Nordsjælland – the Scandinavian Riviera, august 2025
Nordsjælland, the Scandinavian Riviera
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The Jewel in the Nordic Crown
SAS Royal Hotel – A Modernistic Classic
We’ll start in Copenhagen, where we will stay at the 5* hotel SAS Royal right in the middle of the city and just across Tivoli.
It was no coincidence that it was the Danish architect, Arne Jacobsen, who was chosen as the architect for the University of Oxford’s brand-new St. Catherine’s College. At the time, he was known as a master of modernism.
And we have chosen, for the first two nights of our Kings Nordsjælland trip, to stay at his famous and listed 5*SAS Radisson Royal Hotel in the center of Copenhagen.
And here, on the first evening, when we have all arrived, we will have our dinner at the hotel’s Panorama Suite on the 20th floor with a stunning view over the city towards the royal palace Amalienborg, the Opera House and a clear view across the Øresund strait to neighboring Sweden.
A tour of the iconic hotel and a visit to the Room 606 suite, furnished with Arne Jakobsen’s original furniture designs created especially for the hotel, are included.
We Set Sail on a Long Boat
As you undoubtedly are aware, Denmark, together with Norway and Sweden, are the homelands of the Vikings. On our first day we will go straight to the old royal town of Roskilde, where we’ll visit the National Viking Ship Museum. We will here the opportunity to set sail in a replica Longboat, which, in it’s original, also sailed up the English rivers when the Danish king Canute the Great conquered England in 1013 – sorry about that – and was named English king on London’s Thorney Island, where Westminster and the Houses of Parliament are located today.
On our way through the medieval town of Roskilde, we will pass the local cathedral, where Danish kings and queens have been buried for the past 1000 years.
At the museum, we will experience the original Viking ships that archaeologists have found and restored, and we will try the Vikings’ noble drink, mjød og mead, together with the Vikings’ diet they enjoyed on their raids. It is an acquired taste.
The Museum of Modern Art, Louisiana
When we are finished and done with the Vikings in Roskilde, we will head north towards Strandvejen along the picturesque Øresund coast and its many historic houses and buildings. Next stop will be the Museum of Modern Art Louisiana in Humlebæk, where there will be an opportunity to have lunch in the garden.
The museum lies adjacent to Øresund with a clear view to Sweden just a few miles away. Besides it’s current exhibitions and a large collection of the great masters of international modern art, it is in itself an architectural and modernist gem.
Often there are long queues to enter and experience the museum, but we have obtained direct access. It originates from an old privately owned patrician villa. From the late 1950s when it opened, it has been extended ever since – in a sort of heteroclite way. The sum is a discreet modernist architecture, that today meanders into and under the landscape, which also offer a sculpture park. The museum in Humlebæk has become a ‘game changer’ in the way of experiencing art and a role model for museums in both Denmark and the rest of the world. We think you will agree.
Dinner at Karen Blixen's Home
10 kilometers or around six miles south of Louisiana you will find the old country house Rungstedlund, which was the childhood home of writer Karen Blixen (also known as Isak Dinesen).
Next to Hans Christian, Karen Blixen is probably Denmark’s most internationally known author. Her book “My African Farm” (“Out of Africa”) became known in wide circles around the world when it was made into a film in 1985 with Meryl Streep and Robert Redford in the lead roles. Another film adaptation of her novels is “Babette’s gæstebud” (Babette’s Feast), which in 1988 won an Oscar for best foreign film, with Stephane Audran as Babette.
She lived in Kenya for 17 years and, among other things, started a coffee farm. Karen Blixen returned home from Africa at the age of 46 in 1931 and settled on the family’s country estate. It was here – with a view over Øresund – that she would sit and write all her novels and stories. Today it is one of the world’s best-known artists’ homes, where all the rooms are as they were when the author lived and worked there.
