Gammel Strand

This guide to Gammel Strand in Copenhagen follows the Skovserkoner, fishwives who walked in from Skovshoved before dawn for three centuries to sell the morning's catch on this quay, layering newspaper under their aprons against the cold. It traces the market's run from the sixteen hundreds to 1958, and the granite statue the city commissioned in 1940 to keep one of these women from vanishing from memory. The townhouse at number forty-eight, dating to around 1750, is one of the few buildings here to survive Copenhagen's great fire.