Sailing Out of the Timeless Myths of Hamlet’s Elsinore Castle & Bluetooth’s Roskilde Fjord – Comes Denmark’s Legendary Eco-Designers of Today

It’s a funny thing about ancestral ghosts – Hamlet saw them, my grandmother believed in them, and Hans Christian Andersen made his entry into the world of literature writing about them back in 1822.  And that’s what makes Denmark so special – it is a “Land of Legends” with the oldest continuous monarchy in Europe, spectacular countryside and castles, 5000 miles of clean and sparkling white sandy beaches, and now over 4000 onshore wind turbines making it the world’s most windfarm-intensive country.

And that’s what makes Denmark so richly unique – it is constantly reinventing itself in sustainable ways that are consistent with its legendary maritime heritage, its premium on a close-knit social environment, and its respect for its physical environment – “the land of the Vikings” – many of whom went to France and founded Normandy only to rise later again as English nobility – including my very own ancestor, Prince Bernard of Denmark, Rollo the Viking’s chief counselor in the conquest of Normandy and the progenitor and founder of the “Harcourt” Family in England.

But today, Denmark is now embarking on a new kind of ‘viking raid’ – a globally ‘green invasion’ – and leading the way are the denizens of its very own capital – Copenhagen, nicknamed “Eco-penhagen” – one of the ten most eco-friendly cities in the world.  Over 50% of its hotels are “green”, its central bus system is battery-driven, and with over 300 kilometers of cycling paths, Copenhagen is on target to become the world’s leading ‘bicycle city’ of commuters by 2015.  And if that weren’t enough, topping this year’s #1 San Pellegrino list of best restaurants in the world – for the second time in a row – is “Noma” located in an ‘upcycled’ warehouse in Copenhagen whose philosophy to serve wild and natural food products directly from the soil and sea not only authentically complements the Danish sea and sky-themed atmosphere and terracotta pot filled salads and pebbly-served, starfish-powdered shrimps  – but as Chef Rene Redzepi puts it, (The Founder of the Nordic Cuisine Movement) – each dish is meant “to enrich the soul”.

That ability to link nature to innovation – from eco-cuisine to eco-transport to eco-planning is the hallmark of Danish culture – so much so that leveraging new eco-innovation models of management, economics, and technology is now part of a collaborative effort by the Copenhagen Business School to establish innovation networks worldwide whilst advancing Denmark’s competitive advantage in sustainable business development.  But perhaps nowhere better than in the multidisciplinary area of ‘eco-designing’ are Denmark’s modern-day ‘green vikings’ making the greatest impact worldwide – in the way of car designs, furniture designs, yacht designs, building designs, and urban planning designs.

When it comes to the art of designing eco-friendly luxury cars, perhaps no one can make a more sophisticated, more superbly eco-chic car than Danish-born Henrik Fisker in his new “Fisker Karma” car – a four-door, plug-in hybrid luxury sports car that has a 300-mile range using both electric and gasoline power.  And when it comes to designing environmentally responsible outdoor furniture of international calibre – there is none better than ‘Skagerak Denmark’ whose family’s passion for wood and Denmark’s carpentry traditions over the generations is “anchored in the values of the maritime world”.   As for designing sustainable architecture, the three Danish firms of Deve Architects, Henning Larsen Architects, Christensen & Co. Architects are amongst the world’s best eco-designing visionaries.   Indeed, Deve Architects of Copenhagen has now put a modern-day twist on Prince Hamlet’s Elsinore Castle by designing an urban eco-castle in the formerly industrialized city center of Augustenborg, Denmark whilst Christensen & Co Architects has built a ‘Green Lighthouse’ structure at the University of Copenhagen which is the first carbon neutral building in Denmark.   And Henning Larsen Architects of Copenhagen has designed and completed a unique housing complex of 140 apartments built into the shape of a wave nine stories high with five featured wave crests creating a beautiful connection between Vejle Fjord’s landscape and the town itself.  But perhaps the best example of this Danish eco-philosophy of linking nature to designing can be seen in the “Global Eco-Village Movement”, co-founded by Danish-born Hildur Jackson – the new worldview of linking nature to ‘human settlement designs’  – the creation of planned residential communities based on the holistic concept that human activities must be socially, economically, and ecologically sustainable.

Now looking backwards over the last thousand years of Danish eco-designing, my personal favorite is one that hits closer to home and my immediate family – that of the legendary eco-graphic design left by King Harald Bluetooth of Denmark (b. 935, d.985) – found in the form of a memorial rune stone in the town of Jelling – in memory of his parents, King Gorm the Old and Thyra Danebold.   One stone in particular has a serpent wrapped around a lion and on the other side, a picture of Jesus Christ wrapped in the tree branches of the Old Norse ‘World Tree’ – symbolic of King Bluetooth’s conquest of Denmark and Norway and his conversion of the Danes to Christianity.  Ultimately, his son, King Sweyn Forkbeard, would lead a full-scale Viking assault on England and be crowned King of England on Christmas Day in 1013.  Two of King Bluetooth’s granddaughters would hence marry into Anglo-Saxon nobility.  One of their female descendants in turn would sail to America centuries later to found New England and become the ‘First Poet of America’.  And in turn one of her descendants would become my orphaned grandmother – renamed “Dolly” as a child as she was wont to play with dolls around local cemetery gravestones.  And therein lies the key to my grandmother’s ancestral ghosts and the riddle that she was given – that “she was as old as Olde England itself” – the amazing discovery that her 33^rd great-grandfather was none other than Danish King Harald Bluetooth himself.  Perhaps this is another reason why Denmark is so special – its legends never leave us!