Hjorring, Tip of Denmark, and Den Gamble By

On Thursday we woke up and drove North to one of Jo’s ancestral towns, Hjorring.  Hjorring is unique in that it has three surviving medieval churches.  We were only able to find two but they were very cool to see.  I have to admit that I have no idea what a medieval church is other than it is old but seeing things like medieval churches and Viking ships always causes me to reflect on the complex and long human history that is easy to forget when living in the US where all of our history is so recent.  (Mom, feel free to add a history lesson in the comments).

Old gate in Hjorring that I thought looked cool.

Cobble street in Hjorring. 

The church is dedicated to the Norwegian Saint Olai. It's a Romanesque building from the middle of the 12th century.

St Olai with cemetery.

Sct. Catharinæ Kirke

Hjorring also has a lot of sculptures in the streets.

Meeting of the North Sea and Baltic Sea

One of my favorite places that we visited was the very tip of Denmark where the North Sea and the Baltic Sea meet.  I found out about it via an earthcache listing and I was really surprised by how many people were there.  It was really cool to walk out into the water where the two seas meet.  You could feel the currents coming from both sides which was very cool.  It was also really interesting to be there and to see the cargo ships passing through the area and realizing that all of the shipping in and out of the Baltic sea passes by that one point.  Walking out to the point I wanted to walk in the water but was very surprised by all of the jelly fish.  I eventually became quite fond of them once I realized that they were not going to hurt me.

When I saw this little Dane holding a jelly fish and his dad taking his picture with it I was much more confident that I was not going to get hurt.

It is subtle but in this picture you can see the Baltic Sea current in the foreground and the North Sea current in the back.

I thought that it was cute that this jelly fish was smiling.

North Sea

I was a little bit scared to eat the herring while I was there.  I decided to be brave and try some.  There was a restaurant above the point where the North and Baltic seas meet.  It has an absolutely beautiful view of the two seas almost surrounding us beyond the sand dunes.  Admittedly the herring was not pickled but the meal was as delicious as the scenery was beautiful!

Randers

Randers is another of Jo’s ancestral cities.  It is now an industrial city.  When I read the guide book entry about Randers it very nicely said that Randers had ugly buildings mixed in with the old nice ones.  It was not as bad as the guide book described but it did differ from the rest of Denmark in its more recent, functional architecture and in its less than clean streets.  The only “ugly building” that I have a picture of it the one behind the horse statue.

Randers Kirke (church)

Randers Kirke door.  Don’t let the serenity of the scene fool you.  There was a road that went right around the church.  There were no markings that there was a road but people were zipping around it.  That was another anomaly of Randers, people tried to run you over.  In the rest of Denmark traffic is very orderly.

Viking statue in Randers

Denmark is famous for these short stocky horses.

Den Gamle By

One of the last things that we did was go to an open air museum in Arhus which had restored or replicated houses/buildings from the 15th century on up to the late 1800’s.  It was really interesting to see what the architecture was like and to get a sense of what jobs existed in the urban areas during.

This house is from 1571.  The sign said “Half-timbered house … with the patterned brickwork and elaborate carvings characteristic of renaissance timber-frame buildings.”