Why you should experience the Children’s Museum Section at the National Museum of Denmark.
The Children’s Museum Section is where Denmark’s history becomes play, where curiosity is not only encouraged but essential.
Step inside, and the atmosphere changes instantly: gone are the solemn galleries and glass cases, replaced by a world that hums with laughter, imagination, and the sound of discovery. Here, the past is meant to be touched, climbed, and lived. Children can dress in Viking tunics, hoist wooden swords, and steer a replica longship across a painted sea. They can grind grain into flour like Iron Age farmers, trade in a bustling medieval marketplace, or sit inside a reconstructed 1940s classroom with wooden desks and chalk-streaked slates. Every exhibit is tactile, every story experiential. What makes it remarkable isn’t just the interactivity, but the depth behind it, the subtle way play translates complex history into wonder. The Children’s Museum doesn’t simplify the past; it makes it real, allowing young minds to see themselves as part of Denmark’s ongoing story.
What you didn’t know about the Children’s Museum Section.
The Children’s Museum Section is one of the oldest and most innovative of its kind in Europe.
It opened in 1994 as a groundbreaking experiment, a museum within a museum, built on the idea that history should be experienced, not observed. Designed in collaboration with child psychologists, educators, and historians, the exhibits were created to activate multiple senses simultaneously: touch, sound, smell, and motion. Many of the installations use authentic materials, real wool, timber, and bronze, sourced through archaeological methods to ensure accuracy. Few visitors realize that some objects here are original artifacts repurposed from Denmark’s rural schools and homes, offering children a direct connection to the objects’ lived history. The Viking ship replica, for instance, is modeled after fragments found near Roskilde, its dimensions identical to a real longboat. The section also includes a small theater space where actors reenact folk tales and Norse myths, letting children participate in storytelling through costume and roleplay. The design philosophy is rooted in the Danish educational principle of learning through doing, transforming museum exploration into memory-making.
How to fold the Children’s Museum Section into your trip.
Visiting the Children’s Museum Section is an experience best shared, not just for children, but for the childlike wonder in everyone.
Plan your visit during the morning hours, when workshops and interactive sessions are most active. Start with the Viking area, where little explorers can don armor, build wooden fortresses, and navigate maps of ancient trade routes. Then wander into the “Everyday Life” rooms, a series of recreations from Denmark’s past centuries, where families can bake bread in clay ovens or play traditional village games. Allow time for the storytelling sessions, often held mid-afternoon, when costumed guides bring ancient legends to life under soft lantern light. Parents can relax in the adjacent café, designed with wide glass walls overlooking the play area, ensuring kids can roam freely while adults unwind. Before leaving, stop by the creative workshop, where children can craft small keepsakes using natural materials, learning the same skills that once sustained early Danish communities. When you step back into the museum’s main halls, the energy shifts, quieter, older, but something lingers: a reminder that history, when experienced with open hands and open hearts, never truly grows old.
Hear it from the Foresyte community.
You don’t come here to memorize dates. You come here to wander, get lost, and maybe imagine what you’d look like in a crown. It’s spectacle worth every minute.
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