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Tues-Sun 10am-5pm; 40kr, free Wed; www.natmus.dk . Bus #5, #8, #10, #28, #29 or Central Station. Heading back towards the city centre brings you to the well thought-out National Museum (Nationalmuseet), home to the country's finest collection of Danish artefacts, dating from 10,000 BC to the mid-nineteenth century. There's also a fantastic ethnographic collection containing one of the most comprehensive displays of Inuit artefacts in the world, a dull collection of Egyptian and Classical antiquities, and a programme of temporary exhibitions. Most of the displays - the prolific ethnographic collection excepted - are labelled in English. Attached to the main collection is a superb children's museum , where kids can put on armour, fire toy crossbows from model castles, and hide out in Bedouin tents. The main collection , spread over two floors on the right as you enter (the ethnographic collections, temporary exhibits and children's museum are all on the left), begins with prehistoric artefacts and winds it way forwards chronologically via a sequence of linked rooms - the quite remarkable number of intact finds on display here is due to the country's peat bogs, which acted as a preservative on anything buried in them. The earliest moments of Danish civilization are represented with a good number of carefully crafted flint tools, stunning amber pieces and necklaces, and a full-sized skeleton of an auroch - a very large (and now extinct) indigenous buffalo - replete with stone-age hunting wounds. A good sense of the lives of the early settlers is gained by a collection of 3500-year-old coffins, which contain domestic items along with the grisly remains of their human occupants - the best preserved belongs to the Egtved Girl, whose clothes, jewellery and blonde hair have all survived intact. Another highlight is the Sun Chariot of 1400 BC. Made by Bronze Age sun-worshippers, it depicts a gold-leaf, spiral-decorated sun being drawn across the heavens by a magical horse. Continue from here into the Viking collection . The idea that the Vikings were a distinct culture and people has been challenged in recent years - even some of the artefacts that are most closely associated with them, such as the characteristic horned helmets (examples of which are on display), pre-date them by centuries. Whatever the truth, the period from the birth of Christ to the triumph of Christianity in about 1100 AD saw the establishment of a sophisticated seafaring culture in Denmark, with extensive trade routes, military prowess, and colonies in France, Britain and Ireland. Many of the everyday tools and artefacts from this period, including clothes and weapons, are on display, and there's also a good collection of Viking coins and an enthralling section on runic lettering, featuring a number of original rune stones. Moving on through the museum leads to several rooms dominated by the relics of Danish Christianity . Stern-looking late-Viking crucifixes give way to more naturalistic representations, while the Latin alphabet arrives to replace the runes. Further exhibits demonstrate the intricate crafts used to glorify Christ (and the church), with elaborate gold altars, wonderful ceremonial robes and grails. Other highlights include a fantastic collection of jewel-encrusted rings - made to be worn outside the gloves of the wearer - and an armoury that is a positive cornucopia of violent implements. After this wonderful array of historical artefacts the collection continues through to the nineteenth century with a disappointing run of portraits of Danish worthies and a badly preserved royal apartment that formerly served as the home of various crown princes. The ethnographic collection , however, is worth investigating, though there are no labels and it can be hard to make sense of the displays. Of particular interest is the collection of Inuit artefacts , one of the largest in the world, with dozens of whale-bone carvings, harpoons and sealskin kayaks - the splendid body suit made entirely of bird feathers exemplifies human ingenuity in the face of a hostile climate. If you can be bothered to climb all the way to the top of the museum, the ethnographic collection also holds a small selection of Egyptian and Classical antiquities , with a few mummies and, more impressively, a good collection of glazed decorative pottery from the city states of Greece.
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