A small town, a new lake and a peregrine falcon

Limfjordens Hus.

Limfjordens Hus, Scandinavian style

motor boat, view from window

Lighthouse

Limfjordens Hus

I had a birthday, which everyone of us has each year of course - it was in September and we decided to go to the northernest place of the insula Salling, where I had heard about a new restaurant on the outmost tip of land at the small town Glyngøre - a town where my father spent many hours of his childhood, sailing and fishing. His home was south of Glyngøre at Nymølle, where his father was the owner of  Nymølle Tilework.

This new restaurant was built about a year ago, in 2011, a blackpainted wood building, the architecture like the stem of a ship, there is a gourmét kitchen, and a boutique where you can buy all kinds of delicacies (especially in connection to fish) and wine. The menu contains a lot of good dishes, especially fish, mussels and oysters. I like fish, but not mussels and oysters. The gourméts can have them in peace for me. The restaurant is called Limfjordens Hus. It was a very lovely place. We had a table by the panorama window with a view to the waters of Limfjorden where sailboats, fishing boats and little old motorboats came passing by. The sun was shining, it was a perfect day and the food was delicious.

Glyngøre

Glyngøre.
The little cosy town Glyngøre has a unique placement upon an spit of land in the Limfjorden, a land tongue which creates several beaches,  surrounded by high hills, intersected by deep slopes, and giving fine possibilities for fantastic tours, both on land and water. There are some well-developed path systems, and from Glyngøre till the neighbouring town Durup is established a planete road with "the Sun" placed at the tourist bureau in Glyngøre and the outermost planete in Durup. Another biking and hiking path is the old railway, which runs from the harbour of Glyngøre through fields, forests and villages all the way to the town Skive in the southern part of Salling.

Glyngøre harbour

Glyngøre has its roots in water, both ferry and fishing have supported the people of the district since from time immemorial  and created revenues ever since Glyngøre was mentioned for the first time in 1445. The greatest development came with the railway in the 1870s. The Salling railway opened up for a revival of business and increase of population which caused that a church was consecrated in the middle of the town in 1919. Both the industry and the placement of the town at the fjord and the forest have caused that it has developed from two windswept fishing huts into a modern settlement.

The Limfjord-Oyster.
The most wellknown business in Glyngøre is the oyster and mussel  industry. Oysters were in Stone Age an important food - this is obvious when you see the mountains of shells in the several kitchen middens from Stone Age. Oysters became later (Ostrea edulis) a luxurious food, reserved the finest circles, and king Frederik II elevated in 1587 the catch of oysters to a monopoly under the royal house - a socalled kronregalie (regalia) which ordered all oysters, which were presence in Denmark, the property of the Crown. The oyster fishing was for many years a good income for the king, and up to our days it was the Danish monarchy and later the Danish state who leased the right to fish oysters in Denmark. Limfjorden is the only place with large presence today of the oyster, which earlier was common in all Danish waters, and the Ostrea edulis, the flat European oyster, is not being fished in other places than in Denmark. Denmark's export of Limfjord-oyster is ab. 15 million piece a year. The Limfjord-oyster has now got the MSC-mark.

The Blue Mussel.
But I cannot mention the oyster-business without saying something about the blue mussel ( Mytilus edulis) , for this is also one of Glyngøre's wellknown and important exports. 100 % of the Danish mussel-export has the renowned and international MSC-mark (Marine Stewardship Council). The blue mussels in the Limfjorden are cultivated between May and September, and about a couple of thousand tons are harvested each year, the mussels are produced sustainably without or with only little impact of the environment and the other mussel-populations. The whole Danish mussel-export is about 42.500 tons each year.

The Salling Girl

Now! I really had to give you a recipe after all this talk, but I cannot deliver it without copying someone's recipe, and this is not allowed I guess!

Sallingsund Bridge in the background

 The Salling Girl.
An artist (Erik Dahl Nygaard) has created the sculptures of 8 Salling-girls, a 2 meter tall bronze figure, they all wear stilettos. When I saw the sculpture of this girl outside the restaurant I wondered why she stood like that, looking like she had a scoliosis, but  well it must be the artist's idea of a young girl, but then it was because she had to balance on stillettos. The other 7 Salling girls are placed in various towns in the Salling district.  




















