Denmark

Soirée in the Studio (1905)

Put together this digital jigsaw puzzle last night. It was only 150 pieces so it was not too tough. Nice thing about Jigsaw Planet is you can choose the number of pieces you want, up to 300. 300 pieces can take hours. It might be a little easier with a larger screen, but we're getting distracted.

This painting was done by Laurits Tuxen, one of the Skagen Painters, so called because they hung out in Skagen, Denmark. When I look on the map for Skagen I find that it is at the end of a narrow strip of land sticking out of the top of the main peninsula. I always thought of Denmark as being vaguely shaped like the lower peninsula of Michigan, and it is, except for having this worm-like appendage sticking out of the top (and being composed of 400 odd islands).

Denmark

The red line near the bottom, above Hamburg is the Kiel Canal, "is the world's busiest man-made water- way navigable by seagoing ships. It is used by a similar number of ships as the Panama and Suez Canals."* The canal is in Germany, but it is like the natural dividing line between the continent and the peninsula, not like the actual border (the black line just above it that goes to Flensburg).

Back to our painting. The English title is "Soirée in the Studio", but the Danish version is "Aftenselskab i atelieret på Strandvejen" which Google translates as "Evening party in the studio on Strandvejen". And just where is Strandvegen? Strandvegen is the "beach road" that runs north from Copenhagen to the ferry terminal in Helsingør, a distance of about 20 miles. It's the blue line on the map. You need to zoom way in in order to get a clear view of it. It also refers to the northern section of Copenhagen where all the swells live.

The blue line started as a driving route that Google drew for me, but Google used a main road that was a bit inland so I dragged it over to the beach. Google offers the option of asking for a bicycle route, but then it also highlights ALL the bicycle routes which, as you might suspect of a country like Denmark, pretty much obliterates the map. So we'll stick with the redirected driving route.

* Quoted by Google from a PDF that was very slow to load.