The Sleepy Little Town Of Dragor Gives You A Taste Of Danish Hygge

The sleepy little town of Dragør may be within touching distance from Denmark’s capital, but it has largely escaped the tourist eye. Until now.

- Inayat Naomi Ramdas

It's a typical Danish summer day— cold, rainy, and windy. A small shoreside village of warriors is abuzz with activity as a few men and women prepare to set sail aboard their famed longboats across the Øresund in search of new horizons— perhaps even to wage a war on an unsuspecting settlement—chanting songs and calling to the gods.

I am sitting on the edge of a harbour, eating ice cream and watching the waves crash against the boats, feeling the cold wind tear through the summer air. This Viking scene plays out in my brain. Is it because of the documentary series on the Norsemen that I had finished watching just before this trip to Scandinavia?

I am not even sure if the Vikings were based here at all, but I’d like to think they were. As far as I know, Dragør doesn’t have a bloody Norse history usually associated with it. In fact, it might have been an ordinary and peaceful, albeit stinky, fishing village. It’s my last day in Denmark, and I am at the point of dropping dead, but there’s still a little more magic left to be experienced in this sleepy little town, a bus ride from the Danish capital, Copenhagen.

A DANISH SECRET

After a long afternoon in Copenhagen, our charismatic Danish guide Lasse said that he would reveal to us a secret that most visitors didn’t know. Sure enough, this small village hardly features on the popular guidebooks. On the tip of the island of Amager, just south of Copenhagen’s Kastrup airport, lies the town of Dragør. As our bus rolled in, it was hard to think that there was anything exceptional about it. At first sight, it looked like any other European town with little houses and small cars. Boy, was I mistaken!

AN ANDERSEN FAIRY TALE