National Museum of Denmark — Attraction in Copenhagen Municipality

This is an amazing museum with so much packed inside. We were there about 5 hours, and normally we don't go to museums since my husband likes to walk outdoors. Upstairs there was a large Money exhibit with a gold bar you could touch. We had trouble finding the rest of the exhibits, and were thinking, "Is that it?" Go to the bathroom before you start since once we found the start in the Toy and Dollhouse area, you will be walking for hours without a bathroom in sight. There really was not many, if any, places to sit either.

There was a 1970's area with a den in very retro furnishings, other period furnishings, Danish pre-history including canoes, Arctic (my favorites were reindeer underwear and a G-string), Greenland, Vikings, Japanese (Including a replica of a house), Chinese, Korean, Indian, Navaho weavings, and African cultures. I liked the Egyptian area which had some hieroglyphics on stone walls and even mummies, Greek, Roman, Medieval, Stone Age, and Bronze Age. There were even the mummified remains of people found in the bogs. I remember reading about the woman. There was a new Cosplay influencer exhibit being built.

Danish history including a replica of a 1700's HDMS Dannebroge war ship with three rows of cannons which helped me to understand why the Swedish King had wanted an extra or third row of cannons on the ill-fated Vasa ship that sunk and is the most well preserved ship in Sweden. The Swedish ship makers had not yet mastered the extra depth and hull and other mechanics needed to offset the extra weight.

There was a more modern, multi-media interactive exhibit "Viking Sorceress" with audio narration of their stories, special lighting, props and "volcano." The separate Viking area was very interesting as well.

There is a cafe and gift shop.

In the cultural areas, there were so many artifacts in the cases and many lacked signs or information about them that you would just have to look at them but not understand the significance but in truth there was so much to see in the museum that you could not read too many signs.

This is an excellent rainy or cold day activity or even a nice day when you want to see so many interesting things that you have never seen...

I am giving this museum a three star. These three stars are because I think the staff is very helpful and there is a lot to discover from all over the world for every age. You can definitely spend your whole day here. If you're not familiar with many different cultures then you will find many special rooms to form some base of knowledge of different cultures.

But why I didn't rate it well was especially because of exhibition from the voices of the people who have been colonised by Denmark. I felt that the voices weren't critical at all but rather promoting the previous actions of Denmark to colonise the land for the better. The Danish failed to recognise the hardship they have put entire cultures through. It seemed that there was some proud feelings of their actions that made a city or land flourish. Even though they might have done positive things for other cultures, they didn't mention the strength of the cultures themselves and how the cultures thrived without the help of the Danish.

Also in the exhibition of the people of the earth it looked like they lacked a lot of context to the many objects that were exhibited. Where is the transparency of how these items were collected?

I felt through the entire museum that there wasn't a lot of critical view or perspective upon the collected items from different cultures. To my opinion it lacked the respect for different cultures but their own Danish culture. By the way this exhibition was very well put together and impressively interactive.

I think the museum might face some challenges into making this museum future proof. Hopefully this review helps. I truly hope there will be more voices from people who have experiences the...

We visited mainly because of all the posters around town advertising the Viking Sorceress exhibit.

Wow, what a dud.

You put on headphones, then walk through an overdramatized story that has nothing to do with history or reality in any way. It seems to be designed for middle-school children. There was one impressive room, but the audio was just embarrassing.

Then you walk into the room where actual Viking-era artifacts are, and it’s almost completely unlit. People kept bumping into each other and into the glass cases, and you couldn’t see any details of the exhibits. This isn’t the only museum in Copenhagen to opt for dramatic lighting over visibility, either.

Denmark! Turn on your lights! Let us see the cool stuff in your museums!

By the time we exited that part of the museum, we had headaches and skipped the rest. I bet there’s some amazing stuff to see, so make sure to do that stuff before the Viking Sorceress exhibit.

Oh, and one other thing we’ve noticed in museums here: signage is terrible. For example, here you walk up a staircase and are met with a rack of headsets. Turns out this is where you RETURN them, but to enter the exhibit you actually have to turn left after the stairs, and there’s the welcome table. It’s almost out of sight, and there’s no sign pointing to it. So as I stood there waiting for my wife to exit the exhibit, I counted no less than 4 groups of people walk up the stairs, look around, then take headsets off of the rack, only to be told by a person working the table that those were just for used headsets.

Signs are cool, people! And if you can’t have signs, have someone pointing the way instead of barking at people for taking headsets from the...