The first thing I said on Sunday morning was that I should
have brought my sunglasses. The Copenhagen sky decided to help by pouring rain
as we made our way to the station to catch the next train to Lejre, a village
about 50 km west.
The small settlement is a relatively unobtrusive blip on the
Danish countryside today, but it was once the capital of an Iron Age kingdom
and the real-world counterpart to Heorot, the famous mead-hall in Beowulf. It’s because of the extensive
historical dramas that played out on these simple fields that this area is
described as the “land of legends.”
More particularly, an open-air museum not far from the train
platform, Sagnlandet Lejre, boasts
the English name Land of Legends. This
is an archeological site, but it’s also an immersive, interactive experience,
described as “experimental archeology” because of the way in which re-enactors
use historically accurate techniques to heat reconstructed buildings, weave
costumes, and construct pottery. The Land of Legends, in the space of about 100
acres, brings together a Stone Age campsite (circa 5000 BC), Iron Age
settlements (around 200 BC), a Viking village (900 AD), and an eighteenth
century village (positioned as far away from these heathen influences as
possible, of course).
During the summer months, families can actually sign up to
live in these unique places, dressing in the historical costumes and living
life as we think they might have done, hundreds (or in some cases, thousands)
of years ago. Not surprisingly, the Land of Legends was much more sparsely
populated at the end of November, but the whole area was open to the public for
free, as part of the Christmas season (it’s closed for most of the fall
season).
An empty bus was waiting at the train station, and the
friendly, middle-aged driver accepted our train tickets from Copenhagen, even
though we’re pretty sure he was just glad for the company. The drive through
the village, sleety snow in the ditches and marshes spread out across the
low-lying fields, felt a bit too much like the drive to Eel Marsh House in the Woman in Black. We were more interested
in different kind of ghosts though.
The absence of a full crew of re-enactors and tourists
actually afforded us a really unique perspective of the Land of Legends,
starting at the Viking village. We were able to walk through the reconstructed
buildings at our leisure and across the fields, breathing in the fresh, albeit
brisk, Danish air. The rain held off while we were in Lejre, though every other
step was through the mud.
Things got even more deserted as we moved to the Iron Age village, where we felt wonderfully isolated in time and space.
Just past the Iron Age village, a path through the woods
supposedly leads to a Sacrificial Bog—remember the Bog Bodies in Copenhagen?
Some of them likely came from ceremonial sites like this one, but the bushwhacking
ended up being too tangly and off the beaten track that we were convinced we
were headed to our own sacrificial
pool of muck and couldn’t count on getting out in the end.
Meanwhile, a log bridge connects the Stone Age campsite to
the rest of the site—a very low-lying
bridge at this time of year, and you can imagine what happened as soon as we
put our weight on the plank. All the crews of Vikings and Iron Age hunted never
had adventures the likes of the two of us trying to get across that bridge and
keep our shoes in decent condition.
On a piece of higher ground, overlooking a sizable,
beautifully desolate landscape, there were boulders arranged in the pattern of
a ship—a Viking Age Stone Ship,
a massive burial monument (no bodies here, although this reconstruction was,
like everything else at the Land of Legends, assembled using ancient
techniques, and is a replica of a Stone Ship located about 2 km away that had
been cleared by the landowner in 1921).
Leaving the Vikings and prehistoric folks behind, we entered
an eighteenth-century village, where re-enactors kept the low-lying houses warm
on a cold afternoon by constantly tending a fire in the kitchen, offering
visitors a seat in the cozy wood heat to shake off the chill—and a steaming hot
beer, if that suits your tastes.
We passed through a number of workshops on our way through
the village, including a textile workshop where period costumes were
constructed using large looms, and a pottery where jugs and vases were created,
for sale at the gift shop.
On a hillside, the grunts and groans of wild pigs filled the
ears. We were walking side-by-side with a costumed peasant now, so Kayla asked
what happened to Piglet and her friends over the winter. Here we were, in a
world that literally had a portion of bog designated as a Sacrificial Bog, but
the nonchalance of being told most would be slaughtered still somehow caught us
off guard.
The Land of Legends is a strange place to have stumbled upon,
and a really cool place for exploring in the off-season. Of course, the
settlements arranged in a neat row are hundreds of years apart, but the park
still gives a sampling of Danish history over a long trajectory.
Our bus driver friend was parked by the entrance gate,
almost as if he were waiting for us again—he had one more passenger this time,
the Pig-Slaughtering-Peasant. When we tried to buy our tickets, we found out
that his dispenser only accepted cash—which of course we had none of, so we had
to go back through the gift shop and take a few kroner out. As we left though,
we thought we heard the bus driver yell something at us, but decided we were
hearing things.
With a few coins in our pocket, we came back to the parking
lot, only to hear the bus coming to life—he said he’s wait for us, right? We
jumped on-board, but as we tried to hand him the money he simply yelled: “I
have to go!”
Turns out the train to Copenhagen only passes through Lejre
once an hour. Turns out said train was coming in about five minutes, and so the
bus sped across the narrow roadways to somehow make the journey in four. As we
jumped off the bus at the platform and tried to hang him the coins, he refused
them—which probably explained what he yelled out to us, and says something
about the hospitality of the Danish people.
Let’s just ignore the fact that the bus could have abided by
the speed limit if we hadn’t gone back for those coins in the first place.
Pig-Slaughterer jumped off with us to point us in the right direction, and the
unlikely team of three ran across the platform, found the ticket machine, and
punched in our destination as the lights of an oncoming train appeared at the
edge of the tracks. I couldn’t have written a more down-to-the-wire ending if I
tried—the screen read “Printing” (come
on, come on, come on) just as the brakes of the train squealed and the
doors hissed open, and we waited until we were seated before catching our
breaths.
After another long day, we were both exhausted as we settled
in for the half hour trip back to Copenhagen, calling ourselves pretty lucky.
We found a café that was essentially a less-smoky version of
the house in the Land of Legends—a close, cozy atmosphere with hot, creamy soup,
a far cry from the hot dogs and croissants we’d been accustomed to. Oh, and the
beer was cold here.
When we got back to Trine’s, our host had left a note for us
that she was gone for the night—I realize that when you sign up for Airbnb you
have to go through a verification process, and the whole system works on user
ratings and feedback, but it’s still amazing (or insane?) that someone would
trust another person they’ve just met with the complete run of their house. I
thought a bit about some of my earlier experiences Couchsurfing—this definitely
has some similarities, especially when it comes to trust and interaction, but
Airbnb sets up definite level of distance with the host (or at least have a
greater potential to do so). We didn’t speak a whole lot to Trine during our
two-night stay, whereas that’s kind of the whole point of Couchsurfing—I guess
privacy is part of what you pay for, for good or for bad.
Anyway, we didn’t go through her desk or steal all her tea.
Again, for good or for bad.
After a windy, rainy night, the morning dawned overcast but
dry. We hooked onto the metro line and got ready to leave Copenhagen in the early afternoon.
We still have two and a half weeks left in Europe, but that
time will quickly slip by. The turbulent flight from Copenhagen to Amsterdam
was our last flight together for the foreseeable future, and the wall of European city maps is full for now—instead, we have term
papers and final assignments to fill up the remaining time, along with some decidedly
Dutch Christmas festivities.
Shouldn’t be too hard to have a bit of fun in the
time we’ve got left, but it will be nice to be on the other side of the
Atlantic again after all.
Cheers,
rb
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