Denmark

Denmark is the southernmost Scandinavian country. It is made up of the Jutland peninsula and hundreds of islands between the North Sea and the Baltic. Copenhagen, the capital, sits on Zealand, the largest island, and faces Sweden across the Öresund strait. Since 2000, a bridge and a tunnel have linked the two countries.

Öresund Bridge

Our Denmark archive comes from one trip: six days in August 2015 with a Nikon D800. The plan was a few days in Copenhagen, then a short trip across the water to Malmö. On 22 August, we took the train over the strait. Less than an hour later, we were in another country.

That evening, I set up on the Swedish shore and waited for the sun to reach the horizon. At 20:23, it touched the water beside the pylons. The bridge at sunset is a 50mm frame at f/8. As a result, the deck runs out of the left edge and narrows to a thin line. On the far right of the horizon, the faint skyline is Copenhagen, where we were staying.
The bridge carries a motorway above a double-track railway. It runs 7,845 metres from the Swedish coast to Peberholm, an artificial island. From there, a tunnel takes road and rail the last four kilometres to Amager, next to Copenhagen Airport. Denmark and Sweden agreed on the link in 1991, and construction began in 1995. It opened on 1 July 2000 and is the longest combined road and rail bridge in Europe.

Malmö

Earlier that day, we walked the seafront of Västra Hamnen, the former shipyard district of Malmö. At 14:10, however, the sun stood high and hard. So I used the shore rocks as the foreground and gave the rest to the sky.

Turning Torso above the rocky shore is the result. Santiago Calatrava designed the tower, which opened in 2005. It rises 190 metres in nine stacked cubes that twist through 90 degrees from base to top. For 17 years, it was the tallest building in Scandinavia, until Karlatornet in Gothenburg passed it in 2022.

Copenhagen

Copenhagen, meanwhile, gave us the other five frames. We stayed right next to Nyhavn, so the harbour was on our route at every hour of the day. Three of the six evenings ended with a tripod by the water, and one afternoon took us north by bike.

The Copenhagen city guide covers each location in depth, together with Christianshavn and Tivoli Gardens. This page, therefore, gives the country view and the story behind each frame.

Nyhavn

The canal at Nyhavn was finished in 1673 to bring ships up to Kongens Nytorv. Afterwards, merchants settled along it, and their gabled houses now carry the colours of every Denmark postcard. Hans Christian Andersen lived in three of them over the years.

On 18 August 2015, our first evening in Denmark, low sun lit the north side of the quay. At 19:50, I framed the coloured houses behind the wooden masts at 42mm. The old ships hold the foreground, while restaurant tables fill the quay under their awnings.

Gefion Fountain

The next evening was meant to be a day off. We walked to the Little Mermaid, found her surrounded by crowds and kept going. A few minutes later, the Gefion Fountain came into view with the sun just above the trees.

The fountain tells a founding myth of Denmark. In it, the goddess Gefion ploughs Zealand out of Sweden, driving her sons, who have been turned into bulls. Finally, the Carlsberg Foundation gave it to the city, and it was finished in 1908.

I set the 14mm lens to f/22, which turned the sun into a star beside the bull’s head. A 25-second exposure then smoothed the jets of water. On the left of the fountain at sunset stands St Alban’s Church, the English church built beside it in 1887.

Copenhagen Opera House

Ninety minutes later, on the same evening, we stood across the harbour from the Opera House. Henning Larsen designed it on Holmen, on one axis with Amalienborg Palace and the Marble Church behind it. It opened in 2005 as a gift to the Danish people from the A.P. Møller Foundation.

By 21:20, blue hour had settled and the foyer glowed behind its curved glass front. A 13-second exposure at 70mm flattened the harbour. As a result, the Opera House at blue hour sits on its own reflection.

Christiansborg Palace Tower

Christiansborg Palace, on the islet of Slotsholmen, houses the Danish Parliament, the Prime Minister’s Office and the Supreme Court. At 106 metres, its tower is the tallest in the city. Since 2014, it has also been open to the public free of charge.

We climbed it just as the sun went down. From the top of the palace tower, the view runs west over the Riding Ground courtyard. Beyond it, the City Hall tower stands against the setting sun. I stitched several frames into one panorama to keep the whole city line. Seen from above, Copenhagen is a low city of copper and tile roofs, with very few towers breaking the line.

Grundtvig’s Church

On 23 August, our last day, we took bikes north along the cycle lanes to Bispebjerg. Grundtvig’s Church was built between 1921 and 1940 to a design by P.V. Jensen-Klint. After his death in 1930, his son Kaare Klint completed it. Outside, the west front takes the stepped gable of a Danish village church and scales it up in yellow brick.

Inside, however, there is no ornament at all. Instead, millions of yellow bricks form the piers and vaults, and the light does the rest. At 14:00, the sun came through the high windows and lit the pillars beside the pulpit. I photographed the empty nave and its rows of chairs handheld at 14mm and ISO 800.

The same Expressionism later shaped Hallgrímskirkja in Reykjavík, one of the highlights of our guide to Iceland.

Photographing Denmark

Seven frames from six days is a small archive. Still, the numbers show clearly where the value sits. Nyhavn is our most-seen Denmark photo in Google Images, with 94,000 impressions in the last 90 days. It shows the subject people already search for, in clean evening light.

The surprise is Malmö. An afternoon detour produced Turning Torso, which brings more visitors from web search than any of our Copenhagen pages. Meanwhile, the bridge is second only to Nyhavn in visitors. A trip earns most when it includes the subjects people already look up by name.

When to Visit Denmark

We went in late August. Sunset came around 20:30, so a full day of walking still ended with golden hour and blue hour. In June, by contrast, the sun sets close to 22:00 in Copenhagen and the nights barely darken.

Winter, by contrast, turns the light around. In December, the sun sets before 16:00, and the weather is often grey and windy. Even so, the harbour lights and Christmas markets give the city a second season. May to September remains the most reliable window for long light and mild weather.

Getting Around Denmark

Most visitors first arrive at Copenhagen Airport on Amager, about 15 minutes from the centre by metro. Trains also run from Hamburg in northern Germany and, across the bridge, from Malmö. Inside Copenhagen, the bike is the fastest way to move, because the cycle lanes work as a second road network.

Beyond the capital, trains also cross the Great Belt link to Odense on Funen and on to Aarhus in Jutland. Denmark is in the European Union and the Schengen Area, but it uses the Danish krone instead of the euro. Drivers pay a toll on the Öresund Bridge. Its operator, Øresundsbron, publishes the engineering facts and current prices.

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