Danish Language Blog

One of the first things you’ll notice when going by train or bus in Denmark, is how extremely flat the country is. There are no mountains, only a few hills. The only klipper (rocks) are located on the island of Bornholm, between Sweden and Poland. The rest of Denmark is fladt som en pandekage (flat as a pancake). (Admitted, the Netherlands are even flatter – and even more liberal when it comes to the pleasures of life!)

Wait – no mountains? In 2005, the Norwegian Roger Pihl proved us all wrong. With a dash of irony and a lot of love for Denmark, he published a book which in Danish got the name Guide til Danmarks bjerge – Guide to the Mountains of Denmark.

”Denmark is a fjeld-land (mountain-country)”, Pihl writes. ”Even if the peaks protrude no more than 100 meters, the view can be just as impressive as from the Norwegian mountains, where you can add a zero to the height.”

Denmark has an average height of 31 meters, and Pihl argues that in that perspective, every hill with a height above 100 meters should be considered a Danish bjerg [b-yaᵒᵒ] (mountain)!

Here, then, are the

10 highest peaks in Denmark

1. Ejer Bavnehøj/Møllehøj in Ejer, Jylland. 170.86 meters (above sea level).
2. Yding Skovhøj in Yding, Jylland. 170.77 m.
3. Rytterknægten in Almindingen, Bornholm. 162 m.
4. Rye Sønderskov in Gammel Rye, Jylland. 157 m.
5. Them Bavnehøj in Them, Jylland. 153 m.
6. Sorring Loddenhøj in Sorring, Jyland. 148 m.
7. Himmelbjerget in Gammel Rye, Jylland. 147 m.
8. Ottehøje in Bryrup, Jylland. 145 m.
9. Aborrebjerg on Møn. 143 m.
10. Alvildas Høj in Gammel Rye, Jylland. 142 m.

Notice how mountains in Gammel Rye dominate the chart! Of these, the most famous is Himmelbjerget. It has a tower, a souvenir shop and a restaurant on its top! The view is as breathtaking as it gets in Denmark, so there’s no reason to laugh about the name, which means … Sky Mountain!

Happy trekking!

Denmark’s capital København [KUR-bn-how-n] is enjoying a renaissance as a European hotspot for travellers who’ve ”got it”. The city has become a kind of ”mini-Berlin” – a colourful place full of street art, alternative modebutikker (fashion shops), cafés and museums. Unfortunately, Copenhagen is (still) a lot more dyr (expensive) than Berlin…

Det er nemt at komme rundt i København. (It is easy to get around in Copenhagen. Notice, BTW, that there are two words for ’easy’ in Danish: nem and let.) The city boasts one of the world’s most evolved systems of offentlig transport (public transportation). You hardly ever have to pay for an expensive taxa (cab, taxi) ride, as most places can be reached by either bus or s-tog/metro.

Once you’ve collected your kuffert (suitcase) at Kastrup Lufthavn (airport, from luft ’air’ + havn ’port, harbour’), it’s time to find yourself a comfortable metro seat. The Copenhagen metro is one of the world’s newest and, so far, smallest. There are only two tracks and it leaves every ten minutes or so, making it really hard to get lost in any way. You buy a billet (ticket) at one of the DSB (Danske Statsbaner – Danish State Railways) skranker (counters). (There’s one at the airport, at the end of the arrival hall.)

If you plan to visit several places, an excellent (and billig, ’cheap’!) option is to buy a klippekort. A klippekort is a ”traveller’s card” with 10 klip or ”punches”. You can buy it for a varying number of zoner (travel zones). Ask at the counter how many zones there are to your destination. (Hvor mange zoner er der til…?) Usually, buying a 2 zoner card is enough to get around in central Copenhagen. (Current price: 245 kroner.) Before entering a bus, metro or s-tog, you simply punch the card in an external automat ([punching] machine). You can punch it several times, if you need to use more zoner.

Where the metro lines end, you can change to an s-tog [ess touw] (metropolitan train). There’s an underground s-togsstation (s-tog station) in every major Copenhagen district. Ask for a free map at the Tourist Information (5 minutes walk from Hovedbanegården – the Central Train Station). Or, even better, ask a Dane!

Hvordan kommer jeg til… (How do I get to…)
Hvornår kører det næste s-tog til… (When does the next s-tog leave for…)

Knowing that many of my readers are Americans, I can’t find any excuses not to have a post about the Rebild Festival!
And 2012 is the right year to tell you about it, as it is exactly 100 years ago a group of danskamerikanere (Danish-Americans) and Danes combined forces and launched the first mayor celebration of American Independence on Danish soil. It was a great success, and each year on July 4th Danes and Americans have flocked to Rebild Bakker to take part in what has become known as Rebildfesten (the Rebild party), or, in English, the Rebild Festival. Today, it is rumored to be the biggest July 4th celebration outside the US…

Yeah, I should’ve been there in person, to tell you about all the taler (speeches) and flag and festklædte mennesker (people in gala). (Click here to see some photos of last year’s event!) Fortunately, I’ve been to Rebild Bakker several times, so let’s take a look at the place…

A bakke is a ’hill’, and Rebild is a small village in the region called Himmerland, in eastern Nordjylland (Northern Jutland). Just outside the village there is a marvellous landscape of bakker, covered with lyng (heather). The hills are crisscrossed with stier (pathways), leading travellers across shady dips and round hilltops. It’s a wonderful place to explore as a child! Landskabet (the landscape) has a feeling of mystery and wildness to it that is rarely found in flat, industrialized Denmark.

I guess the party-planners of 1912 must have come to Rebild and felt the wind in their faces and thought: ”Well, this reminds me of the prairie back in Kansas…” To remind us of this heritage, a US-style blokhus (log cabin, literally ’block house’) has been built in the highest part of the plateau. It currently serves as a museum [moo-SEH-oom].

Why celebrate the national day of a foreign country? If I had a chance to interview the participants of Rebildfesten, I’m sure they’d have loads of good arguments… Although Denmark is now busy making new friends in places like China, there is a historical link between the US and Denmark, in particular between the US and Jutland – as seen in the stories of Danish-Americans and in jysk (Jutlandic, Jutish) literature such as Himmerlandsfortællinger (Himmerland stories) by Johannes V. Jensen, the great 20th Century Jutland storyteller.