Lars lives fifteen meters from his workshop in Den Gamle By

Meet Lars, who keeps the craft alive between the old houses

Wooden spoons hang on the wall in the living room. Some are dark from years of use, others lighter, and together they tell the story of a person who has spent most of his life with wood in his hands.

A red Dala horse stands on a small shelf, and Lars sits in front of me in his worn apron. There are only about fifteen meters between his home and the workshop where he works in Den Gamle By.

While most visitors leave the museum when the gates close, Lars stays. He is the only employee who lives inside the Old Town, and when he goes to work in the morning, it is not by car, bike or bus. He opens his door, steps out onto the cobblestones and continues to the workshop, where wood shavings lie on the floor and where you are greeted with the smell of wood.

But the story of Lars doesn't begin with his home. It begins with a wooden horse.

When he looked for work in 1998, The game by As a newly qualified crafts teacher, he just walked in from the street and asked if they could use him for anything. He had a bag of wooden things that he had made himself, and hoped that someone would see the possibilities in what he could do.

The next day the phone rang. It was Den Gamle By, who wanted to make two wooden horses for a Christmas exhibition.

It sounded like good news at first glance, but there was just one problem: Lars had never made a wooden horse before.

So he called his old master teacher and asked how to actually make a horse when you've never tried it before. The answer was simple and almost annoyingly clever.

You take a piece of wood and remove everything that isn't a horse. So that's what Lars did.

The horse became so good that more assignments came. First a sign, then carvings and over time more projects came. And slowly the work grew into Den Gamle By, until Lars became part of the place in a way that is not just about employment, working hours and contracts, but about belonging.

One of the horses still stands in the workshop among wood shavings and old tools. It doesn't take up much space, but without it, Lars might never have been here today.

He bought his own planer

Today it seems natural that you can encounter living craftsmanship in Den Gamle By, but when Lars started 28 years ago, it wasn't as natural as it seems. He was given assignments to make things for the museum, but it was his own idea to stand out and show the craftsmanship to the guests.

He asked if he could have a room where he could stand and work, and since the museum didn't have a planer, he bought one with his own money. And that really says a lot about Lars.

He believed so much that the guests would benefit from seeing a craft being made that he didn't wait for everything to be perfectly organized. He got started, stood up and let the guests follow the work closely.

For Lars, craftsmanship is not just something you look at. Craftsmanship is something that needs to be experienced and felt with your fingers.

When children come into the workshop and their parents automatically say that they are not allowed to touch anything, Lars can easily say the opposite. In here, they are welcome to touch and look with their fingers.

It may be a small thing, but in a museum where many objects naturally need to be looked after, it means something that there is also a room where children and adults can feel the wood, tools and materials up close.

The planer that got new life

Some of the best things about Lars' story are not about himself, but about an old plane.

When he had to set up the workshop, he couldn't use the old museum objects that were already there, because they had museum numbers and were not allowed to be worn out any further. So he had to find other old tools that could be used.

In an attic in Den Gamle By, he found two planes, which he took down and began using in the workshop.

Later, an elderly couple came by. The woman said that she had donated her father's old tools to the museum, and when she saw one of the planes, she recognized it immediately.

It was her father's and she was so happy to have it in her hands again and to use it for what it was made for. Since then, she has come by once a year to see her father's old plane in use.

When the guests go home

When Den Gamle By closes for the day, the place changes character. The busy sounds disappear, and the houses take on a different calm. Lars makes his rounds between the old buildings, partly because he lives there, and partly because he helps keep an eye out.

He often meets people walking after hours. The Old Town is also a popular place for first dates, and Lars often meets couples sitting on a bench, trying to figure out if there's any chemistry. He usually walks past them quietly.

Other times he meets people who want to talk.

One evening he met a man walking around alone and looking in through the windows. Lars asked if it was his first time there, but the man said he had been there before and that evening he was just waiting for his daughter to finish for a concert at Tivoli Friheden.

They got into a conversation, the man joined Lars' evening round, and at one point Lars asked if he wanted to come home for a cup of coffee while he waited for the concert to end.

Shortly after, the daughter wrote that she would like to be picked up. The man sent back pictures of Lars' living room and wrote that he would like to have a cup of coffee first.

It's hard not to think about who really had the best story to take home that night.

The daughter from the concert in Friheden. Or the father who had evening coffee with the man who lives in Den Gamle By.

Never free or always at home

Many people have asked Lars if it's not strange to never really have time off. When you live at your workplace, you can never really close the door and say the day is over.

But Lars sees it differently. Because he doesn't feel like he never has time off, he feels like he's always at home.

That's perhaps the sentence that best explains him.

Because for Lars, work is not something that lies next to life. It is woven into it. Not in a stressed way, where everything is about performance, but in the way where you have found a place where you belong.

He spends his vacation learning new crafts. He takes a course to learn how to tie brushes because Den Gamle By is opening a brush tie shop. He becomes curious because the craft calls, and because he wants to be able to pass it on to his guests.

The Old Town with people in it

Lars is not just the man who lives in Den Gamle By. He is one of the people who makes the place feel alive.

Because while many of us spend time finding the balance between work and leisure, Lars has found something completely different.

He has found a life where home is fifteen meters from the workshop, where the cobblestones are part of everyday life, and where an old wooden horse still stands as the beginning of it all.

The story is based on a longer interview with Lars Laursen and a visit to his home and workshop in Den Gamle By.

Lars is just one of the many stories you can experience in Den Gamle By. In our guide to the Old Town you will find more articles, experiences and current events.