My first acutely aware reminiscence occurred on the decrease touchdown of a staircase that spiraled up 4 flooring of the 14th-century, moat-encircled Gjorslev citadel in Denmark. I used to be hugging the railing whereas my tweed-clad grandfather, Edward Tesdorpf, who owned the place, smiled at me as he walked down the corridor to deal with his ever-expanding farm companies. I used to be 3 years previous.
And now, 5 many years later, I’m standing on the identical spot, this time with a statuesque Danish girl in fashionable Japanese informal put on. “That is roasted and steamed tea from Korea,” Mette Marie Kjaer tells me, providing a nice cup of miso-tinged brew.
Ms. Kjaer runs her Asian tea firm, Sing Tehus, from a rented wing of the citadel, providing tea ceremonies and yoga retreats whereas sustaining Gjorslev’s standing because the oldest repeatedly inhabited constructing in Scandinavia. After half a century of benign neglect following my grandfather’s departure, the citadel is internet hosting not simply yoga and tea occasions, however arts festivals, medieval festivals and even a summer season musical theater in its courtyard. Gjorslev, my grandparents’ dwelling, has opened to the world.
Epic cliffs and ‘chalk kings’
One can say the identical factor about Stevns, the realm in japanese Denmark the place the citadel is situated. Throughout my childhood, Stevns was thought-about so remoted that locals used to say that it was the place “the crows come to show round.” My children nonetheless take a look at me askance after I clarify how many people on this neighborhood of fishermen and farmers had been intimate with outhouses and coal-burning stoves and heaters properly into the Nineteen Seventies. A few of my childhood neighbors had by no means even been to Copenhagen, an hour’s drive away.
Though at evening Copenhagen’s lights appeared like illuminated pinpricks throughout the darkish Baltic Sea, Stevns appeared an impossibly distant place, the place superstitions had been sturdy and conversations brief — “Sure, it’s not that,” spoken very slowly, was a very in style starting, center and finish to many interactions. Fortresslike limestone chalk cliffs above the ocean hemmed the peninsula off whereas the Tryggevaelde stream — a 20-mile waterway etched into the flatlands, and, in response to native lore, an elf hide-out — turned it into an island.
However now Stevns is being found. Copenhagen commuters are trickling in, interested in the realm’s bucolic charms; Stevns’s epic cliffs, which had been designated a UNESCO World Heritage web site in 2014; a just lately opened folklore museum in the principle city of Retailer Heddinge; and renovated inns and eating places which have turned Stevns into an interesting weekend vacation spot.
Driving from Copenhagen, throughout the Tryggevaelde stream, I seen the gradual transformation of the panorama because the lead-gray sea slowly receded beneath cliffs and dense beech forests. Industrial-size fields diminished to patches of farmlands, with Bronze Age grave mounds protruding like darkish citadels.
When mist rises from the bogs, some say it’s actually ghostly elf ladies dancing across the mounds. Certainly, Denmark’s nationwide play, “Elverhoj” (“Elves’ Hill”), takes its identify from an area grave mound the place, in response to legend, dancing elves and their “chalk king” frolicked with Danish royalty.
The chalk! It’s in all places: within the ingesting wells (reputed by locals to be the perfect coffee-brewing water in Denmark); within the historical church buildings, farmhouses and barns, all constructed with huge blocks lower from the cliffs; and on my fingers and toes after a day of tramping round.
For nearly a millennium, chalk cutters have been mining the cliffs for constructing materials, which provides Gjorslev citadel and different buildings the looks of gleaming Lego blocks in opposition to the verdant panorama. These historical, thick, but crumbling partitions have been preserved by generations of house owners who as a substitute of portray their houses, “rechalked” them each few years with a layer of chalk sludge utilized with a brush.
That is how I got here to know each sq. inch of Gjorslev, having spent a big a part of my youth rechalking its alleys, nooks and, on one memorable event, suspended by ropes, its central 98-foot tower.
The roots of each my journey writing and mountaineering quests are right here, as Gjorslev’s towers and barns made for wonderful climbing whereas the occasional guests required me to take improvised stints as a tour information. Disappointingly, little occurred on this grand fortress over six centuries, so I improved issues with tales of jousting tournaments, executions and different faux dramas to rapt audiences not but armed with web fact-checking units.
A spot in historical past
Throughout World Conflict II, when the Germans occupied Denmark, Gjorslev did make it into the historical past books when my country-bumpkin grandfather, goaded by my cosmopolitan grandmother, whom he had snatched from Copenhagen, turned the place into a middle for the Resistance. My grandfather and his crew smuggled out a whole bunch of Jews, scientists and different folks wished by the Nazis through fishing boats to impartial Sweden. Gjorslev’s forests and enclosed fields turned secret spots for parachuting in weapons and different contraband by the British Royal Air Drive.
“The largest downside had been the parachutes,” my grandfather as soon as advised me. “Each girl was wanting silk for stockings and garments they usually saved bugging us for the silk parachutes. However folks would get suspicious in the event that they noticed somebody in new silks so we needed to burn them.”
