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DENMARK 2007 - East~North Jutland |
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The westerly wind blows constantly across Jutland from the cold North Sea, always brisk, often in gusty gales; with the highest point of land being little over 300 feet, there's nothing really to stop it.
Moving
north to Silkeborg, the town's museum displays an impressive collection
illustrating local history from prehistoric to medieval times, but pride
of place goes to one of the most macabre finds of our travels: the
corpse of a 350 BC Iron Age man recovered from a nearby peat bog,
Tollund Man. The
Migrating
sand
dunes,
driven from time immemorial by the ever-blowing westerly wind, have
constantly
changed the topography of the landscape and coastline of As we begin the final stages of our Denmark trip, it was to be downhill all the way now. But that's for next week. Join us again shortly for our continuing journey around the wild wind-blown shores of Western Jutland. Sheila and Paul Published: Monday 5 November
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WEEKS
6~7 NEWS - EAST & NORTH JUTLAND:
On a bleak and blustery day,
we re-crossed the Store Bælt and island
of Funen, and the Lille Bælt Bridge loomed
mistily ahead; so began our 5
week circuit of Jutland. The small town of Tørring with its welcoming
campsite on the banks of the upper Gudenå River, was our base for
visiting Jelling, another place of spiritual significance for the Danes.
It was here that in the mid 10th century AD, on a site of ceremonial
importance stretching back into the seeds of time, King Harold Bluetooth
chose to establish memorials to his father, Gorm the Old regarded as the
founder of the royal line from whom 1000 years of successive Danish
monarchs are descended. Harold set up a large memorial stone and the
runic inscription reads: King Harold ordered this monument to
be made in memory of Gorm his father and Thyra his mother. It was this
Harold who won all Denmark and Norway,
and made the Danes Christian. This noble stone (Photo
1) still stands at Jelling, revered as Denmark's 'baptismal
certificate' marking Harold's
unification of the kingdom as a
Christianised state. Gorm had originally been buried in a large funeral
mound in the Norse pagan tradition, but as part
of the political statement of the conversion to Christianity, Harold
built a church at Jelling as a mausoleum for his father's Christian
re-burial. The successor stone church built around 1100, still stands
with Harold's rune stone stood alongside, in the shadow of the 2 royal
burial mounds. The nearby Museum explains the complex history of the
Jelling memorials and their significance in Denmark's transition from
Viking tribal society to royal-led Christianised statehood. Even more
admirable was the manner in which the Danes chose to celebrate the Year
2000 Millennium:
Jelling church was renovated and the founding ruler's
remains re-interred in the church which his son Harold Bluetooth, the
first Christianised Danish monarch, had built at the time of the first
Millennium. We stood in silent respect at this mystical site where with
such dignified solemnity the Danes had celebrated the 2000 Millennium
and 1000 years of Christianised statehood.
With cool
misty mornings, mellow sunny days and chill dewy nights, we camped at
Holmens Camping near to By
in the Danish Lake District. The River Gudenå, now fuller flowing than
at our earlier encounter, winds around low hills through a series of
peaceful lakes, the trees now cloaked in their golden autumn colours. It
was an inspirational time of year to be out walking.
body is that of a 30 year old male, wearing only a leather cap; he had
been throttled by a leather thong which still remained around his neck,
and placed in the peat bog as a sacrifice to the deities of such
fearsomely mysterious places revered as a source of fuel and iron ore.
The acids of the peaty water had preserved the corpse almost intact,
tanning the skin waxy black and the hair a ruddy brown. If this reads
like an autopsy report, that's exactly how it felt, gazing with ghoulish
fascination at a 2,300 year old body (Photo 2). This was not the
stuff for the squeamish: the flesh was shrunken, hands and feet
remarkably preserved and features clearly discernible with even stubble
on his chin. Despite his horrific ordeal, Tollund Man had a certain
timeless serenity. Another similarly preserved 'bog body' of an Iron Age
ritual sacrifice victim, Garuballe Man, was displayed at the Moesgård
Museum near to Århus, along with a wealth of other exhibits showing
stages of human development during prehistoric and Viking times in this
region of East Jutland.
Despite
being Denmark's second city, but memorable only for its impressive cathedral, a
Viking museum in the basement of a bank and a heartily good value biksemad lunch, Århus seemed an over-promoted, under-whelming disappointment; better to continue around the bypass towards the Djursland
peninsula with its rolling hills
and
deserted beaches. The main town of Ebeltoft is a modest
gem with cobbled
streets and brightly painted houses, and the harbour is now home to one
of Denmark's naval treasures, the Frigate Jylland (Photo 3).
