Andersen’s Copenhagen

Three doors on one canal

Andersen spent much of forty years on the same quay. No. 20 from 1834 to 1838, no. 67 from 1848 to 1865, no. 18 from 1871 to 1874. He published his first fairy tales at the first of those addresses, in 1835, in what was then a working sailors' quarter of pubs, brothels and tattoo parlours rather than the restaurant frontage you see now. That contrast is the useful thing to carry along the canal — see the Nyhavn history page.

What he did to Danish folklore

More than most people realise. The legend of Holger Danske, the sleeper who wakes when Denmark is threatened, goes back to about 1060 in La Chanson de Roland; it was Andersen who fixed him to Kronborg's casemates, in a fairy tale published in 1846, and that is where the association comes from. He also used the lygtemand, the figure Danish folk belief placed in bogs and damp meadows at night. See Holger Danske and the lygtemand.

Where he ended up

Assistens Cemetery in Nørrebro, which opened in 1760 as a burial ground for the poor and had become fashionable by the time he needed it. Søren Kierkegaard and Niels Bohr are in the same 25 hectares. It is the largest green space in the inner district and walking in it costs nothing: the Assistens Cemetery page.

No walk on this site is an Andersen tour. The English ghost walk runs from Nytorv and ends at Kongens Nytorv beside his canal: the guided ghost walk.

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