It’s a funny time of year when the weather can’t seem to make up its mind whether it’s the end of winter or the beginning of spring. The first brave little flowers and buds appear only to bend their heads to rain, cold and wind. Fortunately, with these grey days comes one of my favorite things: fog.

Scott and I recently spent a few days in Copenhagen where the white, heavy mist made the city seem like a gorgeous, eerie dream. The weird effect that fog has on sound only reinforced this impression: close-by noises were dampened so that they seemed very far away, while distant sounds were strangely amplified. The tapping of my boot heels on cobblestones and the soft, solemn lapping of water on the ancient seawall were swallowed whole in the haze, while ships’ bells clanging and rigging clanking out in the harbor sounded close enough to touch. It was like walking in a Hans Christian Andersen version of Silent Hill. In other words: fantastic.

As much as I love a foggy day, and despite having a Vancouverite’s tolerance for gloom, I was apprehensive about the prospect of all-day darkness when we first arrived in Sweden. I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find that some of the loveliest Scandinavian customs are inspired by the sunless days I’d so dreaded. Candles burn day and night in restaurants and hotel lobbies. Lanterns flicker outside the doors of shops and houses, while windows twinkle with lights all through the evening. In Copenhagen in particular, there are lanterns and lamps almost everywhere you look.   

Other ways to rage against the dying of the light include painting buildings in cheerful egg tempera-like colors.

Or, if it’s the cold that bothers you most, you can drape yourself in fur from head to toe. Copenhagen is well known for its fur, and there are animal hide coats, hats, capes, and blankets absolutely everywhere. One morning, I saw Cruella DeVille brought to life in a full-length black-spotted white rabbit-fur coat, sporting a perfect platinum bob, red lipstick and deep frown lines.

Though fur really isn’t my thing, I can see how it would be a good defense against the insidious, wet cold of a coastal Danish winter. How else could you enjoy a Carlsberg on the patio in March?

Far lovelier to me than the ubiquitous pelts were the nautical and military influences that dominate Copenhagen’s art and architecture. The old city is heavily fortified with stone and earthworks, and even its churches have sailing ships and cannons carved in bas-relief into their walls. This makes sense when you consider that the city has spent nine hundred years alternately trading with and being attacked by its neighbors.

We stayed at the Admiral Hotel, a lovely old place that looked like a fort on the outside and a ship on the inside. There were nautical features everywhere in the building, and even the wall in our room had plaster marks where an oval-shaped hatch used to be. Coming into our room late in the evening and seeing this patch job, I thoughtlessly wondered aloud whether the building might be a converted ship. Definitely not my finest moment, though wine and jet lag share some of the blame for this spectacular foolishness. Scott looked at me incredulously before breaking out in a wide grin and saying in his best pirate voice, “Arrr, old bricky. Why’d she sink?”

The hotel was, of course, not a converted ship. Rather, it started life in the 18th century as a warehouse on the harbor, which gave it a front row seat to a string of British attacks during the Napoleonic Wars. It’s amazing to me that despite centuries of friendly and unfriendly exchange with all of Northern Europe, Copenhagen’s culture remains so distinctly its own. For all its bitterly cold weather, the friendly people and places make it one of the warmest cities I’ve had the pleasure of visiting.

I’m glad I got the opportunity to see Copenhagen beneath its beautiful wet blanket of fog. As we head into spring, I’ll no doubt be back to explore the vintage fairgrounds at Tivoli, or to partake in the local custom of finding a perfect seaside bench for brownbagging it on a warm night. Meanwhile, I’ll just have to make like those early flowers and turn up my collar to the wind, knowing that the sun will return soon. Copenhagen’s graffiti says it, and I believe it.