Spanskhøj stands tall and proud at the other side of the field from Snibhøj.
Don’t be misled by what Julian calls Spanskhøj on page 159 of TME. What he calls Spanskhøj is in fact Snibhøj.
After spending quite some time investigating Snibhøj, we drove round to see if we could get into Spanskhøj. We couldn’t. It was quite tousled with vegetation and had no clear path to it. It certainly had two passages but there was no way we could get in. Shame.
What Julian calls Spanskhøj on page 159 of TME is in fact this lovely chambered mound: Snibhøj.
After reaching Hannerup we saw the sign to drive into a farm courtyard. Before we had even turned the engine off, a kind woman had scurried out with a huge torch for us to view inside the mound.
We dropped our 6kr kroner each in the honesty box, took an informative homemade leaflet and set off through the thick smell of pig poo to the field with the mounds. Spanskhøj, Snibhøj and one other flattened double-entranced mound stand in the same field, and the leaflet makes it clear which is which.
Snibhøj is very special. I’d never seen a monument like it! Two passageways, two FABULOUS chambers which you can get into and investigate, one of which housed a tiny, sleepy bat.
Immediately next to Snibhøj a flattened version of it. We couldn’t find its name.
Spanskhøj stands tall and proud at the other side of the field from Snibhøj.
Access: See fieldnotes for Lindeskov Langdysse 1. This ‘subcomplex’ is reached by a lane that enters the woods a couple of hundred metres to the west of the monuments.
This is not the same lane as Lindeskov Langdysse 1 is on, but if heading west on the 323, it is the next (small) lane heading north.
Once at the woods, reach the clearing by a worn path leading east along the edge of the woods. The path is a little overgrown and not all that even. Could be slippery when wet.
Visited 2 April 2006
Wow!!! What a wonderful surprise! My research hadn’t led us to these monuments, but we saw them on an information board at Lindeskov Langdysse 1.
Neither Julian in The Megalithic European, nor James Dyer in Discovering Archaeology in Denmark even mentions their existence! (but then Julian only mentions Langdysse 6 and Dyer only Langdysse 1 & 6.)
In a clearing in the woods there are 2 langdysser, a burial chamber (dyssekammer) and a round barrow (runddysse). They’re a little ‘worn around the edges’, but still totally essential viewing.
Visited 2 April 2006
Tucked away round some trees behind Langdysse 2 is this nice little round barrow.
It’s so bijou that by Danish standards it hardly seems more than a cist in a small mound, but it has a nice kerb & of course the mound may well have once been considerably taller.
A lovely thing & among the stuff we saw in Denmark, quite unusual. I’d reckon it was well worth visiting in itself, but combined with the nearby monuments....
Visited 2 April 2006
A beauty! Very nice langdysse, though looks a little dug out in places.
The exposed chamber stones seem a little odd. It’s a small setting, almost like passage stones, but pointing in the ‘wrong’ direction – as you’d usually expect them to go to the side of the monument (see Langdysse 3).
Possibly a cist?
Unfortunately I’ve been unable to find any detailed info on these monuments, and none in in English....
Visited 2 April 2006
Probably the jewel in this site’s crown.
Large, and denuded (presumably, or perhaps excavated) enough to allow the chambers to be nicely exposed.
The southern chamber has some stones ‘attached’ that look a bit like the remains of a passage. The northern chamber is a lovely big slabby thing with a raw-looking boulder capstone.
Combined with some big beefy kerbstones, this was a Moth favourite. Oh for some information – in English!
Access: For directions to Lindeskov, see Lindeskov Langdysse 1. For directions to the dolmen itself, see Dysser i Lindeskov Hestehave. If you can get permission to walk up to the site from the nearby farm, it looks like an easy walk of 100m or so across pasture.
Visited 2 April 2006
We could see this from Lindeskov Langdysse 1. Couldn’t investigate it closely, as it’s not officially open to the public. And we couldn’t ‘sneak’ over to it, as there were people working in the nearby farm but time constraints meant we didn’t have time to go and ask permission.
