Lejre: The Land of Legends

Based on your visit today to Lejre, summarize the impact that the Danish landscape has on the Danish as a people, and vice versa.


Lejre: The Land of Legends is a Danish national park and interactive historical site. It is located on the island of Sjaelland (say: Zealand), almost directly west of Copenhagen, about a 45 minutes trip by car. Today, I was lucky enough to be guided through this magical landscape by a talkative Danish tour guide with impeccable english.

strolling through the greenery

our guide showing off a wild boar tusk

The early Stone Age in current-day Denmark was marked by cold temperatures, heavy and frequent snows, and reindeer and aurochs as staple prey. Subsistence living was accomplished by hunting with flint-tipped spears and following the seasons. A following period of warming drove reindeer away and led to intense forest growth and sea level rise. Denmark was now a series of wooded islands with a climate similar to Greece today; Danes responded with dugout wooden boats and fishing spears. When the climate again cooled, bringing it close to the temperature and humidity of today, the Danes were entering the bronze age and were able to set up farming operations in more permanent locations. People burnt down patches of forest and used more advanced tools to work the land.

boats!

The early Danes were nomadic hunter-gatherers controlled by their environment. Entire lives were dictated by seasons, climate, weather and the response of animals and plants to those criteria. The diet, tools, weapons and structures of these people were dependent on the landscape they inhabited.

a stone-age dane and his abode by the lake

Today, Lejre represents a rare piece of wilderness; Denmark is a small country that has been well-populated by humans for a long time, meaning almost all of the landmass has been manually altered in some way. Today, 9% of Denmark's land remains wild, the rest being heavily manicured or managed by humans. To add to that statistic:

62% of land-use is agricultural
13% of land is forested, managed as a resource, currently increasing due to national policy
10% of land has been built upon
9% of land is natural wilderness
2% of land is covered by lakes and water courses
450 total islands exist in Denmark
90 of Denmark's islands are populated
16,639 sq mi /43,094 sq km is the size of Denmark proper
32.3 mi / 52 km is the furthest one can get from the Sea in Denmark
source: instructor Toby Musgrave and Wikipedia

Towards the end of our tour today, our guide posed a question (paraphrased from memory and notes): Now that we have made our mark on the landscape, why should we preserve what is left? What role does the land play in society and the environment, and how do we justify funding its preservation when it is a valuable commercial resource as well? Her answer involved the telling of stories using landscapes as visual aids, and the opportunity to maintain a strong sense of history and heritage among the Danish people. But I would answer her question with another: what is the definition of wilderness?

Lejre is a landscape affected by thousands of years of human activity. Today, it is owned by a group committed to restoring the land to its prehistoric state. The group is reintroducing species like wild boar and a modern imitation breed of the aurochs; they have rebuilt the architectures of antiquity based on found remains; they have built dugout canoes; they dress in stone-age garb and give tours and facilitate learning opportunities. In doing all of these wonderful things for educational purposes, are they really recreating wilderness? are they simply providing a pastoral image of what might have been? are they destroying a current landscape to understand an old one? And does any of this matter in the grand scheme of environmental integrity?

I'll leave you with these questions. I, for one, had a fantastic time wandering the woodland paths – a welcome break from the city after three hectic days. I think Lejre is a great resource and opportunity for the people of Copenhagen, of all ages.

Skål! Cheers!

Robin

thanks for the shot, McKenzie!