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.
The Gray Lighthouse has been warning ships away from Skagen’s turbulent shores since 1858 and is still active.
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.
It was odd to find the vestiges of Nazi aggression on a quiet beach.
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.
Grasses and shrubs pepper the expanses of sand on Skagen’s beaches.
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.
At Grenen, waves collide from opposite directions.Although the Germans built their bunkers to withstand, many have slowly been succumbing to sea and sand.
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.
The whitewashed tower of the Sand-Buried Church is all that remains above ground.
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.
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.
Evil doers are identifiable in the Fanefjord frescoes by their short statures, open mouths, crooked noses, red hair, or faces shown in profile.
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.
The Fanefjord Kirke isn’t located at the center of a town, like most churches, but on a solitary hill leading to legends of trolls moving the church every night during its construction.
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.
Klekkendehøj is a twin-passage tomb with two long connected stone entrances. The terrace around the mound served an unknown purpose.
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.
Sprove Dolmen sits just 500 feet from King Asgers Høj.
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.
Møn was designated a biosphere reserve in 2017 by UNESCO.
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.
Hans Christian Andersen spent his childhood years in this home down the street from some of my ancestors.
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.
Since it was built in 1784, Hindsgavl’s neoclassical design could be mistaken for Pemberley or Mansfield Park.Hindsgavl Castle was revitalized in 2003.
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.
Morning mist both obscured and revealed the landscape along the Little Belt.That mound, a few stones on its apex, and a narrow ditch that was once a wide moat are all that remain of the first Hindsgavl Castle.
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.
Our early morning down by the Little Belt produced my favorite pictures of the entire trip.Deer were added back to Hindsgavl’s deer park in 2011, and the area was designated a nature reserve open to the public.
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.
Everchanging sand, up to 13 feet deep, has covered Lindolm Høje since ancient times.
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.
Lindolm Høje was used as a burial and cremation site from about 400 to 1000 AD. Now it is used for grazing goats.
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.
Sometimes a little silliness is in order.
Later that evening, we arrived at the wild and craggy town of Skagen (pronounced skain), which will be the subject of my next segment.
A few years ago, Jason and I decided we wanted to take both sets of our parents on trips of their choosing as a small way of saying thanks for the decades they tolerated being responsible for us. Like Jason’s parents, mine had sandy beaches and islands in mind but not of the tropical variety.
The kingdom of Denmark, the southern-most Scandinavian country, is comprised of over 1,400 islands circling a slender peninsula. This was my parents’ pick. With over 75 of Denmark’s islands inhabited, narrowing down landmasses from their country selection wasn’t easy. Since our flights stopped in Amsterdam both directions, we thought we might as well also add on a few days in that notable city, despite the excess location options available in Denmark alone. We invited my entire extended family to join us on this voyage of gratitude, and my sister and her daughter accepted that offer. The group traveled to some of Denmark’s most prominent and rugged places and got a taste of the Netherlands. Here’s the first of my four-part series on our journey and its discoveries.
There are 78 inhabited islands in Denmark, so I took choosing our route and sites seriously.
A Word on Chaos
Most vacations include bits of unexpected chaos. This trip was upfront about its pandemonium. Getting to Copenhagen required two flights, one to Amsterdam (as previously mentioned) and a second from Amsterdam to Copenhagen. At the time, Amsterdam’s airport, Schiphol, was experiencing an untimely mix of bad weather, labor shortages, resigning managers, low wages for security personnel, and peak weekend travel, which resulted in our inbound flight being delayed by almost five hours. This made us miss our connection to Copenhagen, so we had to find another flight. That ultimately resulted in us having to leave the secure section of the airport to pick up our bags and come back in via a security line over a mile long that took more than 2.5 hours to wind through. Probably not coincidentally, our flight out of Amsterdam was also delayed about an hour. At least our six-hour layover at Schiphol passed quickly since we spent the bulk of it in that line.
Once in Copenhagen, the bewildering chaos ended, and the regular travel mayhem began. On the plus side, our late arrival helped us get over our jet lag quicker since we had no choice but to stay up until 11:00 PM, forcing us to go about 30 hours without sleep. Admittedly, most of us snoozed on the plane ride between Amsterdam and Copenhagen as we found it impossible to do otherwise, but that was a rather brief nap.