Launched in 1862, this flagship of the Danish navy stood at the
transition of maritime technology from sail to steam power, the last of
the great wooden warships. It became a symbol of Danish national pride
at a time when such sentiment was in short supply, having scored a
decisive naval victory off Helgoland as German armies invaded Jutland in
1864. It had later served as royal yacht for Christian IX, and now
stands proudly at Ebeltoft harbour, degraded to the status of 'tourist
attraction'. We clambered around the decks, rigging and cannons of the
Jylland, admiring the vessel's scale but horrified at the
condition in which sailors had lived and died. Ebeltoft Strand Camping
was both welcoming and provided a memorable beach-side location for our camp,
with a flaring sunset across the bleak grey waters of the bay (Photo
4). And to conclude our time in Djursland, we spent a golden autumn
day among the hills of Mols Bjerge, and around the coast of Helgenaes,
looking across to Fyns Hoved where we had camped 4 weeks ago; in
Denmark, you are never far from anywhere, with sudden views across water
of the most unexpected places.
Continuing
north, we were welcomed hospitably at Fladbro Camping near Randers, and
camped on a high wooded plateau overlooking a tributary of the Gudenå
river. The view from this memorable location was stunning, as was the
flaring autumn sun-rise the following morning across the mist-filled
valley. From here we visited another of Harold Bluetooth's Viking
ring-fortresses, Fyrkat near the small town of Hobro at the head of the
Mariager Fjord. Like 
We paused
on our northward progression for a day's walking in the peaceful hilly
heath-land of Rebild Bakker where forest trees glowed golden despite the
autumn gloom. Aalborg, another large city and commanding a crossing of
Limfjorden, had little to commend it other than its much-hyped nightlife.
A far more dignified reason to pause briefly here was
to visit a remarkable historical site on the city's northern outskirts. Lindholm Høje
was a late Iron Age/Viking farming settlement
occupied for some 600 years from 400~1000 AD; preserved under the
shifting sands that had progressively covered the hillside are some 600
burial sites with their grave marker stones, many in the shape of
a ship's outline which had enclosed the funeral pyre and symbolised the
deceased's journey to the afterlife. The museum was one of
the best we had seen, with displays (commentaries in English
translation) detailing Viking society, life-style, farming and
seafaring, and burial traditions. Here was a worthy tribute to Aalborg's
Viking roots, throwing an entirely different light on the conventional image of
Viking warriors; Lindholm Høje really is worth a visit.
Skagen
(pronounced Skein) is Denmark's most northerly region, and
despite its apparent remoteness, is a popular holiday destination during
summer months. In early October however, most of the campsites are long
closed
and the nearest was 30 kms distant at Sindal village: Soldalens Camping
was a jewel - small, welcoming and peaceful. The entire peninsula of Skagen, extensive heath-covered dunes and woodland planted in the 19th
century in an attempt to stabilise the shifting sands, culminates in a
sandbar gracefully curving out to the point where two seas meet, the Skagerrrak on the North Sea side and the Kattegat on the Baltic; this is
Grenen, Denmark's most northerly tip. Even on a sunny windless day, the powerful
currents as the 2 opposing tides converged produced a compelling
spectacle of
upward surging fountains of spray (Photo
5). What would it be like in a fiercesome winter storm? Standing
here on this narrowing strip of wet sand, Denmark's northern tip, we
could gaze out at a 270° sweep of horizon filled with shipping. Skagen
town is a purposefully busy fishing harbour, one of Denmark's largest,
where the dockside is lined with delightful (and expensive) fish
restaurants and fish smoke-houses (røgeri og fiskehus) where you can buy
the most delicious smoked and fresh fish. Visit the 
conditions of Skagen fishermen.
Skagen. Plantations were established to stabilise the migrating dunes
and prevent the sands from engulfing farmland and properties; even a
church was buried by the shifting sands at Tilsandede Kirke. At
Sandmilen, you can witness the final eastward advance of the migrating
dunes as the endless sand, despite the covering of heath and marram
grass, approaches the Kattegat; it's a chilling sight. Over on the
Skagerrak side of the peninsula, an area of dunes has been left in its
bare natural unstabilised state at
Råbjerg Mile (Photo
6). Here the powerful forces of nature continue to drive the dunes
eastward across the peninsula;
at
the present rate of 15m a year, they should reach
the Kattegat coast by
2050 to blow out into the sea. This sloping
barren wasteland of sand was a mesmerising sight, with tongues
of wind-blown sand visibly moving forwards over the nearby heath-land.
The wild coastline stretches for miles along this deserted shore (Photo
7), and from the coastal dunes above, we witnessed a wonderful
glowing sunset across the Skagerrak (Photo
8). Denmark was surpassing our other trips in terms of sensational
natural phenomena and sights.
