Latest Fieldnotes

Access: We weren’t able to actually visit these, as the field was in crop. So we just looked at the one we could see from the road and the field edge, a frustrating 20 metres away. There was no obvious path across the flat (ploughed when we were there) field, so it would probably be best to ask at one of the nearby farm or houses.

Very near other monuments in the woods near Frellesvig on Langeland. From the 305 heading north, pass Frellesvig and turn left (west) after a few hundred yards when the main road bends gently right. (It may be unmetalled, I’m not quite sure.)

Turn left (west) at the next ‘junction’. After just under 0.5km, this road turns right, but the monuments are in the field on the left (south). there is just room to park here.

Seen from a (frustratingly close!) distance 7 April 2006
In a small uncultivated plot in the north end of a field there are a large damaged langdysse and a better (I believe) preserved, but much smaller one.

The northern and larger langdysse certainly looks to have an impressive kerb, but it appeared that its ‘top’ was probably quite disturbed. It certainly looked overgrown when we were there.

James Dyer says in Discovering Archaeology in Denmark that the smaller one has 2 clear chambers with passages to the south-east and large wall slabs filled-in with dry stone. They are both 1.8 metres wide and 3 metres long. He calls the kerb at the SE ‘particularly good’.

We couldn’t see this at all, as our view was blocked by the northern one.

Access: We didn’t actually visit this one, just looked at it from the road roughly 100 metres away. There was no obvious path across the flat (ploughed when we were there) field, so it would probably be best to ask at one of the nearby farms or houses.

Around 0.5km north of Dyssekammer i Herslev.

Seen from a distance 7 April 2006
This looked very overgrown, though you could glimpse one of the 2 chambers through the scrubby trees, standing exposed and proud of the mound.

There was no path that we could see and nowhere immediately obvious to park for more than a few seconds, so we decided to give it a miss as we had a lot more to see in our last full day in Denmark.

Must admit, I now kind of regret it, as looking at the one photo I took, it looks as if it may be better preserved than we thought. Visit it & let us know!

Featured in The Megalithic European (TME) page 163, as an inset.

Access: A short walk of about 500m at the most, gently uphill over a grassy track.

Near Horsens & junction 56 of E45. I’ll echo Julian’s instructions, as we got there fine using them! From junction 56 head east on the 52 taking care to stay on the 52 at a strange crossroads where the 52 ‘veers right’ (as Julian puts it). Then he says to go 2.1km along that road, turning right at sign for Rugballe 1.

Follow that lane until you reach a T junction & turn right, the another 0.8km & turn right into trees. Look out for a clearing on the right where the monument is & a clearing on the left where you can park.

It seems from the map that you could actually get there a slightly simpler way by turning off the 52 a little earlier, but there may be something I don’t know about that route!

Visited 4 April 2006
The Great Tomb on Porth Hellick Down in the Isles of Scilly immediately sprang to mind on seeing this, both on TME & in the ‘flesh’. But that’s a good thing, giving 2 of my favourite features in a tomb – a chamber you can get into and a nice set of kerbstones!

Really narrow passage & a comparatively small, low chamber with a beautifully quartz-striped stone as one of its largest orthostats. There is a valley to the north which I think may have offered a pretty cool view, but it’s masked by the trees mentioned in the directions.

Excavators found burials & associated materials in the chamber from the middle and late neolithic. A huge number (7,000!) potshards were found just outside the kerbstones, in front of the passage, and more on top of some of the kerbstones.

Access: Good. You can get within a few yards of the monument by car and enjoy the seaside setting.

For road directions to the area, see Frydendal Kro. Continue NW along the ‘main’ forest road, past Frydendal Øst & Havrekobbel.

It’s about 5km in total from Frydendal Kro. Stay on this road, and keep eyes open for a right-turn to Nygard.

Once you can see the sea, you can also see the runddysse!

Visited 3 April 2006
Wow! A wonderfully pretty monument in a beautiful setting – the sea always makes a fantastic life-filled backdrop!

An impressively complete kerb remains on this picturesque runddysse, which is built on an ‘extra’ mound to allow it to sit level on the slope down towards the sea.

The centrally placed chamber is exposed, but the mound is complete enough to still mean that the sidestones are largely below the surface. It’s topped off with a heavy & shapely capstone .

