Another
break from archaeology today as we are concentrating on Hans Christian
Andersen, who was born in Odense. For those of you who don’t know, he is famous
for his nursery rhymes, such as: The Princess and the Pea, The Ugly Duckling,
The Emporer’s New Clothes, The Little Match Girl and many, many more. He was
born in 1805 to very poor parents but overcame that to become internationally
famous with his works translated into many languages within his lifetime.
We
visited two sites – H.C. Andersens Barndomshjem (his family home) and H.C.
Andersens Hus (his birthplace), which were covered by one ticket. The former is
a very small house that would have had four families living in it and clearly
showed the very poor conditions that he was brought up in. The house now has a
lovely English garden that, needless to say, did not exist in his time. The H.C.
Andersens Hus is also very small but houses all around the original house have
been purchased and new sections built to provide a much larger museum that can
cope with the vast number of visitors from around the world that come each year.
The
museum was very informative and the story of his life was told very well with
lots of supporting documentation and photographs.
Photos:
The Hans Christian Andersen quarter with houses dating from his time – the H.C.
Andersens Hus is the yellow one at the left hand end of the terrace (slightly
left of centre of the photograph); The HCA pavilion with its pond is where the
regular parades of HCA characters (in season and not on Sundays) finishes; A
not-so-ugly duckling from the pond by the pavilion; There are very ambitions, multi-million
pound plans for underground and over ground areas around the existing museum
that will reflect HCA’s stories – the centre of Odense is currently in chaos as
the work proceeds – come in 2020 to see the results; We are really getting
stuck on the Danish Brunch offerings – this one was excellent; The alter screen
of the Odense Cathedral.
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