Jelling – Vikings, Kings, Christianity and BlueTooth

Zagan the motorhome is thinking of becoming a yacht. He is spending another couple of nights tucked up with his new kind in the marina in Aarhus (N56.13956, E10.21995). It took some working out how to get through the barrier, but we are in and not moving until Friday! it’s dark so we’ll pop up a picture of where we are on our next post.

When we tried to leave the marina in Faabord we hit upon a small problem. The card that we’d paid a deposit on and pre-loaded with money to pay for electricity now wanted another 152DKK before we could leave. Little did we know that we were supposed to have left our space at 10am (like that was ever going to happen) and so it was charging us for another day. We have no idea what the other 22DKK was for. After inserting the card into the machine and punching all the buttons many, many times we decided to take the other option, leave and just be charged what you loaded onto the card. So, our one night in the marina cost us the best part of €30 and we have a souvenir small piece of plastic.

As you might guess this didn’t do anything to help lighten our mood, but in the end it is only money. We tried our best to forget the money grabbing machine and the rubbish weather as we headed for another area of Denmark, this time not an island, but a peninsular bounded to the south by Germany: Jutland. Crossing the ‘Little Belt Bridge’, which, unlike its big brother, was free we headed north to a free parking place just north of Fredericia.

Loads of these stating your speed and flashing if you are going too fast – but of course you can guess the jokes about the din our farts make when we pass the signs!

More toilet humour helped cheer us up – sadly I never got to Middelfart, the motorway bypassed it

Reaching the small car park (N55.58042, E9.78613) it was on a bit of a ‘what I call’ wonk. With several cars in place we parked as best we could and set off for a walk along a path by the beach. A break in the rain had everyone out walking dogs, tiring out children, jogging and cycling along the path, it was quite the Italian passeggiata – how we miss Italy.

Unhappy Jay by the sea – bad weather and wonky sleeping spot don’t help

Sloping car park by beach

Back at the car park we waited for a space at the flattest part of the car park and moved in. Chocking up we were still wonky but, after looking around the area on maps.me for something better, we decided to settle in for the night.

After an evening with our noses buried in the guidebooks we had a plan for the next few days. First stop was Jelling. Our guidebooks says that every Dane goes there at some point in their life, as it is revered as the birthplace of Christianity in Denmark, the monarchy and all that is Danish. On a personal level I wanted to find out why everyone now has a Danish Viking King on their phone.

Every set of roadworks needs these, our wait was two minutes which would be hours without the countdown!

We followed the signs to the UNESCO listed site and parked up in the free car park (N55.75613, E9.41680). In fact everything here is free, you can wander around the church and new visitor’s centre explaining the history of the place, all for nothing. Because of that we were expecting it to be a bit rubbish, but we were very pleasantly surprised. It seems that the government keep it free because it is such an important place to the Danish people. I can’t think of anything similar in the UK, but if pushed I guess it would be a cathedral, York or St Paul’s.

Jelling was a Viking settlement over 1000 years ago. Not just any viking lived there though, it was the royal seat of King Gorm the Old, the first in a millennium long chain of monarchs that still sit on the throne today. How do we know they were here, well they left their mark. Gorm and his son Harald Bluetooth both had runes carved into huge boulders, which still sit outside the church today.

Jay examines the rune stones outside the church

The church is towered over by two huge burial mounds and was surrounded by stones in the shape of a 350m long ship, these have now been replaced by tiles so you can still see the outline. Around the perimeter of the settlement a large palisade of 3 metre high oak posts stopped visitors entering the town unannounced, today the palisade is represented by a series of white concrete posts. You can climb the burial mounds or go onto the roof terrace of the visitor’s centre for a view of the whole settlement.

Danish graveyards have their own little garden area boxed in by hedges, it means this poor little fella can have his toys out in his garden forever

After a wander around the church and graveyard, we went into the centre to find out more about the place. It was buzzing in there, because it is school holidays here at the moment and no doubt the rain has forced parents to find something to do indoors. As the chap on reception said, the place is interactive and touching anything orange would bring it to life. How could we resist, even if we did have to push some children out of the way (only kidding, they were pushing us out!).

Jay is a little too happy on this feature – touch the orange and it tells you how long it would take your victim to die by this weapon

Just on her way to Valhalla with the other Viking warriors

Once we had finished playing we got down to the serious business of learning, as you would expect the children pretty much disappeared in this part of the museum. There was loads of information about the two stones sitting outside the church across the road. Gorm’s stone was a tribute to his wife Thyra and the runes include the word ‘tanmarkaR’, which is the first time the name Denmark appears in the country.

Harald Bluetooth’s stone however tells us much more. It is the first stone to have the runes written horizontally, like you would see in a book, such as the bible. It states ‘King Harald ordered this monument to be made in memory of Gorm his father and Thyra his mother, the Harald who won for himself all Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christians’. It also includes an image of Christ, which is the oldest representation of him in Scandinavia.

The image of Christ from Harald Bluetooth’s rune stone is appears in every Danish passport

The missionary Poppo is said to have persuaded King Harald Bluetooth to be baptised in 960 by performing several miracles involving hot metal, however the miracles may not have been the entire reason for the baptism. By being baptised, King Harald Bluetooth could prevent the Germans from using the conversion of pagan Danes to Christianity as a reason to invade. It took hundreds of years for all the Danes to convert, but slowly the Pagan festivals were dropped in favour of the Christian festivals of Easter and Christmas.

These plates are said to show Harald Bluetooth being convinced about Christianity, the last one is him being baptised

Of course the whole place has been dug up and investigated many times, but surprisingly no human remains were found in either of the burial mounds. In the 1970’s they dug beneath the church itself and found the remains of three earlier wooden buildings, the oldest thought to have been put up in Harald Bluetooth’s time. A burial chamber was also unearthed and in it what are believed to be the remains of Gorm the Older. They believe King Harald Bluetooth moved him into the church out of respect after his conversion to Christianity. Gorm has since been reburied back in the church, a small silver mark on the floor showing where he now rests.

The bones uncovered in the church were reburied under the silver marker

We really enjoyed our time in Jelling, oh and I got to find out why we all have a Viking King on our mobiles. The engineer Jim Kardach who invented the wireless system for connecting your mobile to your laptop was a big fan of King Harald and named his system Bluetooth.

The Bluetooth logo is a H and B in runes

The alphabet of runes if you want to work out your name….

… or try and work out what we have said here

After all that information we retreated into the supermarket next door and stocked up on a few essentials before heading north to Aarhus.

Just days after I run out, the Danish supermarkets have Ribena!!!

At the campsite, yes I know we were treating ourselves to a campsite, we were told we must buy an International Camping Key Card to be able to stop there. As it was in our ACSI book and we already have an ACSI I doubled checked, but no we had to pay an extra 110 DKK if we wanted to stay. So we turned around and headed to the marina. It’s closer to town and we now know how the card system on marinas works, so we won’t be getting fleeced this time (fingers crossed), in fact we’ve managed to find an electric supply that had leftover credit on it. I guess it is true, what goes around, comes around.

Ju x

Bonus pic – spotted on the motorway today:

Didn’t expect to see this on a Danish car!