-sea-bound like other flatfish, so both sides of the fish are usually colored. The flesh is fatty and lends itself beautifully to cold smoking ore home smoking. As with all fatty fish, you need to be very precise when you cook it – too long and it will be bone dry. The fish is fine all year round, but most exquisite in winter.

Plaice
Speckled like a ladybird, with red spots on grey skin, plaice (Pleuronectes platessa) is the most loved fish for everyday meals all over Scandinavia. But it is not as plentiful as before and is quite expensive. The flesh has a tender sweetness to it, and is quite firm when cooked. Plaice is often served with rye flour and fried whole, on the bone, in butter. The fish is most delicious in late summer and autumn.

Other flatfish
The flounder is similar in appearance to plaice, but with a knobbed back and no red spots, though the two species interbreed and it can be very difficult to know which is which. Inside, however, the flounder has dark, succulent flesh, with a taste quite different from plaice.

The with (a member of the flounder family) can grow to an impressive size, and is rarely eaten, but delicious.

The dab, not unlike a flounder in appearance, is normally what you get if you buy frozen flatfish fillets; it’s thin-fleshed and not too interesting.

At the other end of the scale, the delicious and expensive soles and lemon soles are mostly eaten in restaurants, and most of the catch is exported; their prices are simply prohibitive for private eating.

Culinary uses
Flatfish cooked on the bone are much more succulent than fillets, but the latter are much easier to fry, simply coated in rye flour and sizzled in browned butter for a few minutes. Serve them hot on buttered rye bread with lemon and remoulade for a beautiful lunch dish. Other accompaniments might be potatoes and a variety of sweet-and-sour pickled things such as cucumber salad, raw lingonberry jam, and either just melted butter or a parsley sauce; but remember that the smaller flatfish, such as place and flounder are best in the summer, so don’t serve these with anything too substantial.

Larger flatfish, such as halibut and turbot, are wonderful if baked whole and served with a chervil cream, butter hand horseradish or a caper sauce.

The bones and heads of all flatfish are pure gold for fish stocks and fish soup. Keep them in the freezer until you have enough for a stock.

Scandinavian Flatfish, written by Tor Kjolberg

Waterfront Oslo

Tor Kjølberg

August 14, 2017

The ideal way to arrive in Oslo is by boat, for then you get the most complete picture (though arriving by car from the south along the Mosseveien also offers some impressive views).

The view from the fjord is dominated by the City Hall, a large brick building topped by two square towers which overlooks the busy harbor. The imposing Modernistic structure took 20 years to build – it was begun in the 1930s, but with the interruption of war, wasn’t completed until the 1950s.

The cavernous main hall is decorated with murals of Norwegian history and mythology, and the courtyard is adorned with bronze statues, a fine carved wooden frieze and the swan fountain.

Every year on 10 December City Hall hosts the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony.

On Rådhusplassen is the Nobel Peace Center (Nobels Fredssenter), which opened in 2005 on the site of the Vestbane building, a former railway station. Exhibitions staged here focus on former Peace Prize laureates and topics such as war, peace and conflict resolution.

Just north of the Nobel Peace Center, the Konserthus (Concert Hall), home of the Oslo Philharmonic, holds concerts most Thursday and Friday nights, except in July.

Related: At the Edge in Oslo

The last remnant of Oslo’s heavy industry, the Aker Shipyard, closed in 1982. In its place on the western side of the harbor are Aker Brygge and Tjuvholmen, vibrant complexes of shops, offices a hotel (The Thief) and apartments overlooking the fjord.

Tjuvholmen is one of Oslo’s newest boroughs. The area is characterized by an intriguing architectural diversity and unique outdoor areas. It plays host to several galleries and art installations, including the Astrup Fearnley Museum, designed by Renzo Piano, flanked by a sculpture park and a beach.

The seafront boardwalk lined with cafés and restaurants is one of Oslo’s most popular meeting places and teems with people in the summer months.

Waterfront Oslo, written by Tor Kjolberg

Feature image (on top): Tjuvholmen