Looks like a beauty, and from the west a ‘rise’ in the field suggested the vestiges of an enormous covering mound.
Access: Very good. You can park right next to the monument. Actually, too close – in fact, if you have a 4WD (hawk, spit!) you could probably park on top of it! (Don’t!)
To reach the monument, take the 8 to Orbæk. Head west(ish) out of the village on the 323. After leaving the village, travel around 1km or less & take what I think is the first turning on the right (north). This turning is just after a large farm at the beginning of a gentle right kink in the 323, and very soon after a turning to Lindeskov village.
Within moments, the langdysse will appear from behind a building and some trees on your right.
Visited 2 April 2006
The longest (or langest) langdysse in Denmark & it failed to make Julian’s cut for The Megalithic European. I can kind of see why – assuming he visited it.
It’s mind-bogglingly long, but I found it somehow slightly underwhelming and ‘soulless’. The drab weather didn’t help, but ultimately, the facts that it was so huge & has a largely complete set of large kerbstones didn’t stop it looking too much like a stretch of disused railway embankment!!!
Perhaps it suffers from chambers not being visible, despite several apparent attempts at excavation.
A tiny chamber is exposed at the north end, without its capstone. But if it wasn’t for James Dyer in Discovering Archaeology in Denmark, I would have probably thought this was the remains of an inserted cist.
It’s a shame that it’s difficult to get a view from the east to properly appreciate its full length (due to ploughed/cultivated field), as from the west, part of it is obscured by the trees mentioned above. It’s also marred by a rubbish bin, an info board & the parking space.
All that said, it’s pretty damn impressive & absolutely a must-see.
Featured in The Megalithic European (TME) as an inset on page 157.
Access: Very good. Right next to the 323 with a layby right next to it. For directions to Lindeskov, see Lindeskov Langdysse 1, but continue west along the 323. Very soon, the monument will appear on your right, immediately next to the road.
Visited 2 April 2006
Wow! A massively impressive skeleton, this must have been a monster when ‘clothed’ in its mound.
For some, the site may be marred by the proximity of the road. But for me, the ‘flipside’ that the closeness to the road makes it easy for all to reach negates this, & adds that feeling that this is a survivor that won’t be done away with easily! And how!
Lindeskov 6 boasts no fewer than 4 good-sized chambers (actually, 2 are huge) plus another diddy one at the west.
The number of undeniably large stones used here make this one of those sites that still fills me with wonderment at the effort put into building these things – no matter how used to looking at them I get!
Wonderful.
Access: Good. The two main monuments are right next to the road, one each side.
From Frydendal Øst, continue north west along the road (which becomes langedyssevej), passing Frydendal Øst. However, when the road forks, you need the right turn onto Nørreskovej. There is a large white house (called Havrekobbelhus!) at this junction, you need to pass it on your left.
A few hundred metres on, you will see a layby-type space on your right, and the monuments are just around the next bend.
Visited 3 April 2006
Nice! Three langdysser – I’d describe one as ‘beautifully broken’, one as not badly preserved & the other pretty totally trashed & unimpressive.
The one on the south of the road is splendid, featuring the remains of a beautiful kerb and the remains of a couple of chambers. Probably as a result of the remaining kerb, it has retained its classic langdysse shape very well, albeit I would assume, considerably lower than it would originally have been.
The other reasonably well-preserved one (nearest to the road on the north) – let’s call it the ‘middle’one – only has a few kerb-type stones. But it’s noteable for a lovely ruined chamber with a large capstone & the remains of a passage to the east.
The final, most northerly barrow is basically a large low mound ‘behind’ the dysse on the north edge of the road. It has a few large stones on it, but I have to admit I don’t remember the remains of a four sided chamber that James Dyer mentions in Discovering Archaeology in Denmark.
