Jutland, the only non-island portion of Denmark, connects the country to mainland Europe. Skagen sits on its tip, Denmark’s furthest point north. Skagen is both beautiful and abrasive with pristine white sand beaches and a roaming desert called the Råbjerg Mile, the largest moving sand dune in Europe. The Råbjerg Mile was formed during the 1500s and has been inching along for centuries at a pace of 50 feet per year engulfing landmarks and infrastructure in its path. In another 100 years, it will cover the road to Skagen. This unusual place was our last Danish sojourn.

Day 6

We set out in the morning in search of Det Grå Fyr, Skagen’s famous grey lighthouse. Instead, we ended up on North Beach at one of the town’s many other lighthouses, Skagen Fyr Vest (West Lighthouse). Why the plethora of lighthouses? The Skaw Spit, a sandy underwater feature that changes with currents and weather, makes the waters around Skagen particularly dangerous and in need of a legion of lighthouses apparently. Our confusion worked out alright for us though as we found piles of captivating rocks on that beach and hit Denmark’s most northern point.

Eventually, we did make it to Det Grå Fyr. Det Grå Fyr was built in 1858 and is Denmark’s second-tallest lighthouse at 131 feet. Visitors can take 208 steps to the top where they are greeted by impressive shoreline views and gusts.

Next, we walked out to Grenen, a journey that requires about three miles of stepping round trip on a breezy beach. What is Grenen? Grenen is a sand bar north of Skagen where the North and Baltic Seas meet in a never-ending dramatic display of ramming waves and turbulent sprays. It was trippy to watch violent breakers coming from competing directions there.

The natural setting at Grenen, dominated by coastal grasses and silvery sands, is at odds with the austere relics from Nazi occupation during WWII dotting the shores, concrete bunkers. Some of these structures are now partially submerged as the sand supporting them has been leisurely crawling back to the sea over decades.

Our last outing of the day was to the Den Tilsandede Kirke (Sand-Buried Church), originally called Saint Laurence after the patron saint of sailors. The 148-foot-long and 72-foot-high structure was built between 1355 and 1387 and abandoned in 1795. Why was it abandoned? The name should give a clue. The Råbjerg Mile, that traveling mass of sand, started to submerge the building around 1600. Every week the door would have to be dug out just so worshipers could enter. Eventually, this became an unmanageable task, and Skagen’s oldest building and once largest church was forsaken and left to its gritty demise. While the structure was later largely demolished, the foundation, floor, alter, baptismal font, nine feet of the walls, and cemetery wall remain underearth along with all the cemetery’s headstones. I guess even God is beholden to nature. This discarded house of worship inspired the Hans Christian Andersen tale A Story from the Dunes.

That evening, we had a lovely dinner at Café & Restaurant Kokkenes. We laughed over childhood memories and recent vacation recollections while indulging on fish soup and orange sorbet. It was a satisfying end to our last night in Denmark.

Day 7

The next morning, we went on a rushed quest in the rain on the shores of the North Sea for lucky adder stones. Adder stones are rocks with naturally occurring holes in them. In ancient times, they were believed to be made from the hardened saliva of serpents (hence the name adder) and have magical properties. For some reason, there are a larger than normal quantity of them on the beaches around Skagen. After only a few minutes of searching, Jason got particularly good at spotting them. He found seven total and our niece located one. I found nothing. Good thing my husband believes sharing is caring.

After our hasty beach search, we departed for the Aalborg airport with a stop in the old center of the town. Though we were in a bit of a hurry, we enjoyed a walk around the Budolfi Church and the Helligåndsklostret (Aalborg Kloster), which was built in 1431. We also stopped in the Historiske Museum’s shop where we spent all our remaining kroners.

On a final Danish note, the pastries in Denmark were dependably the best we’ve had in Europe. Sorry France, you were inconsistent. Kobenhavner Tebirkes, which are comprised of a couple layers of laminated dough, a thin filling of marzipan, and a generous topping of poppy seeds were my favorite. Yum!

Amsterdam, our last destination, will be the final focus of this long-worded journey through our European exploits.

Day 3… Continued

After the lag to procure another rental car, we were all off to the island of Møn. Møn is about an hour and 45 minutes from Copenhagen. It is supposedly a popular tourist destination, but it didn’t feel like it. The island is known for its white cliffs, colorful church frescos, and Stone and Bronze Age burial chambers. We thought we’d sample a bit of all of these starting with Fanefjord Church.

On the edge of Møn, atop a lonely knoll overlooking the Baltic Sea, the island of Falster, and grazing cattle sits a petite whitewashed structure, Fanefjord Kirke. While the charming surroundings of this edifice may attract some visitors, the main pull is the bright and eccentric works of art inside the building.

Fanefjord was built in 1250. It contains a handful of frescoes dating back to around 1350. However, its most famous ones were created by the Elmelunde Master about 1500. The identity of the mysterious Elmelunde Master has been lost to history, but it likely was more than one person.

Fanefjord’s Medieval frescoes are bizarre by modern standards. Some panels highlight important points in Jesus’ life, his circumcision for example. Others portray big no-nos sure to merit hellfire and damnation like Careless Words During Service, which depicts the devil Tutivilius recording the names of women not paying attention during church. Much of the art was meant to provide a pictorial sermon for an audience that may have been largely illiterate. Other imagery was designed to imbue magical properties to keep evil from entering the church through the apertures in the vaults.

Intriguingly, the church’s frescoes were painted over during the Reformation in the 1500s and not rediscovered until 1929 when water damage at one end of the building hinted to a colorful layer under the whitewash.

