Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek is famous for its collection of antiquities: Egyptian carvings, Greek statues and Roman sculpture form the heart of its collection. Indeed, its collection of Roman portrait busts are among the finest in the world. But the 19^th century also has a strong sculptural presence. The double-bust of the founder of the museum Carl Jacobsen and his by then dead wife, Otillia – her ghostly arm placed protectively on his shoulder as she hovers behind him – might well be the most disconcerting.

It’s more pulse-quickening than a visit from Denmark’s actual prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt. This weekend Sidse Babett Knudsen, Borgen’s Statsminister Birgitte Nyborg, arrives in London to open Nordicana, an event dedicated to the ever-increasing amount of Scandinavian exports seen on our TVs. She will also be interviewed and take questions from the audience. Who needs real PMQs?

The last two years have seen the Tiger Lillies hit a prolific peak of activity, to be found as often on the theatrical as the concert stage, drawing on plenty of influences from outside the UK to boot.

“Are you thirsty? I’ve got water and beer.” The car’s trunk is opened to reveal a picnic-style plastic cooler. But this is a taxi, so in goes the case. “If you’re hungry, I’ve got liquorice.” It’s unusual hospitality, not what’s expected from a taxi driver. Even one this young, hip and, well, blonde and classically Nordic looking. It was a fine, if surprising, welcome to Denmark and smoothed the departure from Billund airport, a functional facility adjacent to the original Legoland, one of Scandinavia’s top tourist draws.

Tales of pirate drama on the high seas have come a long, unpleasant way since Errol Flynn. Borgen and The Hunt co-writer Tobias Lindholm’s debut as solo writer-director explores the human factor behind Somali pirate headlines, with the cool grip Nordic drama fans now expect.

Continuing its voyage through Scandinavia’s music, theartsdesk opens the latest chapter in Norway with Still Life With Eggplant, the 16th album from Trondheim’s prolific, long-lived, occasionally challenging and always vital Motorpsycho.

Bach: Cantatas for Ascension Day The Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists/John Eliot Gardiner (SDG)

Yok is a fine Turkish word meaning “there isn’t any”. You use it for “no”, as in, say - is Midnight Express any good? Yok.

Thomas Vinterberg made his name with Festen’s queasy social discomfort, but has struggled to match his Danish compatriot and Dogme 95 co-founder Lars von Trier’s iconoclastic career. The Hunt’s stomach-knotting intensity as an innocent man is accused of paedophilia restores him to the front rank.

Orchestral volcanoes were erupting all over Europe around the year 1915. It was courageous enough to make a mountain chain out of three of them in a single concert. I was less prepared for the white-heat focus applied by that stalwart Dane Thomas Dausgaard, and completely flummoxed when he and Jian Wang, a cellist with the biggest yet most streamlined sound I’ve ever heard, made total sense of the only overblown monster on the programme, Bloch’s "Hebraic Rhapsody" Schelomo.