The historic buildings are surrounded by a large and atmospheric flower garden, which Karen Blixen herself laid out with hundreds of different flower species. Next to the garden and the house, there is a 15 ha large and protected nature and forest area laid out as a bird reserve – “a real paradise for birds that came here across the World Ocean”, said Karen Blixen, who at her own request is buried in the middle of the reserve.
We visit both the author’s home and its impressive surroundings, which today is called the Karen Blixen Museum. And here we will have our private dinner, before driving home to the SAS Royal Hotel.
A Visit to the home of Queen Victoria's great- and great grand child
Wednesday morning, we will check out of SAS Royal. We will start by crossing the narrow waters between Denmark and Sweden via the Øresund Bridge, which is known from the TV series ‘The Bridge’ connecting the two countries who are on thoroughly good terms. Siblings as we are. We will visit the ‘old Danish country’ (we’ve forgiven them) across the narrow strait Øresund, driving straight to an English princess’s pleasure castle.
Denmark and southern Sweden have always been closely linked. For hundreds of years and up and until around 1700, southern Sweden was part of the Danish kingdom. IN those days there were hundreds of miles of forest separating Stockholm from this part, so Copenhagen was the more meaningful capital. Even today, southwestern Sweden and eastern Denmark are collectively called the Øresund region.
The Øresund connection, as it is officially called, consists of a tunnel which is replaced halfway across the Øresund by a high bridge. It was completed in 2000, when it connected Copenhagen and Malmö.
After having crossed the water, we drive north to end up at the peninsula and the Kullen massif. Here we can now suddenly look directly over to Denmark, before we continue to the pleasure castle Sofiero, which is known for its beautiful park, inspired by an English country garden. And there is a good reason for that. When the later King Gustav Adolf married the English princess Margaret of Connaught, who was the granddaughter of Queen Victoria, in 1905, the couple was offered Sofiero as a wedding gift from the king and then transformed into a more spacious country house with an English country garden. Their daughter was Ingrid, who later became Queen of Denmark.
Margaret died aged 38, but three years later Gustav Adolf married the English Lady Louise Mountbatten, who was the brother of Lord Mountbatten, great-granddaughter of Victoria, great-niece of King Edward VII and Princess of Battenberg. In 1950 she became Queen of Sweden.
In addition to experiencing the gardens and visiting the castle, we have lunch in the castle’s restaurant with a view of the water – and over to The King of Denmark’s Nordsjælland.
Helsingborg - Helsingør, Hornbækhus and Danish hygge
At the narrowest point in Øresund, the distance between Sweden and Denmark is only about 3 miles. We leave the Swedish town Helsingborg to Danish Helsingør, by ferry where we dock just a stone’s throw from Hamlet’s Kronborg, before continuing 10 miles along another beach route – Nordre Strandvej – to the classic North Zealand seaside town of Hornbæk.
Here we stay at the 120-year-old bathing hotel, Hornbækhus, which, despite a gentle interior modernization, has retained all its original turn-of-the-century charm and its exterior is as it was when it was built.
It is a historic setting and the epitome of Danish hygge or ‘coziness’. Here we can mingle with the beach hotel’s other guests and the local Hornbæk residents who regularly participate in the hotel’s dinner party, which is a traditional, informal and hyggelig event with exquisite Danish dishes.
But just prior to this we will experience a chamber concert in one of Denmark’s most unique and beautifully located museums, not particularly known, not even among Danes.
A Quartet Concert Among Giant Sculptures
A short ride from Hornbækhus, you’ll find Tegner’s Museum and Statue Park, located in the middle of a large protected heath, where the heather will be blooming while we are there. The octagonal concrete building lies in the middle of the landscape, like a spaceship landed from a distant galaxy. Here we will experience a chamber concert quite out of the ordinary.