The sun even came out, highlighting the amazing variety of differently coloured kerbstones and turning them into dollymixtures!

A favourite!

Co-ordinates are for carpark on east side of road, barrows are clearly visible on west of road

Access: Carpark at east of road and short walk along grassy paths to the nearest barrow. May get boggy in the wet and I haven’t seen the path between the 2 barrows – I guess they’re about 200m apart.

For directions, see Mols/Porskær Stenhus. Continue east along this road past Porskær un-named to Agri, continuing ‘straight on’ at the crossroads. The barrows are on the left after about 500m.

Visited 4 April 2006
Having spent hours at Mols/Porskær Stenhus & wanting to get on to Tustrup, we didn’t have time to walk up to these beauties – which I now kind of regret!

However, from the little information I’ve found, it doesn’t look as if there is all that much to see other than the mounds.

Access: Small carpark close to monument. Short uphill walk of maybe 100 metres on edge of field, with worn path across ploughed soil (when we were there) to monument.

Langdysse ved Ristinge Nor is in the south of Langeland, but very easy to reach from Hesselbjerg. From there, go into Hesselbjerg village and turn right. Very soon take the next left, and then the next right.

The road bends left to go north and then left again to go west. Stay on this road and the monument is in a field on your right on the (near) horizon after around 0.5km. There is a small parking place also on the right (north) of the road.

Visited 5 April 2006
Nice one! Covering mound gone, but looking spectacular in the yellow light of the sinking sun.

This strongly reminded me of Lindeskov Langdysse 6 – the one featured on page 157 of Julian’s The Megalithic European, both because of the lack of mound covering and the multiple chambers.

The plan of the monument on the information board at the carpark shows that 2 of the 4 chambers in the langdysse were jættestuen – passage graves. And the ‘middle’ 2 were ‘dysse’ or dolmens – burial chambers without a passage – suggesting that they are older.

Quite handily, one of each remains reasonably well-preserved (though I think the passage on the passage grave only has one stone from its passage).

Access: Good – carpark right next to monuments.

Head for Aabenraa on the E45, down near the isle of Als. Leave the E45 at junction 70 to go west on the 24 for a short distance. Then take the 429 west into Rødekro, but almost immediately turning left (south) onto Hærvejen. This road will take you to Hjordkær.

As you reach the town, you will see an industrial estate on your right before reaching the 443. Turn west into the industrial estate and the carpark and monuments are on your left after 100-200 metres.

Visited 3 April 2006
Hmmm. Prehistoric sites throughout Europe include many gritty ‘urban’ survivors that remain powerful, impressive and attractive despite their surroundings.

This ain’t one of them, but it’s still partially a credit to the local archaeological authorities that it’s still here & with what looked like a very good info board. (It was in Danish, so I can’t guarantee it was good!)

Its unsatisfactory setting (and possibly state of destruction) are a familiar story for those of us who care about sites in the UK. The site was excavated in 1980 as several burial mounds were being ploughed up as the land was under industrial development. How many burial mounds there were and what condition they and this site were in, I don’t know.

At least the nearest factory makes something worthwhile – parts for wind turbines....

Access: Area to park right next to Kongehøjen ved Voldstedlund. We didn’t have time to go up to or into Ormhøj or Jordhøj. It looks like a walk of a few hundred metres back along the road would be the best approach, but you may be able to reach them from Rishøj.

Visited 4 April 2006
Aaargh!!! Through the big lens, Ormhøj and Jordhøj look like real beauties, but we were out of time having spent quite a while at Kongehøjen ved Voldstedlund and Rishøj.

To be honest, I hadn’t realised they were so close to Kongehøjen ved Voldstedlund until we were heading away. How I missed spotting them from Rishøj, I don’t know, but it was probably too late by then!

So if you’re lucky enough to visit, the only information I’ve found is that Ormhøj has an oval chamber 5 meters long with a rare smaller chamber behind it. Excavated in the 1890s, finds of earthenware post and flint knives are in the Danish National Museum (Copenhagen).

It looks as though you can get into the chambers.

Immediately adjacent to La Croix de St Pierre Tertre Tumulaire is La Croix de St Pierre cairn which Julian calls Le Dolmen West. I loved this. It’s very restored but it has a style and character, clarity and sharpness which I found very appealing.

