With a program promising music, film, culture, knowledge, history, treasure hunting, DJs and community, Golden Days wants to celebrate Copenhagen’s 850th birthday in style.

Most of the events are free of charge as the Danish capital delves almost a millennium into its past to deliver a festival that includes well in excess of 100 arrangements – the festival’s largest ever program.

With titles such as ‘Literature and Legends’, ‘Historic Beer Tasting’, ‘Fake News in Absalon’s Footprints’, ‘Copenhagen Tweed Ride’, ‘What is Amager?’, ‘Gin and Gender’ and ‘Wake up at Carlsberg’ – which is itself turning 170 years old this autumn – what isn’t there to like?

So who is this Absalon fella? According to the – admittedly not always strictly reliable – historian Saxo Grammaticus, it is exactly 850 years since King Valdemar the Great gave the warrior-cleric Bishop Absalon the small fishing hamlet of Copenhagen. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Absalon set about fortifying the hamlet and it soon expanded into a very profitable business enterprise. The rest, as they say, is history.

The Golden Days festival will attempt to shed light on what is unique about the city by taking its “cultural historical pulse”, providing some pointers, perhaps, as to what we and the rest of the world can learn from it.

In addition to the program and very much in keeping with the spirit of the times, as a warm-up to the festival, Golden Days has launched an online Copenhagen Canon, for which residents and visitors are asked to suggest things, events or places that are atypical Copenhagen.