Sagnlandet Lejre - The Land of Legends

The history of Denmark's landscape became even more fascinating after a trip to Lejre today. The Lejre landscape showed how the retracting of glaciers 15 thousand years ago formed the defined hills and tunnel valleys throughout Denmark. When the glaciers finally melted, it left lakes, valleys and hills all over the country; Lejre being one of the original landscapes left. It's comprised of different grasses, bushes, trees and animals that would have been hunted/used during the four different ages - Stone Age, Iron Age, Viking Age and the 1800's. These different ages show how Danes had to adapt to the landscape to survive. After the land developed, reindeer roamed the country, then migrated North when the weather got to warm, leaving the hunter-gatherers' to either follow their prey or stay to find a new way a life.When reindeer was the main food source and since they did not include a lot of vitamins the people needed, they would eat the digested contents of the reindeers' stomachs since most plants were not mature enough to eat. As their main food source left, those hunter-gatherers' that stayed in Denmark had to depend on the Auroch cattle or wild boar for nutrients. Once the greenery was mature enough, the people would start to use that as a way to build huts and as food sources.

The islands of Denmark took time to form and once they did, the Danes had to again adapt to the new environment. With this, fish, oysters and mussels became a bigger part of hunting and a larger food source. As the weather got colder, the amount of fish began to deplete and settlers found farming may be the next way to survive. So they burned down a large amount of forests to make a flat farmland for crops as well as livestock. As farming began to increase, the landscape began to get flatter and hills less defined, losing the original landscape of Denmark. This is something a lot of countries have discovered, that farming can do a lot of damage to the original environment. Lejre is a great way to show how Danes have had to adapt over the centuries and change their farming techniques.