a blog by Peter Leonard
An hour and a half west of Copenhagen, on the island of Fyn, lies Odense, home of Hans Christian Andersen and, much earlier, seat of a cult of Óðinn.
Nowadays it's the former claim to fame that gets the most attention from the city fathers, with an incredibly comprehensive museum of the Danish writer's life and times. It includes the actual house in which he was (perhaps) born, and pulls no punches about the desperate poverty into which he was born. Outside the modern railway station, a unique three-sided sculpture immortalizes three figures from his writing, including The Shadow:
At other places around town you'll catch representations of The Steadfast Tin Soldier:
As well as countless wrought-iron representations of Andersen's other main form of artistic production: paper-cuttings which he created out of folded material with scissors:
Meanwhile, the city museum offers up 5,000 years of axes, demonstrating the length of human habitation of the island of Fyn:
More pictures form Odense here.