Silkeborg - Art Center and Kongensbro

A Taste of Denmark

Winter

The countryside  was very winterly on this February day - and the air was freezing cold. We came from the east coast of Jutland and went to the town Silkeborg in the middle - and the difference in temperature was remarklable, from minus 9 Celsius at Århus till minus 15 Celsius by Silkeborg. The trees had been covered in frost in the morning, but the sun was shining most of the time and it has a little more power now than in the cold period before Christmas. I like the winter lanscape, the white of the snow highlights the blue shades in nature. It's very beautiful.    













I'm always counting buzzards on the fences in winter. They are watching the countryroad and the fields for prey. This was the third "fence-buzzard" that day,  a very light-coloured bird, but it turned its back to us. I'ts not easy to catch a photo of the buzzard from a car. On the motor road you must not stop or slow down, and if you roll down the window, the buzzard reacts at once and fly away.

Not far from the road a little village with a church. It's a suburb of Århus, but it's still a parish church, a Romanesque building with a tower from the Middle Ages. In the church is a very fine Romanesque granite baptismal font with double-lion figures and an old bible etc....but we're not talking churches today!

Framlev church and village

I don't know why I like old sheds. Here's a green one behind pretty trees. 













Our destination was Silkeborg Art Center with an exhibition of Danish and Chinese artists, and when we came to the parking place a fine little bird was singing in the top of a spruce. It was a Common Crossbill. This colourful little bird has eggs and baby birds in the midst of the dark cold winter - and the babies fly out in March as the earliest bird litter in the Danish bird fauna. The crossbill's food are spruce cones, which hold most seeds in January and February, and there are many cones this winter, so it might  be a good year for this pretty little bird.

At the main entrance

detail of painting

The Art Center Silkeborg Bad is placed in the outskirts of the town Silkeborg in a scenic area, close to a pretty lake Ørnsø and a sacred spring Arnakkekilden, surrounded by forest and a beautiful sculpture park. The place was a spa resort from 1883 till 1983. Today it has been transformed into a modern art center. All year are alternative exhibitions of primarily contemporary art from home and abroad.  The art works often appear together with the special physical possibilities of the place, and the park is on a regular basis involved as a part of the display area.The present exhibition  "Seeing Landscape" was an association of Danish and Chinese painters and sculptors, called Corner.

detail of painting

Above some examples from the exhibition.

In the sculpture park.

stable

Gern Å

A listed area with a water stream with good fishing of trouts and with hills and meadows is laid out as a regional nature area of geological and landscape interest with an important active for the outdoor life. It's not easy to see in winter, but there is public access to large sections of the listed area along foot paths, forest roads and some field paths with several recreational spaces, like in the beautiful hills, Gern Bakker with great views across the river valley of Gudenaa.
Along the hills is an old road called the "Trækstien"  which runs upon a dike from the 1800s, where the river Gudenå was an important trade route with an extensive barge navigation. "Trækstien" is today a popular hiking route, it's about 23 km and it connects Silkeborg to Kongensbro.

Buzzard in tree

cute horses

Gudenå at Svostrup

stubble field

Blue Skies

Gudenå at Kongensbro

Here at Kongensbro, where the country road between Århus and Viborg crosses the river Gudenå, was a landevejskro (guesthouse) siden 1663, when king Frederik 3. allowed Ebbe Gyldenstierne to run a guesthouse at the riverside of Gudenå. The present inn is from 1949 and is today run by Christian Andersen, who's the third generation Andersen at the place. His great-grandmother founded the tradition of good cooking on Kongensbro. She published no less than 8 cookbooks with dishes from the guesthouse and recipes from the district. Her good  traditions are now brought on in the third generation. Kongensbro Kro is today a modern inn, but in the old days it was known as the Pramdragerkroen, (barge transport inn). There were many of those guesthouses along the barge transport route, when the river Gudenå was the most important trade route through Mid Jutland. The transport was on big barges, being drawn by men and horses along the pramdragersti,  the path along the river("Trækstien").

you cannot go skating here..........

the geese are flying home - whereever that is.....

the light is fading... we're going home too..

photo Silkeborg district 4 february 2012: grethe bachmann