Day Trip to Hven

I tend to like experience gift-giving if I can, and fortunately Morten does to. For his birthday I took him for a yummy Ethiopian meal and gave him a coupon for a day trip to Hven a small island between Denmark and Sweden. The island is actually Swedish (they spell it Ven) but there is frequent ferry service from Copenhagen to the island. The ferry ride is about 90 minutes. Here is a view of the harbor from the ferry.












A common thing to do in Hven (pronounced vein) is to rent a bike and tour around the island. Since we have nicer bikes than the rentals we brought our bikes on the ferry. The island is pretty small so a day-trip is sufficient to explore it. There are only about 370 year round inhabitants on the 7.5 square km island. Most Danes and Swedes know Hven as the island where astronomist (and alchemist) Tycho Brahe built his Uraniborg observatory in the 1500s. His assistant was Johannes Kepler - recognize that name?

At that time the island was Danish and give to Brahe to use by the Danish king. The island became part of Sweden when Denmark lost it (along with the rest of Skane/Scania region of now Southern Sweden) in the Treaty of Roskilde in 1658.

Here is a nice view of a traditional house and fields that we saw on our bike ride.












Of course I must include a funny photo as well. I interpret the below photo to mean that in Sweden people are required to Grunt before diving into the water....














We got lunch on the opposite side of the island, unfortunately I only had 120 Swedish kroner so it was a small lunch, but the view was quite nice :-). I like this pic because in it you can see flags from Denmark, France, Norway, and Germany on the boats.