On the streets of Copenhagen, the sound of drums boomed from the square and a blur of red and white flags came into view. People on cherrypickers tidied up buildings and staff at a department store replaced sales flags with the national one.
The arrival of a single police car, parked in the middle of the road, stopped traffic. Minutes later, the square filled with the sound of horses’ hooves on cobbles as riders arrived carrying brass instruments and silver swords followed by an empty carriage pulled by six horses. It was the rehearsal on Friday for the once-in-a-generation event set to unfold in little more than 48 hours: the formal abdication of Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II.
Though preparations were under way in the capital, the coronation of the queen’s son, Crown Prince Frederik, will be understated – particularly in comparison to that of King Charles. In Denmark, there will be no jewel-encrusted crowns, golden coaches or fur robes. As has been the case since the introduction of the constitution in 1849, there will not even be a ceremony.
Instead, after a procession by Frederik and his wife, Mary, followed by the queen, to Christiansborg Palace, the proclamation will be delivered by the prime minister. At 3pm, Mette Frederiksen will appear on the balcony of the palace, the home of the Danish parliament, to announce the new monarch.
This comparative modesty does not appear to indicate a lack of adoration or enthusiasm from the public.
On Sunday – two weeks after the queen’s surprise New Year’s Eve announcement that she planned to step down after 52 years on the throne – the city is expected to be packed.
Despite the short notice, many hotels and restaurants are fully booked, and coach-loads of people are expected to arrive from across the country and the world to say goodbye to the popular queen.
Rikke Holm Petersen, a spokesperson for the tourist organisation Wonderful Copenhagen, said: “Right after Her Majesty the Queen announced in her new year’s address that she will step down as queen of Denmark on 14 January, people started booking hotels in Copenhagen for the weekend of the royal succession.”
At Bistro Royal, on the corner of Kongens Nytorv, where the procession will pass on Sunday, they had to recruit more staff for what is usually a quiet January weekend.
The assistant manager, Lasse Rigtrup, who was putting up the day’s menu outside, said he expected the restaurant and the area to be full of people wanting to get a glimpse of the royals.
“They’re going to come around the corner here,” he said, pointing to the road. “So we’re going to have guests who want to be by the window but we’re also going to do something outside.”
The 31-year-old said he was excited about the new king, who “has a lot of modern values”.
“It’s something that hasn’t happened in my lifetime so it’s going to be very special for a lot of people.”
Rigtrup was working on the night of the queen’s abdication announcement and watched as guests started getting the news on their phones. “It was literally like a bomb exploding in people’s minds.”
While not royalists, Anita Laugesen, 41, and Casper Grønbelh, 45, could not disguise their enthusiasm for the royal family as they pushed their bicycles past. The couple said they would not not be marking Sunday with anything special, and did not know anybody who was, but they would watch it on television.
Laugesen, a bank worker, said: “I would say most people feel the same as us. They [the royal family] are doing a good job and there’s nothing to not like.”
Looking up at a stage with a backdrop of the queen’s smiling face and the words “Danmarks dronning den største tak” (Queen of Denmark, the biggest thank you), Masoumeh Mirzaei, 27, said she felt emotional about the queen standing down. “It’s not my country, I’m from Afghanistan, I’ve been in Denmark about five years,” the student said. “Somehow I feel she is also my queen. She’s the best.”
But at a low-lit student cafe in town, a group of Roskilde University humanities students working on their laptops were not so convinced of the royal family’s cache.
“For me it feels so very irrelevant,” said Sigga Slente, 23. “I know there are arguments about being good for tourism and the economy, but for me it feels so old-school that some people are chosen to be rich.”
Andreas Grønnebæk, 23, agreed. “I’m an anarchist and I’m very anti-monarchy because they represent a repressive and colonial time in Danish history and I don’t think we should be celebrating that.”
Ravin Gomei, 19, said that while the royal family were funded by the taxpayer, “the rest of society has to find a way to survive”.
The Danish royal household is understood to have received more than 120 million Danish kroner (£13.8m) of taxpayers’ money last year. In Britain, the sovereign grant for 2022-23 was £86.3m.
The Danish government is in the process of finalising a new law, which under the constitution is required on the arrival of a new monarch, to allocate royal finances. It has already estimated the family will need more money.
Denmark’s finance minister, Nicolai Wammen, a Social Democrat, said on Friday that the royal family must be “modern and future-proof” but that they must have enough funding to do their work and the government was “fully committed” to this.
The government was also considering taking on a stronger role in the maintenance and modernisation of the royal castles, he said.
