My first conscious memory occurred on the landing at the bottom of a staircase that spiraled up to the fourth floor of the moated 14th-century Djorslev Castle in Denmark. I hugged the railing as Edward Tesdorf, the tweed-clad grandfather who owned this place, smiled at me as he walked down the hallway tending to his ever-expanding farm business. I was 3 years old.
And now, 50 years later, I'm standing in the same spot. This time, we're with a regal Danish woman wearing stylish everyday Japanese clothing. “This is a Korean roasted and steamed tea,” Mette Marie Kjær tells me, and she recommends a soothing miso-flavored tea.
Maintaining Gjorslev's status as Scandinavia's oldest continuously inhabited building, Kjaer rents a wing of the castle to run his Asian tea company, Shin Tehus, and offers tea ceremonies and yoga retreats. are doing. Neglected for half a century since her grandfather's departure, the castle now hosts yoga and tea events, as well as arts festivals, medieval fairs and even summer musical theater in its courtyard. Zhorslev, my grandparents' home, opened up to the world.
Spectacular cliffs and “Chalk King”
The same can be said about the Stevens region in eastern Denmark, where the castle is located. When I was growing up, Stephens was considered such an isolated place that locals often referred to it as “Where the Crows Turn''. Children still look at me quizzically when I explain how many people in this community of fishermen and farmers had close ties to barns and coal-burning stoves and heaters until the 1970s. I'll see it. Some of my childhood neighbors had never even been to Copenhagen, an hour's drive away.
At night, when Copenhagen's streetlights looked like pinpricks across the dark Baltic Sea, Stevens seemed incredibly remote. Superstitions were strong there, the dialogue was short, and the very slowly spoken “Oh no, that's not true” was especially popular at the beginning, middle, and second half. Many exchanges come to an end. Chalk limestone cliffs, like a fortress above the sea, frame the peninsula, and the Trygvarde River (a 32-mile channel carved into the plains and, according to local legend, a refuge for the elves) turns the peninsula into an island. changed.
But now Stevens is being discovered. Copenhagen commuters are trickling in, attracted by the region's idyllic charm. Spectacular Stephens Cliffs was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2014. The Folklore Museum has recently opened in the center of Stor Hedinge. Renovated inns and restaurants transformed Stevens into an attractive weekend destination.
Driving across the Trygveelde River from Copenhagen, I noticed a gradual change in the landscape as the lead-gray water slowly receded beneath the cliffs and dense beech forests. I noticed. Industrial-sized fields have been reduced to patches of farmland, and Bronze Age burial mounds jut out like dark citadels.
Some say that when mist rises from the swamp, it is ghostly elf girls dancing around the mound. In fact, the name of Denmark's national play “Elverhøj'' (“Elf Hill'') derives from a local burial mound where, according to legend, dancing elves and their “Chalky King'' frolicked with the Danish royal family. .
Chalk! It's everywhere. Drinking well (locals say it has the best coffee brewing water in Denmark). Ancient churches, farmhouses and barns are all built from huge blocks hewn from the cliffs. Also for your hands and feet after walking around all day.
For almost 1,000 years, chalk cutters have mined the cliffs for building material, making Gjorslev Castle and other buildings look like gleaming Lego blocks against the lush landscape. These old, thick, but crumbling walls have been preserved by generations of homeowners. Instead of painting their homes, they applied a layer of chalk sludge with a brush and “re-chalked” the walls every few years.
This is how I got to know every nook and cranny of Djorslev. I spent a good deal of my youth reimagining its alleyways, nooks and crannies, and its central 98-foot tower suspended from ropes as memorable occasions.
This is where the roots of both my travel writing and mountaineering explorations lie. The towers and barns of Zhorslev made for great climbing, but the occasional visitor requested impromptu duties as a tour guide from me. Unfortunately, very little has happened in this magnificent fortress during its six centuries, so jousting tournaments, executions, and more are all being held to fascinate viewers not yet equipped with internet fact-checking equipment. improved things with a fake drama storyline.
historical place
During World War II, when German troops occupied Denmark, Jorslev did It went down in the history books when my countryman grandfather, enticed by his cosmopolitan grandmother whom he had brought from Copenhagen, turned the place into a center of resistance. My grandfather and his crew smuggled hundreds of Jews, scientists, and others wanted by the Nazis to neutral Sweden on a fishing boat. The forest and enclosed fields of Jorslev were used by the Royal Air Force as a secret location for parachuting with guns and other contraband.
“The biggest problem was the parachute,” my grandfather once told me. “Every woman was short of silk for stockings and clothing, and kept us on the hunt for silk parachutes. But if people saw someone wearing new silk, they would be suspicious. Because of the wax, we had to burn them.”