It was the artist Rudolph Tegner, who himself acquired the entire area and had the museum built for his sculptures in 1936. In the landscape, his huge, vitalistic bronze sculptures are enthroned, which we can experience in the late afternoon sun between juniper bushes and heather, before we offer a drink at the museum’s tree-lined café. And then it’s time for our private concert.
Parnassos has been given exclusive access to the museum after its opening hours, so we have it all to ourselves.
The ceiling in the museum’s main hall rises 11 meters above the floor, and many of Tegner’s plaster sculptures of mythical, heaven-seeking people almost touch the ceiling. And in the middle of this breathtaking spectacle with its very special acoustics, we have set up a concert hall, where a chamber ensemble will entertain us with classical works that match the spirit of the place. This has never happened before in the museum’s 89-year history, so it will be a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ experience.
A Visit to the Royal Summer Residence
Considering that we are visiting the ‘Kings of North Zealand’, so what would be appropriate than to start the Thursday with a visit to the Danish royal couple’s summer residence in Fredensborg, which is beautifully located next to the large Esrum Sø or Lake. Our host here will be the royal head gardener, who will talk about the Palais’ history and show us around the impressive park and the palais’ garden.
Fredensborg Palais was built as a pleasure castle for the Danish king Frederik IV in 1722. In the second half of the 19th century, the castle was the setting for gatherings of the crowned heads of many of the European royal houses.
The Danish King Christian IV went by the name “Europe’s father-in-law”, because he had his daughters married into the other royal houses. Among the summer guests you would have found the Russian Czar married to Danish princess Dagmar and the English crown prince and later king, Edward 7th, married to Danish Alexandra (then again we see close family ties between the English and Nordic royal houses). In addition, i.a. the new Greek king George 1st, who was the son of the Danish king, as well as nobles and royalty from other European countries.
Today, Fredensborg is the summer residence of both the now abdicated Queen Margrethe II and Denmark’s King Frederik X and Queen Mary. And the probability that they are present at the castle, precisely when we visit Fredensborg, is quite high. Despite that, we cannot promise that we will run into them – or that they will invite us for tea.
Meet the Man who set the Watergate Scandal in Motion
Our lunch for the day will be the luxury version of traditional Danish smørrebrød (you may know the word from the Swedish version, Smörgåsbord).
We will enjoy it in one of Denmark’s oldest and most popular seaside and summer towns. It’s called Tisvildeleje, and the children think it’s at the End of the World. The town’s main street stops at the several-kilometer-long white sandy beach with a view of the sea and adjacent to one of the country’s wildest forest areas. You simply cannot go any further.
For a century and a half, Tisvilde has been sought out by artists, intellectuals and people hungry for sun and nature, who have set up their summer residences here. One of them was one of the greatest geniuses of our time, Nobel laureate Niels Bohr, who discovered the atom and founded quantum physics.
Today, you can come across Hollywood stars, media personalities, well-known artists and politicians, who unabashedly mingle with the local residents and other summer visitors on the beach and the city’s unpretentious restaurants and cafes, where, among other things, risk running into the American actor Bradley Cooper, the speaker of the Danish Parliament or a former prime minister.
Parnassos’ guide, Poul Arnedal, is a permanent resident of Tisvildeleje. He will take us on a guided stroll around the atmospheric city and tell us about the place’s incredible history and its famous personalities. Lunch is served in the Garden in the middle of Hovedgaden, or the main street, where we will meet the American, Spencer Oliver, who more than 50 years ago and quite unexpectedly triggered the Watergate scandal in the USA and thereby the downfall of President Nixon.
During the presidential election campaign in 1972, he sat in the leadership of the Democratic Party, which was housed in the Watergate building complex. And because he was the Democrats’ most central person, it was his phone that was tapped without his knowledge by Nixon’s ‘Plumber Gang’, so that the president’s men eavesdropped on the opponents’ election strategy.