A beautiful & peaceful place for a picnic on a nice day – there’s even a picnic table provided.
Approximate long/lat coordinates only, but shouldn’t be too hard to find.
Featured in The Megalithic European (TME) page 155.
Access: In woodland, you can get close enough by car to see the monuments through the trees. The ground around the monuments is typical woodland mud, which may be slippery when wet.
Blommeskobbel is on the island of Als, so travel towards Sønderborg on the 8. We went a slightly different way to Julian in TME, but it looked simpler on the map.
Shortly after a roundabout at Bro, we took a right towards Kettingskov. As we reached Kettingskov, at a crossroads with a slightly more major road – Østkystvejen – we turned left and then took the next right, which is unconfusingly called Blommskobbel!
This is where we rejoined Julian’s route. Less than 50m along ‘Blommeskobbel’, fork left towards the woods. The road goes into the woods, and once into the woods, when it forks again you need to take the left fork.
The monuments are visible on your right after you have been in the woods for less than 1km.
Visited 2 April 2006
Another must-see & a cool place (in more ways than one when we went!) We spent quite a while here, despite the rain & cold. Which is saying something considering Jane’s aversion to cold....
Two langdysser, a denuded but recogniseable runddysse & a diddy dolmen (probably also from a runddysse)! And those langdysser are beauties – big & beefy!!! (Not nearly as long as Landeskov langdysse 1, but somehow more impressive to me....)
The ruined runddysse and the other remaining dolmen squeezed against a tree also add hugely to the site and the whole complex merits a good deal of examination.
Interesting to try to photograph because of the trees – at least they weren’t in leaf! The trees also do an amazingly good (or rather, bad) job of hiding the fact that you are so close to the sea – a view of which would add yet another dimension to the site!
I believe the woods contain a good few other monuments, but that these are at least mostly, or possibly completely, trashed.
We did find nearby the wrecked and difficult to find (& access!) overgrown remains of another barrow – probably another langdysse. Hardly worth seeing, and I’m afraid I can’t remember reliably exactly how to find it. I think it was a little way back up the access road (100m maybe, on the ‘field’ side).
As you drive north out of St Just, directly opposite a crazymadbonkers Christian grotto (which I had fun leaping around on rather disrespectfully) we spotted these three very tall, slender standing stones on the same side of the road as the cemetery.
Fairly approximate long/lat coordinates only, as I couldn’t spot the monument among the trees on the arial photomap. They shouldn’t be far out though.
Access: A 200m walk through the woods on paths north from Havrekobbel. I just followed what looked like the ‘main’ paths & they took me straight to the monument. You could approach up from the Troldhøj road which is the next turning north, to the west of Havrekobbel, but it’s quite steep and I’m not sure how easy it would be to spot the site on the hillside amongst the trees.
For road directions, see Frydendal Kro and continue north & west past Frydendal Øst to Havrekobbel.
Visited 3 April 2006
A pretty spot overlooking a small valley with a road at the bottom.
Can’t help thinking that without the forestry, the view might well be
beautiful – in retrospect I wonder if the sea might once have visible. I suspect not, as the valley bears to the east.
The ‘Old Troll’s Hill’ is a pretty well-preserved runddysse (round barrow). Excavations found a 17cm flint dagger at the bottom of the mound and a bronze-age urn in the chamber.
It has a relatively undamaged mound which is made more dramatic by being built on a the highest point of a steepish valley. To complete the picture, it has a nice exposed chunky chamber, complete with capstone. A little beauty!
Approximate long/lat coordinates only, but shouldn’t be too hard to find – famous last words!
Access: In woodland, a short walk through the trees on fairly level & fairly even ground. May be boggy and/or slippery in wet weather. Just about visible from road – you can certainly see the road from the monuments, at least when the trees aren’t covered in leaves!
