Nyhavn
The Nyhavn ( Danish for "new port") is a key port in the Danish capital of Copenhagen and one of the main attractions of the city.
The Nyhavn Canal, completed in 1673, was commissioned to create a branch canal from Copenhagen Harbor to Kongens Nytorv Square . The colorful gabled houses on both sides of the small arm of the harbor were mainly built in the 18th and 19th centuries. The harbor environment gave rise to numerous taverns early on , and the area is still one of the most famous entertainment districts in Copenhagen with its many restaurants , pubs and dance halls next to Istedgade . Harbor tours and museum ships are reminiscent of the time as a trading port, the importance of which the 400 meter long and three meter deep canal lost at the latest by the beginning of the 20th century. The fairy tale poet Hans Christian Andersen was one of the residents of Nyhavn for a time, at the end of which is the Charlottenborg Palace .
history
Construction of the canal
At the end of the 1660s, Friedrich III. (1609–1670) made a plan that was supposed to give the market place Kongens Nytorv access to the port by means of a branch channel and to better connect the merchants there to the sea trade. But it was only after his death that construction of the canal began when soldiers began the first excavations in September 1671. Two years later, on October 19, 1673, the work ended with the razing of the dam and the new canal could be flooded. The Nyhavnskanalen , which was quickly seized by ships, formed a border between the more affluent Gammelholm in the south and the new residential areas for poorer city dwellers in the north, which emerged at the end of the 17th century. The two arterial roads to the north at that time, Store Strandstræde and Lille Strandstræde , were cut off from their connection to the city. The order of Christian V (1646–1699) that the landowners fix the quay with stakes and pave it was difficult to enforce and could not be implemented satisfactorily until around 1700.
Building new houses
The story of the row of houses facing the sun on the north side began with the construction of house number 9, which dates from 1681 and is therefore the oldest house in Nyhavn. The narrow blue gabled house represents the style of Copenhagen before the great fire of 1728 and, with its two floors, its attic and high cellars, has been able to retain its original shape, while the other buildings increased one or more floors over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries were increased. The rows of houses also escaped the flames during the town fires of 1795 and 1807 and today, with their colorful gabled houses, form a harmonious unit. Additional buildings were often added in the backyards to set up workshops or stores. On the quay there were sandboxes from which the residents got sand for their toilets and white-scoured floors.
On the south side there was originally the garden of Charlottenborg Palace , which was separated from Nyhavn by a wall. In the 1770s the garden was transformed into Copenhagen's new botanical garden . The head professor was given a director's apartment in a newly built house close to Charlottenborg Palace. When the Botanical Garden was relocated to Østre Vold in 1874 , the house was demolished in favor of a new exhibition building for the castle.
The row of houses from No. 6 to 22, which is on the shady side in the south, was built in the 1770s. The rest of the street was dominated by a long wall that separated Nyhavn from the Danish naval base in what is now the residential area of Gammelholm. When the fleet vacated the base in 1870, this central part of the city was converted into a residential area. With the Heibergsgade and the Holbergsgade , new access roads from Gammelholm to Nyhavn were created. In the course of this, a canal bridge was opened in 1875, which connected Holbergsgade with the opposite Toldbodgade .
In 1805, Ole Suhr had a warehouse built in Nyhavn No. 71 at the end of the north side to store herbs and other goods from overseas. Like many other harbor warehouses, the building was converted into a hotel in 1971 and today houses the 71 Nyhavn Hotel , a four-star hotel belonging to the Arp-Hansen Hotel Group , Copenhagen's largest hotel chain.
Port activities
As a port, the Nyhavn never achieved great importance because it was too small and too shallow from the start. Nevertheless, in the 18th century the Copenhagen merchants invested in courtyards and food shops along the canal . After the second naval battle of Copenhagen in 1807, which plunged Denmark into political and economic crisis, activities in the port languished. When trade recovered from the crisis and sailing ships, soon to be replaced by steamers, returned to the port of Copenhagen, Nyhavn proved too small for the big ships. Package boats filled the niche and kept the port alive for the next hundred years. The small boats transported goods from Copenhagen to the Danish islands and provincial cities. A wide variety of goods that were loaded or unloaded from the ships were piled up on the quay. Hotels like the Øresund in No. 3 or the Carl d. 15. was created in No. 15 to accommodate the passengers who were able to ride on the package boats in the meantime.
Origin of the pub scene
In addition to the supply shops, tattoo shops opened up on the sunny side of Nyhavn, and gradually more and more harbor bars . The clientele consisted mainly of day laborers looking for work in the port and seafarers who hired on ships . They spent their waiting time in pubs with names associated with wanderlust - such as Shanghaj , Mozambique or the still existing harbor pubs in Hong Kong at No. 21 and Cap Horn at No. 7. Celebrations and accordion music often lasted until next dawn. But fights, prostitution and theft were also the order of the day, so that police patrols soon followed. The Nyhavn got an increasingly dubious reputation, which partly lags behind it to this day. An attempt was made to counterbalance the temptations on the quay with the Christian seaman's home Bethel at corner house No. 24.
Loss of importance as a port
At the end of the 19th century, the Thingvalla Line shipping company opened its ticket office at Nyhavn No. 1. The office was the contact point for mostly Scandinavian emigrants who hoped for a better life on the other side of the Atlantic by buying a single ticket. The office was later taken over by the Cunard Line , which until 1920 advertised the “promised land” with color posters. At that time, the Nyhavn no longer played a role in shipping. The innkeepers continued their business with the serving of alcohol, but lost customers due to the absence of seamen and dock workers.
