He might not be as famous as Hans Christian Anderson or Hamlet, but if you’re going to talk about important Danes you can’t ignore Ole Kirk Christiansen. A carpenter from Billund, Christiansen began making wooden toys in 1932, naming his company Lego (from the Danish “leg godt” which means “play well”) in 1934. Lego began producing plastic toys in 1947, and by 1949 were making early versions of their now famous Lego blocks under the much less appealing name “Automatic Binding Bricks”.
Like every kid ever, I loved Lego, and like every adult ever I’d probably still play with it instead of doing boring adult things if I had the choice. So when I moved to within an hour or so of Billund, I was super excited. I finally went for a day trip to Legoland on a very sunny Saturday with a bunch my friends from my Danish language class, and I wasn’t disappointed. My dad took me to the Legoland in Winsdor when I was a child, and I didn’t think I remembered much about it, but once I was in Billund tonnes of memories flooded back, and I was almost expecting to turn around and see him sat on the seat behind me while I was on the log flume ride – which I am convinced is identical to the one that was in Windsor over ten years ago. I’m not sure if it was the weird deja-vu or just the fact I was surrounded by Lego, but I felt like a giddy 7 year old, and I defiantly to enjoyed playing at the Lego stations while queuing up for rides and trying to decide which Lego castle I’d live in if I was a Lego princess a little bit more than a 21 year old should do. It was a great day though.
Sorry for the photo dump – I’m coming into exam time (I do some work on my study abroad, I swear!), so I didn’t have time to write too much, but I couldn’t make my mind up on which photos to pick so I just used them all. 😉
Stay Safe.
Sarah Middlemiss 