 Grynderup Sø.

Public Planche from naturplan.dk

In the afternoon  we went to a new lake which was re-established recently near Glyngøre. Grynderup sø (lake) is a nature restoration project. The purpose is to reduce the outlet of nitrogen into the Limfjorden and to create a better living for birds, animals and plants -  and to give people new possibilities of experiencing nature. The project has been carried through via voluntary agreements with the landowners. The main part of the area is still privately owned, while the Miljøministeriet (environment) has taken over ab. 80 hectare of the northernest part of the area, where the public probably will come. Bike- and hiking paths have been established, areas with tables and benches, parking places and primitive overnight places. Lookout towers give possibility to see the bird life, and in the northern end of the lake is a drawing- ferry in the narrowest place of the oblong lake.

                                                                                                   

 

red admiral

toad, a kid!

elderberry

peregrine falcon, photo: stig bachmann nielsen.




The Peregrine Falcon.
There were still some flowers by the path along the lake, like toadflax and yarrow and some yellow ones, there were dragonflies, too fast for shooting, and there was a tiny, tiny toad, who was looking at us in a very suspicious way.  The elderberry had fruits, ready to pluck for elderberry juice for winter, but there was not enough for both me and the birds, so I let them be. And then - there it came, the highlight of the day - a streak in the air like a flash of light - the peregrine falcon - it came so fast that I saw nothing but a glimpse. But my son took a shot of the noble bird in its speed. And this falcon is really extremely fast. The peregrine falcon is the fastest animal on earth when it is diving.

The peregrine falcon's maximum speed:
Speed is the falcon's forte. If birds of prey were airplanes, then the eagles, the buzzards, the kites would be the gliders, and the falcons would be the jets. Estimates of the maximum speed of a falcon dive are as fast as 273 miles an hour (440 km/h) based on analysis of motion-picture footage of a falcon in full vertical dive taken by the Naval Research Laboratory in England in WWII. Most biologists, however, estimate the falcon's maximum velocity at 150 to 200 miles an hour ( 240 to 320 km/h), which is still faster than any other animal on earth.
(from my article "Falconry in the Middle Ages" from August 2010, on the Thyra-blog) 




photo September 2012: grethe bachmann nielsen; stig bachmann nielsen, naturplan.dk

The Ertebølle Culture
Kitchen Midden/ Køkkenmødding


Ertebølle

Ertebølle Hoved is an ab. 500 m long and up to 20 m high coastal bank with layers of moler and ashes, and it is situated in a very beautiful nature area about 17-18 km southwest of Løgstør - close to the village Ertebølle. From the top of Ertebølle Hoved is an unique view across Limfjorden to Salling, Mors, Fur and Livø. Ertebølle Hoved is a very welknown fishing place; many sea trouts have been caught here. In the cliff is a big colony of sand martins. There are exciting geological formations with layers of volcanic ashes and moler and travelling rocks from Norway and Sweden and possibilites of finding fossils of plants and animals in the ashes and moler. Of the kitchen midden are only weak traces ab. 2 km to the south, but an exhibition gives an interesting introduction to the history.


A view to Vitskøl Kloster


Ertebølle on the coast, a view to Salling

Ertebølle gave name to Ertebøllekulturen, which is the international denominator of the coastal cultures in the early part of Jægerstenalderen. It is due to that the National Museum in the 1890s excavated a giant kitchen midden at Ertebølle, consisting of oyster- and scallop/ cockleshells which revealed that people lived at this place in the early part of Jægerstenalderen. The kitchen midden is from the period 5200-4200 b.c. and represents a southern Scandinavian Stone Age culture.Findings of bones etc. suggest that some of the large settlements were residences all the year round, while the lesser settlements were seasonal. In Denmark settlements from this cultural period are common on the islands and coasts of Limfjorden and along Jutland's east coast. But it was Ertebølle which gave the name to this era.

