Luxury Vacations in Denmark

Where do the Danish go for homegrown holidays? To the Baltic island of Bornholm, a rootsy world of rustling beech forests, red-roofed fishing villages and white sands.

In the 19th century, its natural light drew artists and writers. Now its ingredients – wild strawberries, marrows and figs, the smoked fish that hangs outside every home – feed local restaurants and draw chefs from the mainland. It’s been 20 years since the New Nordic Food movement began gathering up foraged produce from Denmark’s woods and meadows and fermenting it into a new culinary language. Sparked by René Redzepi’s Noma, Copenhagen’s restaurants have become destinations in their own right, but this light-footed city has plenty to do between meals, from the fairy-lit grottoes of the Tivoli Gardens to the newly reborn, cocktail-juggling Carlsberg District. In the Nyhavn district, fishing-boat masts jut against picture-book gabled houses and solar-powered boats putter down canals. Denmark is a progressive, breathe-in-deep destination for curious travellers, with wild landscapes unchanged since Viking times, pretty towns such as Aarhus to uncover, and hotels that act as showcases for covetable contemporary design. An all-round Scandi classic.