Since then, Spencer Oliver became secretary general of the OSCE with headquarters in Copenhagen, married a Danish woman and acquired an old fisherman’s house at the beach in Tisvildeleje as his summer residence. And despite his 86 years of age, he is still politically active with close connections to the inner circle of the Democratic Party and was active at home in the United States in the campaign for Kamala Harris in 2024. Stories to follow! He spends all his summers with his wife Jeanie in Tisvildeleje.
An Organ Concert by the Works of J.S. Bach's Teacher
For the rest of Thursday, we will feel the whir of history in Helsingør.
At the end of the afternoon, Parnassos has arranged, together with one of Denmark’s foremost organists, an organ concert specially for us with works by, among others, one of baroque music’s greatest composers, Dietrich Buxtehude. The music will fill the church room in St. Mariæ Church from Buxtehude’s own organ. Because it was precisely here that he composed a number of his tone-setting Baroque compositions, which inspired the next generation’s composers like Johan Sebastian Bach and Georg Friederich Händel.
We are in the middle of the old medieval town, where St. Mariæ Church and Vor Frues Kloster – after being almost burned down – were completed in their current forms at the end of the 15th century. Here Buxtehude got the job as organist at the age of 23 in 1660 and was there until 1668. He was born in Helsingborg (while the city was still Danish) and grew up in Helsingør, where his father was organist in the Cathedral of St. Olai.
He then became an organist in Lübeck in the principality of Holstein, which until 1864 was part of the Danish kingdom, and where his reputation as a composer attracted and inspired younger composer talents such as Bach and Händel. The young Bach stayed with him for a few months in Lübeck who was taught a thing or two about fuga and polyphony.
Gala Dinner at Kronborg Slot
We Return to the King's Copenhagen
Friday morning, we will head back to what the Danes call the King’s Copenhagen. A designation that has gained new relevance after King Frederik 10th in January 2024 together with his Australian-born Queen Mary took over the Danish throne as his mother, Queen Magrethe II, chose to abdicate because of health issues.
And this concludes the official part of our program for the journey to the Jewel in the Nordic crown.
Some will now take the train or plane to wherever you call home, after been given the full Scandinavian experience.
Others may decide to stay for an extra day in Copenhagen. And for them we have arranged a special program on the Friday 15th August, which can be added during the purchasing process. During the day, we will offer a guided Canal Tour, which will take us around the city’s canals and along the harbor, where you can experience everything from The Little Mermaid, the Opera, Amalienborg Royal Palace and the Christiansborg Parliament Palace to the historic 17th century quarters of Copenhagen and the most modern state -of-the-art buildings seen from the water side. As a supplement, you can also get a guided tour of the Danish capital in a hop-on-hop-off and experience the city up close from street level.
The evening consists of an exquisite gourmet dinner at the three-star Michelin restaurant, Geranium, which in 2022 was voted “Europe’s best restaurant”, and whose head chef Rasmus Kofoed has won the Bocuse d’Ore and today belongs to the small circle of “Best of the best” restaurants in the world. The dinner takes place on Friday 15 August. Accommodation at the Royal Radisson is included in the price, which, no arguing about it, is quite steep.
And our Purpose is?
What Exactly do you get for your 13,000 dkk? (aprox € 1,750)
- Two Nights at the 5* Hotel Radisson Royal.
- And an additional two Nights at Hornbækhus.
- Speech and lunch at Vikingeskibsmuseet.
- Entrance to all museums and churches.
- Entrance to all privately held concerts.
- Dinner at Karen Blixen’s Home.
- Gala Dinner at Kronborg slot, Hamlet’s Castle, wine-pairing, included.
- Middag på Hornbækhus.
- Frokost i Sofiero.
- Frokost i Tisvilde.
Please Note:
The amount covers the stay and experiences in Denmark only and does not include the flight.
This is to give you as much flexibility as possible, such as when you fly during the day and from where. Maybe you also want to extend your stay.
If the trip is canceled – regardless of the reason – we will compensate your flight ticket of up to £ 150/person.
