National Museum of Denmark

The National Museum of Denmark stands in central Copenhagen, a short walk from the city’s main shopping street. Its main building houses Denmark’s largest collection of cultural history, covering Danish and foreign cultures from Greenland to South America. The museum also supports archaeological and anthropological research in Greenland through its Greenland Research Center. It manages national commitments in archaeology, ethnology, numismatics and conservation, including work on Danish churches and the handling of national treasures known as Danefæ. The museum presents 14,000 years of Danish history, from Ice Age reindeer-hunters to Viking artefacts and medieval religious art. It holds Denmark’s largest collection of objects from ancient Greece, Italy, the Near East and Egypt, including finds from the Danish excavation at Tell Shemshara in Iraq. The pre-Columbian collection from the Caribbean, curated by archaeologist Gudmund Hatt, contains around 7,800 catalogue entries. Exhibits also explore everyday life in Denmark from 1560 to 2000 and the stories of the Danish state and nation. A major Viking exhibition opened in 2013 in the presence of Queen Margrethe II and later toured to the British Museum. Visitors find a wide range of national treasures on display, including the Holmegaard bow, the Trundholm Sun Chariot and the Egtved Girl coffin. Artefacts such as the Hjortspring boat, the Gundestrup cauldron and the Seikilos epitaph are also shown. The museum’s Danish pre-history section reopened in 2008 after years of renovation. A recent repatriation included a 17th-century sacred feathered cloak returned to the Tupinambá people of Brazil in 2024. The surroundings include exhibits on coins, runestones and everyday objects that bring Danish history to life.