On the island of Als, so travel towards Sønderborg on the 8. Continue on the 8 until you are nearly at Fynshav, looking out for a turning left to Helleved (& probably Elstrup) – the road may be called Katry. Take this and prepare to take the next right, ‘Helved’ (not sure if there is a sign that tells you its name).
The road bears left and enters a forest. At the first crossroads (very approximately 1km along this road) turn right and pretty much immediately, the monuments are in the trees on your right.
Visited 2 April 2006
Here there is a dolmen in the almost flattened remains of its runddysse mound, and a very ‘shallow’ (flattened, I assume) langdysse with an open cist-like chamber.
Pretty underwhelming, but worth a look if you’re travelling to the more impressive sites in the area.
Apparently, on the other side of the road, there are 3 large burial mounds. We didn’t investigate, as the trees on that side seemed much more dense....
Approximate long/lat coordinates, as I couldn’t see the site among the trees on the aerial photomap. We just happened to spot the site on the right of the road travelling NW from Frydendal Kro, so shouldn’t be too hard to find!
Access: Through reasonably even undulating wood, visible from road, at least when trees are not in leaf!. For directions, see Frydendal Kro.
Visited 3 April 2006
Spotted this one from the road just after leaving Frydendal Kro. Nothing terribly spectacular, but worth keeping an eye-out for – chunky chamber stones & large mound.
The first row you reach heading west is the northern row. It’s a long row of white, quartzy, sugar lumps.
Saint-Just, a very ordinary and comfortably pleasant French village, is the guardian to a wild and wacky ribbon of monuments which will have me scratching my head quizzically for the rest of my life. Nothing here makes any sense at all as the path to the west of the village leads you on a megalithic mystery tour.
Each monument on its own is intriguing … beguiling … but together, so close together they become a megalithic headf*ck.
We parked to the west of the village and followed the ample and informative signs which led us under the pines towards the Cojoux heathland glowing golden with gorse and ringing with birdsong. Apart from us, there was no one else around at all. The monuments – and the birds – just kept on coming.
Following the path west out of St Just as it snakes its way through the dense, tall gorse forest for a few hundred metres we reached the stones of Les Demoiselles Piquées – the ‘worm-eaten women’. Not a very nice name, but you can see why they are called this. These are big stones, too. I stood next to one and felt like a midget. A novel feeling for me.
Chateau Bû! What on earth is it??? Chateau Bû is caged up. Straight-jacketed. Probably for its own protection because it is insane. Without being able to get right up to it, walk round it, get into it, it’s hard to make any sense of it. It has a mound, perhaps two metres tall, with a chamber in it like a cairn. Then it has four uprights – a four-poster – plonked on top.
And then a bit of a cromlech at one end. I’ve seen a lot of old crumblies in my time, but this one I can’t fathom. You’ll have to see it for yourself.
For 200 metres westwards over the health from Chateau Bû lie a whole pile of monuments, some – quite literally – within spitting distance of each other.
La Croix de St Pierre are three nice-but-nothing-to-write-home-about burial chambers. Two are now little more than ground plans and the other is just a stone cist. However in the context of the St Just complex they simply add to the mystery.
We were about to leave Saint-Just and as I looked on the map, I noticed another monument marked very close by but not featured in any of the literature we had. We had to go and see if we could sniff it out. Without having a clue what it would be, we picked up a sign to a ‘dolmen’ and parked. Scrambling up a steep bank into some woodland punctuated with amazing natural rocks, we followed the path until … WOW! What a find! Treal allee couverte. An absolute beauty.
My first ever allee-couverte! And I wasn’t disappointed at all. Hidden away in the forest this was much longer than I expected and much squarer inside. On some of the stones in the terminal cell some little raised knobbly bits have been carved in lines. These are quite common around these parts. Someone somewhere considers these to represent pairs of breasts, but frankly I’m not convinced. Not a bit!
Featured in The Megalithic European (TME) page 159.