Day 1
The next morning, our introduction to Copenhagen began with an early walk along the harbor to meet the Little Mermaid. The Little Mermaid, a sculpture of granite and bronze, was a gift to the city of Copenhagen by brewer Carl Jacobsen in 1913. She sits just a few feet from the shore making access easy. Although she is an icon of Copenhagen and the target of many tourists, she has also been the unfortunate victim of many jokesters and demonstrators over the decades. Her head has been detached multiple times, she’s been explosively removed from her rock perch, and she’s been frequently stained with paint. Still, with diligent repairs, she’s remained tragically pining for her prince for over 100 years.
The Little Mermaid is a popular tourist attraction. If you wish to have a more personal experience with her, I’d recommend visiting in the morning.
Making our way back from the Little Mermaid, we wandered through the Kastellet, a star-shaped fortress built by King Frederik III in 1662. The Kastellet’s bright colors and tranquil landscapes camouflage a more complicated past. It has been used for many purposes through its centuries including a prison and later Nazi headquarters when Germany occupied Denmark during World War II. It felt incongruous for the same space to contain both armed Royal Life Guards and the rosiest 18th-century barracks I’ve ever seen.
Our hotel was close to the Marmorkirken (Marble Church), so we couldn’t pass on a visit later that morning. The Marmorkirken is believed to be modeled after St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. While its dome is reminiscent of the Vatican, it is used for Lutheran worship. It was intended to honor the royal family’s 300-year reign, but construction ended up taking 150 years too long for that purpose. This delay was largely due to the enormous expense of Norwegian marble, one of the primary building materials used. Eventually, the church became the 5th largest dome in the world and the 2nd largest in Europe. We lucked out and happened to drop in at just the right time to join one of the twice-weekly tours to the top of the dome where the views are astounding.
The Marble Church (Marmorkirken) was principally constructed out of Norwegian marble. The dome has a diameter of about 100 feet.
One of our oddest, and most humorous, experiences of our vacation occurred at the Marmorkirken. A man with a thick carpet of chest and shoulder hair, which was prominently featured via the tank top he was wearing, grabbed one of the church’s bottles of hand sanitizer and approached our niece with it. He said in English, “Your hands please.” This prompted her to hold out her hand for a generous application of the sanitizer believing he was one of the church’s staff members, and this was among their anti-COVID processes. However, after the man repeated this procedure with my sister and me, he briefly perused a church corridor, grabbed one of the available tourist pamphlets, and vanished outside. Clearly, he was not an employee of the church. What the what? Out of the crowd of about 15 people waiting to start the tour, why did he pick us? And why the creepy sanitizing charade in the first place? We are still both baffled by and giggling about the experience.
The Marmorkirken supplies an excellent view of the Amalienborg Slot, the current home of Danish royalty.
Later that afternoon, we decided to visit Rosenborg Slot, though our time there would be limited. Rosenborg Slot was originally built to serve as the summer palace of King Christian IV. Construction began in 1606. Sometime in the 1700s, his great-grandson, King Frederik IV, decided he’d like a fancier seasonal home, leading to the opening of Rosenborg to the public as a royal museum in 1838.
The castle, built in Dutch Renaissance style, is full of opulence but also peculiarities. For instance, on display is a beloved pranking device of the king, a trouser-wetting chair, which would grasp sitters and then drench their seat with water. One room, the Mirror Cabinet, features walls of mirrors, which were extremely expensive to produce at the time. That’s not too unusual for a royal splurge. The unusual component is the circular floor mirror that was used to gaze up women’s skirts.
Rosenborg is a beautiful palace and holds an array of treasures.
Rosenborg’s biggest draw for many is its basement vaults containing Denmark’s crown jewels. While the glitz and grandeur in the treasury are overwhelming, a few items stand out. Christian IV’s coronation crown from 1596, weighing 6.6 pounds and covered with intricate depictions of the king’s many virtues, is one of them. Goblets and jewelry featuring a swanky skull and crossbones motif are another. It isn’t just the jewelry in the vaults that dazzles though. Some of Christian IV’s saddles and riding gear, layered with pearls and gold, are almost equally impressive.
At Kongens Have, we took in one of Copenhagen’s best-known monuments depicting Hans Christian Andersen captivating children with a story.
While our time in Rosenborg was rushed due to its approaching closing, not all parts of the outing were hurried. Rosenborg is situated in the Kongens Have (King’s Garden) making a welcomed stroll through this extensive park necessary. The garden was created in 1606 as the private grounds for Rosenborg Slot and is now a peaceful green used by the citizens of Copenhagen.
Each turn of the Round Tower’s spiraling ramp gains just over 12 feet of elevation.