Kitchen middens may have a thickness of several meters and a stretching of several hundred meters. From the beginning they consisted of small shell heaps growing higher and higher. Among the shells were trash from housekeeping, animal bones, tools, etc. They did not live like poor people at the settlements. Their daily food was rich in nutrients. An informative finding was a clay-pot with the burnt crusts of fish. The fish were put unskinned into the pot. It was not possible to determine the plant parts, but the pot has probably contained a fish soup with herbs, it was somewhat like the Stone Ages people's bouillabaisse. Another clay-pot contained a porridge consisting of fermented blood and flour, made of seed and hazelnuts. These and other examples were an insight to a food culture, where cooking the food did secure that the nutrients in seed, fruit, roots and vegetables were exploited, and at the same time that it maintained the juice and the fat in a good soup.


Ertebølle Hoved

The hunting people who lived in the period after ab. 6.800 b.c. is named Kongemosejægerne after a settlement in the western part of Zealand. The hunting people from ab. 5400 bc is named Ertebøllejægerne after the famous kitchen midden Ertebølle south of Løgstør at Limfjorden. The various names do not refer to immigration, since there was a population continuity of the hunting tribes. The names are just archaeological names of the various tool-traditions, which succeeded one another during Jægerstenalderen - and which made it easier to confirm the archeaological findings.

The hunting people lived in settlements at the coast, generally all year round. Here was the richest flora and the richest food supply. Large areas of fx North Jutland, North Funen and North Zealand were flooded by water and divided in islands, numerous inlets and low-watered lands. The most important food was the food from the sea. Human bones were examined, showing that fish and sea mammals were the large part of the food in Jægerstenalderen. A seasonal movement of the settlements did undoubtedly take place. There seem to have existed some specialized settlements with season-hunting for seal and furred animals, fx in East Jutland at Ringkloster (Skanderborg), where the settlement was used during several centuries, mainly inhabited in winter season.


There are only weak traces of the kitchen midden

At the coast was brushwood of alder, willow, hazel and hawthorn; ivory and honeysuckle twisted around bushes and trees. Mistletoe was common. The animal life in the settlement was marked by an almost endless richness in variation. There were large amounts of fish, there were seals, dolphins, porpoises and killers in the salt waters and the inlets. Furthermore a large amount of birds, both resident and migrating birds. The hunting included aurochs, red deer, wild boar, elk and furring animals like otter and pine marten, in the sea they were hunting for fish, sea mammals and sea birds. The hunting in the hinterland gave a large bag of important raw materials and valuable meat. People at the coast might also have had a contact to inland settlements.

The climate was mild, subtropical. The mildness of the climate had also an influence on the conditions between the land and the sea. The ocean continued to rise, caused by the melting down of ice at the poles. (Since the ocean reached its maximum in the Atlantic period it has sunk ab. 3 m during the next 7000 years caused by a general fall in temperature). The rise of the water was not regular. Since the hunting people's settlements mostly were placed in connection to water, the water level was of great importance. The settlements were moved to keep pace with the coast advance or return. The population grew and grew, which increased the need for food; it weighed heavily on the resources, and in the end it became a necessity to find a permanent solution. And the agriculture came to ab. 4000 b.c.



The changed conditions between land and sea gave the archeologists great possibilities for studying the settlements at the coasts. They were mostly situated in small quiet inlet areas and inner low-lands. In the northern part of Denmark in North Jutland the kitchen middens are found in raised land. In the southern part of Denmark the kitchen middens are below water.


Mini-museum in front and a large Stenalder Center behind the trees.

A mini-museum close to the cliff describes about the kitchen midden and the geology of the area. A few hundred meters from here is the exhibition of the Stenaldercenter which describes the nature in and around Ertebølle ab. 6-7000 years ago and how people lived, furthermore are several archaeological findings etc. A reconstructed settlement gives examples of how the huts from that period might have looked, and the visitors can see how flint was made into axes and other tools, and they can participate in activities like archery and skin tanning etc.

Source:
Gyldendal og Politikens Danmarkshistorie 1988, Bind 1. "I begyndelsen", af Jørgen Jensen.
Bodil og Heino Døygaard: "Se dit Land Danmark". Skarv. Høst og Søn. 1996
Politikens store Danmarksbog, af Søren Olsen, 2003

photo 9. April 2009: grethe bachmann