A cobblestone sidewalk in Hans Christian Andersen's hometown
of Odense on the Danish island of Fyn
After a few days of looking up at the tall spires of cathedrals and castles in Denmark, there came a point when I began to look down and photograph the Denmark beneath my feet. In another post I'll be sharing many ancient floors in some of the castles @hanedane and I visited, as well as some Danish streets and street signs, but this post is devoted to Denmark's quaint cobblestone sidewalks. Needless to say, there are differences between Danish and American walkways, and some of those differences are actually pretty cool.
Like this one... on many sidewalks in Denmark there are raised markers to help blind people navigate. What a great idea that is and surely it's resulted in improved safety for blind pedestrians.
At right is a line of textured ridges in downtown Copenhagen near Nyhavn. Many of the streets in this area, also known as København K, are pedestrian only. The paving tiles here are newer, as most streets and sidewalks in Denmark are much older cobblestone.
We saw this raised metal dotted line on a sidewalk outside the Roskilde Cathedral.
Roskilde is a town just west of Copenhagen where the Viking Ship museum is also located. It sits at the southern end of the Roskilde fjord.
Again, these rectangular paving tiles are newer, set apart from the older cobblestones that are everywhere in Roskilde.
Above is a different variation of a raised metal dotted line marking the walkway for the blind in a town called Kalundborg, on the western shore of Zealand (the furthest east of the three big islands in Denmark. In the photo on the right, you can see another marker for the blind, also in Kalundborg, extending all the way down the block. It's been embedded in the newer paving tiles that butt up to the older cobblestone walkway next to buildings that are hundreds of years old.
Another aspect of Danish walkways that I saw everywhere was a double band of flatter tiles embedded in cobblestone; my guess is that its function was to smooth out the ride for two-wheeled carts, but that's only a guess.
This example, at right, is from Kronborg Castle in Helsingør, which is up at the northern tip of Zealand and just a short ferry ride to Sweden.
Below are a few more examples of these double track tiles.
I've researched these double tracks online, but sadly came up empty. If anybody out there knows why these exist and what purpose they serve, please let me know!
Finally, here are several photos of various sidewalks that show the quaint, pedestrian, cobblestony nature of Denmark:
Thank you for reading and joining us on our travels! We're Allan and Stephanie... making our way through middle age.
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