Saturday 15 March 2014

Copenhagen

Poul Anderson, The Corridors Of Time (London, 1968), p. 14.

"Tivoli" is a pleasure garden in Copenhagen. (I have not been able to ascertain why Anderson refers to "Old Vienna" in connection with Tivoli.)

"Langelinje" is a pier, promenade and park in Copenhagen.

"The Little Mermaid" is a bronze statue of the Hans Christian Anderson character on a rock by the Langelinje promenade.

There is a statue of "Gefjon of the Oxen," a Norse goddess of plowing, on a fountain, used as a wishing well, at Copenhagen harbor front.

"Amelienborg," the winter home of the Danish royal family, is in Copenhagen.

"Nyhavn" is a seventeenth century waterfront, canal and entertainment district in Copenhagen.

"Kongens Nytorv," "the King's New Square," is a public square in Copenhagen.

(Seven references that I have googled.)

Thus, avoiding Tivoli on his last morning in Copenhagen, Lockridge instead walks along car- and bicycle-filled streets, down Langelinje with its sea winds and ships, past the Little Mermaid, Gefjon and Amalienborg, left along the canal through Nyhavn, past centuries-old seamen's taverns, across Kongens Nytorv, then among Renaissance churches, palaces and counting houses - all in a single paragraph that the reader may well rush through because the next anticipated plot element is Lockridge's second meeting with Storm Darroway.

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