DRAGØR

E20, 8 km south of exit 18

No sooner have we crossed the Öresund bridge than we are welcomed into the “lille, smukke Dragør”, the pretty little Dragør, with its Danish bonhomie and its narrow cobbled streets.

The village is characterized by squat little houses with decorative, colourful hollyhocks gracing the front doors. You almost sense a Dutch influence in this type of architecture and quite right too. In 1521 a large part of the island of Amager was inhabited by gardeners from Holland. They cultivated the island and imprinted their own manners and customs on it, as is shown in the Amager museum in the neighbouring village Stora Magleby. Here you can also get an idea of what it must have been like to live and work on a Danish farm at the beginning of the 20th century. Other nationalities came to Dragør to live, such as disaffected Scanians from the south of Sweden, who sided with the Danes when Skåne became Swedish in 1658.

SMALL TOWN IDYLL

Dragør still has an atmosphere of the turn of the last century and it is a sheer pleasure to walk among the houses of yellow limewash and peep into the little gardens behind those flower decked wooden fences. Here anything seems to be going on just as usual and the peace and calm is only disturbed by happy exclamations from the tourists: “Oh, look how cute, did you ever see such a pretty little house, I’d love to live there!” And I could think of worse places to live than a sweet little house with a garden and a tower on the roof with a view over the sea, and all this at just a stone’s throw from Copenhagen!

LUCRATIVE HERRING TRADE

Picture, if you will, another era, like the Middle Ages, when herring fishing and seafaring played a very important part in Öresund. All around the Dragør harbour there would be upwards of 7,000 boats and in streets and market squares trade was flourishing.

Gammel Kro was as tempting then as it is now, serving good food from its strategic position in the harbour, in the pitch house tar was boiling and from the harbour smithy the booming of hammer beats could be heard for miles around. Fishermen and coast pilots were busy in the harbour while the sailors’ widows and old salts were observing it all from their “kikkenborge”, the little rooftop viewing towers.

Today it is the tourists who are thronging the harbour and stroll around the lanes or walk along the splendid beach promenade with a view across to the Öresund bridge. The shop windows along Kongevejen with their “special offers” try to tempt those of us who want to stuff our suitcase with souvenirs. To this day, pubs and inns of ancient lineage keep their doors open to keen guests and the menu, needless to say, consists of every variation on the herring theme.

Modern times have caught up with most things and Dragør’s position right between Kastrup Airport and the new Öresund bridge might have contaminated this idyll. But both these modernities are just a little bit too far away for them to be of any nuisance or spoil your good night’s sleep. Spending the night here is actually not a bad idea.

A stoll through the old town of DragØr