Access: Walk of around 500m along clear and reasonably even track, gently climbing. Very muddy in the weather I was there in! The final section is a path across a field, which may be slippery and is a good bit steeper.
Troldkirken is about 9km west of Aalborg. To reach the monument, take the 187 E-W between Aalborg and Sønderholm.
Just to the east of Sønderholm, turn south to Store Restrup (St Restrup). When you reach a crossroads with a more major road, turn right (west) and continue for about 1km – when the road is going uphill you are close.
There is a layby on the north side of the road for parking, and a signpost for Troldkirken – but it’s so huge you’ll be able to see it clearly on its little hill from the road.
Visited 6 April 2006
‘The Troll’s Church’ is a big ‘un!! On the day I saw it, it was a big wet ‘un! (Please excuse the raindrops on the photos!)
The small hill (exaggerated by quarrying in the past) it stands on is visible from miles around. From the south, the langdysse, and particularly the huge chamber are clearly visible.
As a matter of fact, I’d forgotten that there is more here than just the dolmen. Although reduced to the level of the bottom of the chamber, this is still an impressive earthwork, 90m long, with plenty of big kerbstones to impress. (Bit of a shame they’ve been joined by a concrete ‘trig’ point!)
You have plenty of time to get to appreciate its positioning on the walk up Troldkirkenvej, and there is a very nice round barrow ‘høj’ to add some extra interest to the walk. The view of Troldirken itself to the NW from the top of the høj is superb – I recommend it highly.
By the way, if you look at the ‘inline map’ for Troldkirken by clicking the ‘Show map’ link near the top of this page, there are some interesting cropmarks around the site, most noticeably some immediately to the SW of Troldkirken itself.
14:08:03ce
This Kercado sized tumulus outside the village of Le Bono is fascinating for a number of reasons. The great mound itself covers a very long passage of orthostats and drystone which bends through almost 90degrees partway along. This then opens out into a chamber with almost enough room to stand. The faint remains of carvings can be seen along the passage including a goddess figurine. This chamber, if required, could be pitch black at any time of day.
Inspite of the condensation on the stones themselves the floor in here is remarkably dry.
What is also fascinating though is the surroundings. Around the tumulus are a number of burial mounds dated to the Iron Age. However they are very much like megalithic structures, one still having, what Aubrey Burl describes as, a small dolmen like structure at its centre. South of the tumulus are a number of fantastic natural rock outcrops, maybe part shaped by man.
Clearly this area was sacred for a long time. From the time before the megaliths to a time when they had long since ceased to be constructed. Were the pine trees not here there would be views out to the Gulf of Morbihan. But how did that area look back then when sea levels meant it was no sea at all…
14:08:03
For many years I have planned a trip out here and finally I have made it. This is one fantastic site. The carved figurine which was the Guard stone for the passage is long gone but there is a cast in the museum and its image forms the head of ‘Neo’ the mascot who guides children through the artifacts.
The passage here is relatively short, if all the area past the, almost 90degree, bend is counted as the chamber. This part of the passage-grave is a long passage too which widens slightly at the end and is terminated by a large slab. Burl says some of the stones are carved but the moss and weather have made these carvings invisible to my eye.
It is hard to imagine what this place would have been like when it was complete. The long stoop down the pitch-dark tunnel to the wider area must have been frightening. No natural light would have penetrated so deep and the guarding goddess must have seemed imposing.
Who knows why these were so planned but les Pierres Plats and the Tumulus at le Bono are similar in plan so they were popular in this area.
Someone seems to have built some kind of ‘den’ between the entrance stones, which is curious and makes me think of the village idiot at Crucuno, is it just kids or does some modern idiot retire here for his rest?
Sitting in these woods by these ancient and deserted stones has a profound resonance with me now. The years of antiquarians, archaeologists, enthusiast and tourists seem to almost haunt the trees. One can almost see them standing around in the clothes of centuries, almost imagine some weary travelers stopping here for rest, although it is not really on the way anywhere.