And next, immediately adjacent to La Croix de St Pierre is the La Croix de St Pierre Tertre Tumulaire, a 20 metre long low mound surrounded by small kerbstones marking out its shape. Not much height left to the mound now.

Mentioned in passing in The Megalithic European (TME) on page 168.

Access: Walk of just over 1km fairly gently uphill much of the time, along field edges next to the sea. Quite rough underfoot, as much of this is on edges of ploughed fields.

The Langdysse ved Pæregård Strand is on Langeland, and easy to find from Ringlehøj i Snave Skov. Simply continue for around 700m to the end of the same road which ends beside the sea. Walk north along the edge of the fields next to the sea.

7 April 2006
What a shame! OK, so the langdysse’s is quite damaged, but it seems that it could still be well worth seeing if cleared of the thick overgrowth covering it.

It has the remains of 3 chambers and according to James Dyer in 1972 “...is partly surrounded by a kerb of stones.” – Discovering Archaeology in Denmark.

The tough & gnarly vegetation makes it very difficult to investigate the monument properly and to work out what’s what. Even with the plan in Oldtidsminder På Langeland that we picked up at the tourist info office, it’s still too abstract.

And worse, with its seaside setting, it has a wonderful place in the landscape that can only be glimpsed, when it should be striking. The tress and large bushes on it mask the view to th north from the south of the monument – and the view to the south from the north.

All that said, we enjoyed our visit – the coast here is beautiful – but the monument requires a fair amount of imagination and prompted a lot of frustration!

Access: The field was in crop so we simply took a couple of photos and headed onwards. From where we took the photos we couldn’t tell what access was like, unfortunately.

The Jaettestuekammer ved Kinderballe is on Langeland, and easy to find from Hesselbjerg. Simply continue for around 2.5km on the same road out of Hesselbjerg village heading SE then bending south.

When you pass Kinderballe, the road kinks to the west & back to head SSW. The stones are clearly visible a short distance ahead in the field on the right (west).

Seen from a distance 5 April 2006
Huge stones on an imposing mound. The scary bit is how big the covering mound would have been, as as far as we could see, these look like the chambers of a langdysse!!!

I’d love to get up to this place one day!

Visited 2 April 2006
We couldn’t spot this one – is it destroyed? If not, I would have thought it would have been visible from the nearest roads....

We weren’t able to enter the field for a poke around though, so we may have missed something!

With the light almost gone, we really needed clear directions to get to Steenbergen before dark. I fouled up on the navigation and we went the wrong way. Then, just as we really needed shit-hot directions from Julian (as they had been most of the two days we’d used his instructions) he let us down. However, we found it. (just turn right when you get to the first T-junction in Steenbergen village and follow the lane round till you see the car park.) Just as we had started the day with a rip-roaring beauty, we ended it on a high. Steenbergen is marvellous. Up on a dune this lovely six-capstoned animal perches in the sand, complete with dinky dolmen-style portal. For some reason it had a single strand of barbed wire fence around it. Protection from what, we wondered? We just climbed under.

29 December 2003
Well-signposted in the village of Noord sleen near Emmen, this hunebed lies complete with kerbstones close to its more trashed neighbour, D51.

Visible from D51, perhaps just 50 metres away, is D50 and this is a cracker. Ten metres long, maybe more, and with 8 of its original 9 capstones still there and all still supported by their uprights, this monument is in really good shape enhanced by its original kerbstones encircling the line of ‘dolmens’. And today, sparkling under yesterday’s snowfall, it was magical, the snowmelt creating beautiful abstract shapes and blueish light against the greeny grey stones. While Moth made photographs, I made a quick sketch.

29 December 2003

Following Julian’s instructions in The Megalithic European we quickly located D50 and D51 at the tiny hamlet of Noordsleen, near Emmen.

Our footsteps crunching the 150ms up the icy farm track towards the copse in which they lie, the first hunebed you reach is D51. With only three capstones remaining, this site feels a bit trashed, but with snow on the stones and the huge flat fields all around glistening it felt exciting and special to be there, as this was both Moth’s and Cleo’s first hunebed.

(Also known as Papeloze Kerk)

Last time I was in Drenthe, I had only a crappy map to work from so completely failed to find this one, which I desperately wanted to see. It turns out I had been only about 200 metres from the monument which lies in an intimate glade in dense woodland. Happily, this time, with Julian’s instructions in TME we found it immediately.