After appreciating and wondering at ceilings, we went underground to Denmark’s oldest man-made stone structures. Møn was a happening place in the Stone Age. Starting around 6,000 years ago, the island was intensely farmed. Evidence for this comes from its 120 mound, passageway, and barrow burial grounds, which represent a cult of ancestry. These tombs were constructed at a rate of one per year but were made so well that little work was needed to restore most of them even after thousands of years.

We crawled inside Klekkendehøj, which dates to the Neolithic period about 4,500 years ago. Inching along its twin passageways wasn’t comfortable but curiosity won, as it usually does. King Asgers Høj, the largest gallery grave in Denmark with a passageway 32 feet long, was our next stop. This 4,000-year-old mound is located close to Sprovedyssen (Sprove Dolmen), a barrow tomb with a Stonehenge feel. These Stone Age spectacles rise randomly out of fields, surroundings probably not too unlike when they were assembled.

Stepping further back in time, we took the Graaryg Fald Trail to Møns Klint (cliff). Møn’s cliffs are the tallest in Denmark at 420 feet. Their bleached appearance comes from their high chalk content, the leavings of the prolific marine life in a shallow sea 70 million years ago. These marine deposits were crushed and folded by the glaciers of the last ice age. Eventually, when those glaciers receded, the cliffs of Møn were revealed.

We hiked about three miles through a beech forest filled with trees more than 400 years old down to the beach at the base of the cliffs. When 500 stairsteps are required each way to reach a beach, it better be glorious, right? Don’t worry, it was. The shore was pebbled with dark flint that contrasted with the lofty ashen walls. We didn’t make it too far along the coastline as it was getting dark, and the remnants of landslides made some areas more difficult to pass with the current higher tide. Instead, we returned via the same half a thousand steps we had descended. Incidentally, signs indicated landslides are a common phenomenon along these cliffs due to heavy rain and frost erosion.

Day 4

Although there was much more to see in Møn, a picturesque castle awaited us, so the next morning we didn’t linger. Our destination was Hindsgavl Slot in Middelfart, which is on the far side of the island of Funen. Our route passed through Odense, where Hans Christian Andersen was born and spent his youth. We paid homage to this imaginative and prolific writer by visiting his childhood home (HC Andersens Barndomshjem) and birthplace (HC Andersens Hus). Odense and Hans Christian Andersen carry special meaning for my family since we are direct descendants of ancestors who lived around the corner from Hans while he resided in Odense.

Hindsgavl Castle, which we reached late that afternoon, was a favorite of our entire trip. Hindsgavl stands on a peninsula of the same name. It is separated from Jutland, the peninsula that connects Denmark to the rest of Europe, by the Little Belt, a twisting straight of extraordinary beauty and concentrated mist. The current castle was built in 1784 to replace another palace, which had stood since the 1200s and was the site of a peace accord between a Norwegian and a Danish monarch before it was destroyed during the Swedish War in the 1600s.

Hindsgavl would fit perfectly in a Jane Austen novel with magnificent libraries and imposing entrance halls. As if the enchanting buildings and vast grounds weren’t enough to inspire dreams of Mr. Darcy, our dinner that night was right on brand. With berries and apples from the castle’s garden and local smoked cheese, chicken, and cured ham, our meal was as elegant as the surroundings. And yes, the boiled potatoes were excellent.

Day 5

The castle’s extensive estate features a deer park, vegetable garden, and many trails that finger out in all directions and crisscross frequently. Jason and I wanted to experience some of these, so we woke up at 6:30 to go on a walk before breakfast and our checkout. It was magical. We started on a randomly selected trail and at each intersection we took the route that seemed most likely to lead to the Little Belt. Through this method, we ended up walking along the coast as walls of fog climbed up the land like vaporous fingers intent on squeezing the tree branches. We came to a hill that looked unnaturally constructed yet seemed too large to be a burial mound. At the top we found a sign and discovered it was the remains of the medieval Hindsgavl Castle. Its once moat had narrowed to more of a ditch after almost four centuries.

After a delightful breakfast, there was more to explore. We visited the Little Belt again and found many bright starfish and pink jellyfish near the shore. When asked if she needed to go back to her room to take a shower, our niece responded, “Who needs hygiene when there are starfish.” We wandered the castle gardens and may have helped ourselves to a berry or two. Then, we climbed lookouts in the deer park. Although we were reluctant to leave Hindsgavl, we were beckoned on by a schedule and more awaiting marvels.

These marvels came in the form of Lindholm Høje and the Vikingemuseet Lindolm Høje at Aalborg. Lindholm Høje was used as a burial ground between 400 AD and 1000 AD. During those 600 years, 700 people were cremated and 41 buried there making it Denmark’s largest Iron Age and Viking burial site.

How would anyone know how many people were cremated at a site since there would be no remains remaining? Cremation pyres of that period were often surrounded by large boulders. The shape of these encirclements was dictated by the gender of the deceased. Men’s were typically triangular or ship-shaped while women’s were oval or circular.

The hefty stones strewn on this hillside aren’t the most remarkable piece of its history. About 1000 AD, a shifting sand dune covered the area so quickly that the type of plough used in an adjacent field was decipherable upon excavation. That sand kept the stones from being removed for farming over time. The burial grounds were rediscovered in 1889, but the site wasn’t excavated until 1952 to 1958. Nearby Vikingemuseet Lindolm Høje displays artifacts found at the site and summarizes what has been learned about Viking village life from those artifacts.

Later that evening, we arrived at the wild and craggy town of Skagen (pronounced skain), which will be the subject of my next segment.