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.
Summer is far less exceptional without its mountain journeys. Now that spring finally feels attainable and the anticipation of summer has reemerged, I’m going to revisit a few of the treks that amplified last summer’s exceptional status. Spoiler alert: This post will eventually conclude, after a barrage of details, that one shouldn’t depend too much on technology while hiking and should never venture out sans flashlight because junk is distracting and so are ponds, views, peaks, signs, flowers, trees, holes, photos, animals, rocks… basically, everything is fighting against you finishing in the light.
Trail: Great Western and Old Red Pine Road Loop
Distance: 4.8 Miles
Month: July
My ankle was giving me grief during the summer. Months later, after x-rays and an MRI, I would discover a talus fracture was the source of those grumbles. Huh. Before that was common knowledge, my doctor didn’t want me hiking anything too steep as he thought I had a bad case of capsulitis. His counsel put my family’s usual peak-top extravaganza on the no-no list. As an alternative, we completed a mild loop up Millcreek Canyon that incorporates sections of the Great Western Trail and Old Red Pine Road. Parking at the trailhead was a mess, which apparently is the norm. However, the path itself wasn’t crowded and passed through some agreeable countryside.
The Great Western and Old Red Pine Road Loop is an easy hiking option, which is probably why it is chosen so often.
Trail: Honeycomb Canyon and Solitude Loop
Distance: 6.6 Miles
Month: September
Jason and I are quite accustomed to Solitude Resort in the winter, so we thought we might as well peek at some of its familiar peaks while they were donned in summer’s stubble. We downloaded a trail map from AllTrails for a loop through the resort. The map was wrong. It directed us to descend from the top of Honeycomb Canyon on a slim line that led to nothing. Luckily, I spied a path high above us on another canyon wall, and we were able to scramble through bushes and over boulders to it. Despite our route insufficiencies, passing through naked, green terrain instead of smooth snow-covered slopes proved entertaining. We learned there is an assortment of ponds underneath some of our favorite runs. However, our learning did not extend to timing. As usual, but still not planned, we ended up returning in the dark.
At Solitude, snow hides another form of H2O.One could logically assume that Black Bess Peak, one of Solitude’s most prominent features, was named after someone’s beloved cow, but it was named after a mine.
Trail: Prince of Wales Mine
Distance: 5.1 Miles
Month: September
We’ve been interested in hiking to the Prince of Wales Mine up Little Cottonwood Canyon for years. Last summer, we finally fulfilled this climbing scheme. While this trek is not terribly long, it passes too much of interest to not take until well after dark… no matter how early your departure time. The Michigan-Utah and Michigan City Mines are among the engrossing sites on route. There are also random shaft openings here and there that beg you for a look.
Jason and I get too easily diverted to ever complete a hike in the prescribed time.
At the end of the trail and 9,875 feet of elevation, is the Prince of Wales Mine. The Prince of Wales Mine opened in 1872 and closed sometime before 1976. Silver, copper, lead, gold, and zinc were its metals of consequence. While no structures remain at the site, plenty else does including a double-drum hoist, spoked pulley, compressor with curved spoke flywheels, broiler with fluted stack, steam fittings, and odd metal pieces. The mine had a subsurface length of 5,486 meters, which is almost 18,000 feet. We threw a rock down the Prince’s slanted shaft, and it took about 1.5 seconds to hit the bottom or a side, a free fall of 36 feet.
After weathering for decades, old debris becomes more than just carelessly discarded litter.
We thought we had given ourselves plenty of time to complete this trek before night, but we got too sidetracked by the omnipresent mining junk and ended up having to return through blackness. All our hikes seem to have a reoccurring theme.
Information on when the Prince of Wales stopped operating is incomplete, but it was sometime before 1976.
While that is not a complete list of our 2022 summer treks, it is the most complete list that exists as it covers whatever ones I found interesting enough to write a few notes on afterward. My closing wisdom? Online tools for route finding are handy but not infallible. Also, dark comes swiftly, and stuff distracts. Therefore, one should always be prepared to hike sans sun as it happens more often than not, especially if that one is Jason and me. Bring on the exceptional (and dim) summer hikes of 2023!
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