Even the approach is thrilling, down an avenue of trees, like walking into an early van Gogh drawing. And at the end of the avenue lies the prize! Today, covered with snow, it looked like a giant Christmas cake… and equally delicious and fulfilling. This is different from other hunebedden in that part of the mound has been rebuilt, so it gives a really good idea of what they might have once looked like. It reminded me of an over-sized Scillionian cairn.
I sat on the ice, my frozen arse forcing me to make a VERY quick sketch.

The more I looked, the more I loved it. This place is magic. If you come to Drenthe, make sure you see this one.

Emmen Schimeres is the only ‘langgraf’ in the Netherlands. It has a complete kerb of massive stones and its chambers are just beginning to show through what is left of its barrow. A monster and a beauty just on the outskirts of Emmen (off the Odoorn Road). Signposted. Opposite the Mazda garage.

‘It’s just like Wayland’s Smithy!’ exclaimed Cleo. She’s right. I’d been here before, but not in the snow.

The snow provided highlights which emphasized the tremendous length of this langgraf and the closely spaced massive kerbstones seemed to taper off into infinity. The snow also helped to throw out the shapes of the two exposed chambers, rising from the cushion of barrow still within the kerbstones. We all liked this one very much, and like Papeloze Kerk, if you make it to Drenthe, put this one on you list of ‘must-sees’.

A drive of no more than one kilometre north of Schimeres langgraf, Emmermeer (or Emmen Noord as Julian calls it in TME) is a really pretty little hunebed, sweetly sited three metres from the roadside on a piece of undeveloped heathland opposite some 1970s apartments. This one is quite small, but its four dainty flattish stones balanced beautifully on its legs has the appearance of a mini Frank Lloyd Wright prairie style house.

On the western outskirts of Emmen is Valther Forest. There are three hunebedden here, D38, D39 and D40. They’re not in fantastic condition, but they are in the most glorious woodland setting. Go there for complete peace.

D38, D39 and D40 stand in a delightful heathland clearing in the forest near Emmen. They’re all a bit wrecked, but the location is so gorgeous, they’re well worth visiting.

D38, D39 and D40 stand in a delightful heathland clearing in the forest near Emmen. They’re all a bit wrecked, but the location is so gorgeous, they’re well worth visiting.

D40 is the most impressive of this trio of ‘grafheuvels’ in the Valther Forest just north of Emmen. It would be a fairly long walk to them from the road, so risking the wrath of the forest ranger and being completely unable to read the signs, I drove up the sandy forest track until we found them in a bright forest clearing.

You approach D40 first, which is the most complete of the trio. Two great capstones are supported by six sidestones which seemed to us to have more beneath the ground level than above.

Strike off to the west for 20 metres through the low growing heathers and you find D38 and D39.

All three have distinct round raised ringed walls of sand hinting at the size and scale of what once must’ve been quite a necropolis of round barrows.

This wasn’t on our list, but we passed so close by it on our way up to Borger, we couldn’t resist calling in to say ‘hi’. Easy to find, this rather wrecked monument nevertheless has charms. It’s bucolic position in it own little copse in the middle of wide open fields is cosy and inviting. Only one capstone is still supported, the rest are down, giving it the feeling of a wounded animal, not yet quite willing to admit defeat. All but one hunebedden are in state care, with no risk of being ploughed up or dismantled, so Odoorn’s survival in it’s broken condition is assured. By the time we got to Odoorn, most of the snow had melted from the monument in the bright, crisp sunshine.

After lunching in a comfy and quirky typically Dutch eetcafe called ‘t Hunebed in the centre of Borger village, we made our way to the edge of the village to the largest hunebed of the lot – what Julian calls the ‘Great Borger Hunebed’. The Rijkshunebed Informatiecentrum is here, too, and sold lots of lovely books and stuff – but not a damn thing in English. Easy to find – just get yourself to Borger (a very pretty town) and follow the signs. Tip: its in the north of the village.

Borger is a monster. Simply huge. Deeply impressive, its giant backbone of capstones all supported, it does feel like a sleeping dinosaur or huge segmented insect larvae. I challenge the most disinterested person not to go ‘Ooh!’ at this one. It feels slightly soulless to me; though this might be because it is undoubtedly the most visited and exploited.