In the 1950s, Nyhavn's pubs became a hotbed of Dixieland jazz in Denmark. The Danish jazz formation Papa Bue's Viking Jazzband celebrated its first successes in 1956 in Cap Horn . In the 1960s, many fans of beat music were drawn to the harbor environment, but that did not stop Nyhavn's increasing decline. When shipping in the canal came to a complete standstill, parking spaces were set up on the quay.
present
Since the mid-1980s, Nyhavn has been revitalized by creating a pedestrian zone and transforming most of the old seaman's pubs into modern restaurants . They are visited by tourists as well as Danes from the middle class, who did not belong to the classic clientele in the past. In the summer, white parasols turn the street into a glamorous tent city. The area is one of the preferred meeting places in Copenhagen, especially in spring and summer. Until 2002 hydrofoils carried Swedish guests from the other side of Øresund to Nyhavn. Today canal boats leave the quay in order to start their tours through the Copenhagen harbor with its numerous canals.
Since 2016, Inderhavnsbroen has offered pedestrians and cyclists a direct connection via Inderhavnen to the Christianshavn district .
Known residents
The special atmosphere at Nyhavn and the proximity to the Danish State Theater attracted many personalities, including the Danish composer Friedrich Kuhlau (1786–1832), who lived in house number 23 until his death. The most famous resident was the Danish poet and writer Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875), who lived in house number 20 for five years from 1834. There he wrote the fairy tales The Lighter , Little Klaus and Big Klaus and The Princess and the Pea . In 1848 he returned to Nyhavn and moved into an apartment in house no. 67 until 1864. He returned again in 1873 and lived in house no. 18 on the shady side of the harbor until his death in 1875. The Danish novelist , naturalist and numismatist Vilhelm Bergsøe (1835–1911) lived in house number 63, the same house in which the actor Poul Reumert (1883–1968) grew up.
Traditional ships
Since 1976, attempts have been made to revive the old harbor atmosphere with old wooden traditional ships. One of these museum ships is the lightship Gedser Rev , which was decommissioned in 1972 and which has undergone several modifications since 1895 and sank in a few minutes in 1954 after a collision. The ship, built in Odense , is now an exhibit in the Danish National Museum . Since 1976, the galeas Anna Møller , built in Randers in 1906, has been part of the museum and has been used in a variety of ways, for example as a cargo ship, cable lay or stone fishing boat. She is kept in working order by a group of volunteers and takes part in various sailing events throughout Denmark during the summer. Another galeas is the Svalan af Nyhavn , which was built in 1924 at the Jungfrüsund shipyard in the Swedish municipality of Ekerö . Until she was registered as a Danish museum ship, she sailed along the Swedish coast to transport general cargo. Other traditional wooden boats moored in Nyhavn are the Galease Ma-Ri , built in Warnemünde in 1920 , the Haabet salmon cutter from Svaneke on Bornholm , built in 1931, and the Wotan fishing boat, built in Skagen in 1942 .
Anchor monument
The “anchor monument” (Mindeankeret) is on the corner of Kongens Nytorv. It was inaugurated on August 29, 1951 to commemorate the 1,600 or so Danish seafarers who perished during World War II . The stick anchor from 1872 comes from the frigate Fyn (" Fyn ") and contains a plaque with the monogram of Frederick VII (1808–1863). It replaced a wooden memorial cross that had been placed there six years earlier. Every year on May 5th, the day Denmark was liberated from German occupation , the victims are commemorated in an official ceremony.
literature
- Jens Fleischer: Nyhavn . In: København. Cultural history opslagsbog med turforslag . 1st edition. Politics Forlag A / S, Copenhagen 1985, ISBN 87-567-3904-4 (Danish).
- Arne Gotved: Nyhavn og træskibene / and the old ships . 1st edition. Iver C. Weilbach, Copenhagen 2011, ISBN 978-87-7790-210-9 (Danish, also in English).
- Claus Hagen Petersen: Nyhavn . In: Politikens Bog om København . 1st edition. Politics Forlag A / S, Copenhagen 2000, ISBN 87-567-6784-6 , p. 66 ff . (Danish).
Web links
- Nyhavn - Old Sailing Ships and the Longest Bar in Scandinavia at Copenhagen Portal
- Nyhavn at the "Society for Copenhagen History" (Selskabet for Københavns historie) (Danish)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Jens Fleischer: Nyhavn ( Memento of the original from March 24, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. from Selskabet for Københavns historie , 2006, accessed October 1, 2010 (Danish)
- ↑ National Museum: Fyrskibet Gedser Rev ( Memento of the original from April 8, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed October 1, 2010 (Danish)
- ↑ National Museum: Galeasen Anna Møller ( Memento of the original from January 2, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed October 1, 2010 (Danish)
- ↑ Svalan af Nyhavn: Forside ( Memento of the original dated December 16, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed October 1, 2010 (Danish)
- ↑ Svalan af Nyhavn: Samling af skibene i Nyhavn ( Memento of the original from July 19, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed October 1, 2010 (Danish)
- ↑ Flådens historie: Mindeankeret ved Nyhavn ( Memento of the original from January 10, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed October 1, 2010 (Danish)
- ↑ Copenhagen Portal: The Memorial Anchor at Nyhavn , accessed October 1, 2010 (Danish)
Coordinates: 55 ° 40 ′ 46.9 " N , 12 ° 35 ′ 26.4" E