His luck ran out in the final weeks of the war. Someone blew his cover and a caravan of German soldiers came across the moat to arrest him. He flew out from behind the castle and spent the end of the occupation posing as a patient in a Copenhagen hospital room provided by the Resistance.
After his liberation, this country boy became a war hero, serving in the Danish parliament and on the boards of various companies, and the castle was visited by dignitaries such as Marshal Montgomery and Eleanor Roosevelt.
On a recent visit, I dined at one of my grandfather's favorite places, Traktorstedet Djorslev Bogeskov. A 100-year-old dining pavilion located next to the castle forest overlooking the crashing Baltic Sea. The restaurant has been thoroughly modernized and offers an excellent buffet of local seafood, Danish pork, and salads (lunch, 259 kroner, or about $38). “I’ve only been here 20 years, so I’m not yet a Steven person,” Pavilion hostess Pia Johansen told me with a smile that wasn’t joking but wasn’t.
After a 10-minute walk through the forest along a path along the ocean, I arrived at a worn depression in the cliff where a wooden staircase once led down to the ocean. This was my grandfather's chosen location for smuggling Jews and other refugees 20 miles across the Ålesund Strait to Sweden. On the other side of the road is a wooden hut where they gathered at night to await their journey to freedom.
The water here is as clear as aquavit, and as I soaked in the cold water, I imagined my grandfather and his friends in tweed carrying their families onto waiting fishing boats.
“Famous Fish Clay”
Eleven miles south, the Stevens Klint Experience (admission fee, 140 kroner) recently opened on top of a former limestone quarry adjacent to the sea. The center consists of a dramatic concrete and glass gallery, cinema and cafe, half-buried into the hillside above the quarry.
“This is the famous fish clay,” said Nana Catherine Legg-Smith, the center's community outreach coordinator, pointing to a 2-inch dark layer penetrating the bus-sized cliff mass that is the centerpiece of the museum. The name comes from the presence of high concentrations of fossilized fish teeth and scales in the geological formations. Ms. Lee Smith grew up here like I did, but she never thought about the importance of fish clay to science, or how it would turn Stevens into a world attraction. I remember playing.
“Walter Alvarez turned our cliffs into stars,” she said of the American geologist who visited in 1978 and made an astonishing discovery. Fish clay is rich in iridium, a rare metal associated with space, evidence that the extinction of dinosaurs and half of Earth's species was caused by an asteroid impact. Stevens is one of the few places on earth where you can see this geological formation, and the cliffs have earned UNESCO status.
Two miles further up the coast is the 13th-century Hogelap Church, which looks like it's about to plunge 100 feet into the ocean below. According to local legend, the church and the eroding cliffs continued for eight centuries until the cemetery and most of the church chancel collapsed into the Baltic Sea on March 16, 1928. ” We were playing a game of tag. When I was a kid, I could walk up to the open back and stare at Hitchcock's drops without anyone bothering me. Now it is crowded with tourists. Any anxiety associated with standing there will be calmed by the knowledge that the cliffs below are reinforced with concrete.
I went down a steep flight of stairs to the chalky shore. There, some Japanese tourists were taking pictures of the jagged cliffs. After climbing back up and crossing the parking lot, we were rewarded with a wonderful lunch of herring, meatballs, and other local delicacies at the cozy Hogelplund (lunch cost her 520 kroner for two).
But for me, the best meal around here is at Lodwig, four miles down the coast. Lodvig's sandy beach is now popular with windsurfers and is affectionately known as the “Steven Riviera'' due to its sandy beaches. The 18th-century Rodvig Kro & Badehotel was a “special occasion” venue for anniversaries and weddings in my youth, where boiled cod dipped in butter and remoulade was often served. Back then, there were no luxuries for the hearty locals.
But over the past five years, the place has been reinvigorated by chef Morten Wenike, a veteran of Copenhagen's bustling restaurants who masterfully uses local ingredients. I chose coq au vin with wild mushrooms and finished with caramel and apple sorbet (dinner for two with wine, 795 kroner). After many years, I returned with a renewed sense of the inn's original Danish mid-century modern decor.
Later, at the port, I met one of Zhorslev's former agricultural supervisors, whom I had known since childhood. “What do you think makes Stevens so distinctive?'' I asked him, over the sound of halyards hitting sailboat masts.
He thought for a while. “I couldn't say that.'' We looked across the bay toward the cliffs. In the dusk, the cliffs looked like cubist etchings, surrounded by the turquoise Baltic Sea. These same waters nurtured the talkative talents of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Thomas Mann on nearby shores, but Stevens' unique magic and mythology are still preserved by a tribe of silent people.
There was a long silence, waiting for the old gentleman to add something. he didn't. “Yes,” I finally answered. “Not really.”
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