Birthdays, Viking Ships, and Papers! Oh My!

It was something of a rather busy weekend here in Denmark. Last Friday (April 16) was the Queen's birthday. As this may be my only time in a country that has a monarchy for that monarch's birthday, I decided to go. As it was the 70th birthday of Her Royal Highness, the crowd was something massive. Personally, it felt as if all the city had gone to see the monarch, but that is most likely an over-estimate of the number of persons involved. However, I did manage to get a good position in her "parade" route and saw her and her husband in their carriage as they went from the palace to city hall. The pagentry (mounted guards and band, horsedrawn carriage with monarch, people waving small Danish flags, etc) was all very fun. One of the things that struck me was just how quiet the crowd was, however that shouldn't be really all that shocked. A sort of quiet dignity (with the exception of football [American name soccer] matches) seems to be something of a defining characteristic of many of the Danes I have come to know.

Saturday 17 April was my college's housing lottery, but I didn't have time to worry about that. Rather, I was too busy being shipped all over the island of Zealand for my course in Nordic Mythology. We went to a museum dedicated to Viking Ships, saw the site of a ship burial (set in stone), visited the likely hall of King Hrothgar, and went to a military barracks that was likely key in the conversion to Christianity. Before any of these sites could be visited though, we had to wait for just under an hour and a half after our scheduled departure time for our bus to show up (some sort of communication error). All in all, it was a long day, and I was glad to get back to the apartment in the evening and get about the making of dinner. While all of the sites were individually rather interesting and historic, there was no single event that made my jaw drop. True, it was the first time that I was able to sample mead (in a reconstruction of a Viking age house), and that was a rather enjoyable experience. Even with that though, there was no single moment that made me say "wow."

Yesterday (Sunday 18 April) was spent in a flurry of writing. Since coming back from my travels, I haven't been as on top of my game when it comes to my classes as I like to be. There are a number of possible factors leading to this slump, I won't bother to go through all of them. With the end of the semester so close in sight now, it is hard to keep as focused as I like to be. However, I know that I have been able to buckle down before, so there is no reason that I should not be able to do so again. Besides, I doubt that I am the only student at this time of year (the full bloom of spring) that has trouble focusing. I am willing to go as far as to say I think that come May, there will be many (for one reason or other) that will have trouble being as productive as they were in the winter months, but that is pure personal conjecture.

P.S. Copenhagen has not seen a rain of ashes from the volcano in Iceland. I do not know to what extent travel by air into and out of Denmark has been effected. It is not that I am not interested, it is just that most news about the volcanic activity and how that is effecting travel seems to be focused more on the United Kingdom and other parts of the European continent. As soon as something specific to the volcano and Denmark emerges, I will be more than happy to post a link on this blog.