Since we were close to the Rundetaarn, we decided to stop by on our walk back to our hotel. The Rundetaarn, or Round Tower, was built in 1642 during Denmark’s astronomy boon as a university observatory and library. There are hundreds of towers you can climb in Europe, so why bother with this one’s 128 feet? For starters, instead of stairs, it utilizes a gentle ramp paved by bricks to slowly spiral 7.5 times to its apex. This uncommon feature was integrated so equipment and supplies could be taken to the top by horse-drawn carts. A hollow core provides even more architectural interest than the slanted floor. The tower was used as Denmark’s geographical zero point for surveys after the 1760s, a function facilitated by that core. The valiant can stand at the top of the gap on a sheet of glass and fully appreciate all 82 feet of the drop.
The shaft of the Round Tower’s hollow core extends through most of the height of the building.
As the oldest European observatory still in operation, the Rundetaarn’s corridors have attracted many famous figures like Hans Christian Andersen, who used to do research in its library, and Tsar Peter the Great, who once raced his horse up its spinning passageway. Its views aren’t as fine as the higher Marmorkirken though.
Day 2
One of the primary places I wanted to see while staying in Copenhagen was the town of Roskilde, a 25-minute train ride from the city. Roskilde was Denmark’s first capitol. It is a charming mix of the ancient and modern and contains a wealth of historic wonders. My primary aim in visiting was the Vikingeskibsmuseet (Viking Ship Museum).
The Skuldelev ships at the Viking Ship Museum are a mix of warring, trading, and fishing vessels.
This remarkable museum holds five Viking vessels known as the Skuldelev ships that were sunk in the Roskilde Fjord to provide fortification in the 11th century. They were discovered in the 1960s and excavated. More than just exhumed skeletons, these vessels have been turned into living history with constructed replicas. I was led to believe by an incorrect guidebook that one could go sailing on the Viking reproductions. That is false, so, if you also read that in a travel manual, dismiss it. While you can board and examine the Sea Stallion from Glendalough, an impressive replica of the longest ship housed in the museum, you cannot cruise on it.
The Sea Stallion from Glendalough is a recreation of the longship found in Roskilde Fjord. It carried 60 warriors and required 80 trees to build.
What can you sail on? The museum’s boatyard has a collection of over 40 authentic historic reproductions based on designs from all over Scandinavia. Some of these are available for sailings. However, if your crew is too few and light for a sailing, you must instead do a rowing. With a group of only five, that was our fate. We rowed in a boat built in the museum boatyard in 2000 using traditional Faroe Island techniques called the Trolle.
Being of Viking ancestry does not make you more useful on a boat, this one for instance.
Though our guide insisted we do all the rowing and steering ourselves, we were not worthy of these duties. We only made it out of the harbor into the choppy waters of the Roskilde Fjord for a few minutes before the stress of trying to oversee our substandard abilities got to her, and she directed us back to calmer waters. In our defense, the wind on the Roskilde Fjord gets extra insistent as winter approaches, and thus, it was more blustery than normal as their season was nearing its end with the close of September.
The Skuldelev ships were remarkably well preserved after spending almost a thousand years under water.
On a fascinating sidenote, renovations to the Viking Ship Museum in the 1990s led to the discovery of nine more boats buried within the museum’s grounds from the Viking and Middle Ages. One of these is the longest Viking warship ever found. Oddly, these Roskilde ships are not displayed at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde but at the National Museum in Copenhagen.
The Viking Ship Museum was both educational and entertaining.
Although not the key reason for our visit to Roskilde, we were able to also make it to the city’s celebrated brick church. Construction of the Roskilde Domkirke began in the 12th century. It has served as the mausoleum for Danish Royalty since the Reformation. The ornate caskets and vaults of these noble individuals are plentiful throughout the structure. It is believed that the remains of Harold I (Bluetooth), a 10-century Viking king, are entombed in one of the pillars. In case you are wondering, yes, he is where the name for Bluetooth technology comes from.
Built in the 12th century, the Roskilde Domkirke is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Day 3
Before leaving Copenhagen, Jason and I ventured out early to see the Changing of the Guard at Amalienborg Slot, the current residence of the royal family. The pageantry and puffy hats were entertaining.
When we think of royal pomp, the British typically come to mind, but the Danes have fluffy hats too.
Then, we were all off to Møn after a slight rental-car-induced delay. Although online information said our reserved rental car would fit six people and all their luggage, that calculation definitely did not take into account the overpacking of the typical American traveler. Following a debate on whether we could drive for hours with heavy backpacks on our laps and suitcases between our legs, we ended up renting an additional vehicle.
Next week, I will discuss Møn and Middelfart. I promise, it will be more than just hot air.
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