His luck ran out within the final weeks of the battle, when somebody blew his cowl and a caravan of German troopers got here rolling throughout the moat to arrest him. He jumped out the again of the citadel and spent the tip of the occupation pretending to be a affected person in a Copenhagen hospital room supplied by the Resistance.
After the liberation, the nation bumpkin turned a battle hero, joined the Danish Parliament and numerous company boards, and was visited on the citadel by dignitaries reminiscent of Subject Marshal Montgomery and Eleanor Roosevelt.
On a current go to, I had a meal at one among my grandfather’s favourite locations, Traktorstedet Gjorslev Bogeskov, a century-old eating pavilion overlooking the lapping Baltic subsequent to the citadel’s forest. The restaurant has been completely modernized and hosts a superb buffet of native seafood, Danish pork and salads (lunch, 259 kroner, or about $38). “I’ve solely been right here for 20 years, so I’m probably not a Stevns individual but,” the pavilion’s hostess, Pia Johansen, advised me with a joking-yet-not-joking smile.
A ten-minute stroll into the forest on a path bordering the ocean introduced me to a worn indentation within the cliff the place a wood stairway as soon as descended into the ocean. This was the spot my grandfather selected for smuggling Jews and different refugees 20 miles throughout the Oresund strait to Sweden. On the opposite facet of the trail is the wood cabin the place they huddled at evening, ready for his or her journey to freedom.
The ocean was aquavit-clear right here and I took a dip within the chilly water, imagining my grandfather in his tweeds, and his mates loading households onto the ready fishing boats.
The ‘well-known fish clay’
Eleven miles south, the Stevns Klint Expertise (entry, 140 kroner) just lately opened above a former limestone quarry subsequent to the ocean. The middle consists of a dramatic concrete-and-glass strip of galleries, a cinema and cafe half buried within the hillside above the quarry.
“Right here’s the well-known fish clay,” mentioned Nana Katrine Legh-Smith, who’s the middle’s neighborhood outreach coordinator, pointing to a two-inch darkish layer that runs via a bus-size chunk of cliff, the museum’s centerpiece. The identify is derived from the excessive focus of fossilized fish tooth and scales within the strata. Ms. Legh-Smith, like me, grew up right here, and we reminisced about enjoying across the cliffs, oblivious to the fish clay’s significance to science and the way it might remodel Stevns right into a world attraction.
“Walter Alvarez turned our cliffs into stars,” she mentioned, referring to the American geologist who visited in 1978 and made a outstanding discovery: The fish clay, with its lode of iridium — a uncommon steel that’s related to outer house — supplies some proof that the extinction of the dinosaurs, together with half of Earth’s species, was brought on by an asteroid impression. Stevns is likely one of the few locations on the planet the place this layer could be seen, incomes the cliffs their UNESCO standing.
One other two miles up the coast is the Thirteenth-century Hojerup Church, which appears able to totter into the ocean 100 toes under. For eight centuries the church and the eroding cliff had been enjoying tag “one rooster step each Christmas,” in response to native lore, till March 16, 1928, when a big a part of the cemetery and the church’s chancel collapsed into the Baltic. After I was a child, I may wander undisturbed to the open again and stare down the Hitchcockian drop. Now the place is bustling with vacationers. Any trepidation concerned with standing there could be calmed with the information that the cliff under has been fortified with concrete.
I descended the steep steps to the chalky seashore the place some Japanese guests had been photographing the jagged cliffs. After climbing again up and crossing the car parking zone, I used to be rewarded with a superb lunch of herring, meatballs and different native delicacies in cozy Hojeruplund (lunch for 2, 520 kroner).
However for me the perfect meal round right here is 4 miles down the coast at Rodvig, nicknamed “the Stevns Riviera,” for its sandy seashore, now in style with windsurfers. The 18th-century Rodvig Kro & Badehotel was, in my youth, a “special day” spot for anniversaries and weddings, usually that includes boiled cod drowned in butter and remoulade — no luxuries again then for the hearty locals!
However over the past 5 years, the place has been enlivened by the chef Morten Vennike, a veteran of Copenhagen’s buzzy eating places who makes good use of native produce. I went for the coq au vin, garnished with wild mushrooms, and completed with caramel and apple sorbet (dinner for 2 with wine, 795 kroner). I left with a brand new appreciation, in spite of everything these years, of the inn’s authentic Danish midcentury-modern décor.
Later, within the harbor, I ran into one among Gjorslev’s former farming foremen whom I’d referred to as a baby. “What do you suppose makes Stevns so distinct?” I requested him, amid the clinking of halyards in opposition to sailboat masts.
He contemplated for some time. “That I couldn’t say.” We glanced throughout the bay towards the cliffs, which within the nightfall resembled Cubist etchings framed by the now teal Baltic. These identical waters nurtured the garrulous skills of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Thomas Mann on close by shores, however Stevns’s distinctive magic and myths stay guarded by a tribe of taciturn folks.
There was a protracted pause as I waited for the previous gentleman so as to add one thing. He didn’t. “Sure,” I lastly responded. “It’s not that.”
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