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Denmark

A

Anonymous

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Anyone got oany links or info about danish forteana.Been living here a while know and need to be pointed in the right direction.
thanks in advance
 
Well, I recently left Denmark and can tell you nothing mysterious ever goes on there. Sure, we have a few grey ladies and a crop circle some time ago. But besides that it is a very dead place when it comes to Fortean things.
 
I wonder why? Denmark has as long a history of human occupation as UK. Perhaps it's down to geology - the UK has a remarkably diverse range of geological features and mineral resouces for its size. Maybe this cranks up more earthlights etc here, which spill over into other weird phenomena?
 
Well, there are a few things that make it hard for anything Fortean to happen. We have no fault lines or anything that could give people EM-hallucinations. It is a very geologically stable country.

We have eradicated most of the wildife, all that's left is birds and vermin. And you can't have a bigfoot running around in the forests when the biggest of them takes an hour to walk through.

People are rather well educated, they're not likely to claim to have seen virgin mary talking to them.

But there is an UFO-organisation for scandinavia called SUFOI. And we have a lot of new age crap.
 
My Danish folklore is a bit rusty, but what's the story behind Ragnar (I'm going to get his last name wrong, I'm sure) Lodbrog? IIRC, he was supposed to reawaken from death in a future time of peril for Denmark (much like Arthur with England), wasn't he? Can anyone give us any background on him, or even a correct spelling so I can search for him on Google? Thanks!

Oh, and didn't Kirk Douglas portray him in the film The Vikings?
 
I tried googling the other way round - heaps of stuff on Kirk D!

He played Einar in the Vikings; apparently his father was Ragnar. Not that this gets us much further!

Francis Drake is another one who will return to our aid in time of trouble - we just call him by beating on his drum, which is kept in Devon somewhere.

LATER:
Ragnar Lodbrok (or Lodenbrok) was a great Viking chief. An account of his death is here:
http://battle1066.com/vikings2.shtml
but no mention of his return.

However, there may have been another Ragnar some time later (there is a heap of stuff on the web, as usual!), so perhaps the resurrection legend applies to him.
 
many thanks for the replys.Will try my basic danish and attack the libary,s and web site for some more storys.Will let you know of anything interstting.
 
You possibly already know this but Denmark has many incredibly well preserved bodies of Iron Age people sacrificed and preserved in peat bogs. The most famous and best preserved being the Tollund Man who truly looks like he fell asleep just yesterday. No-one seems to be sure if they were executions or sacrifices (willing or unwilling) and what the purpose of their sacrifice might have been. They make the Lindow Man, killed and preserved in a bog near Macclesfield and now in the British Museum, look like a lump of Plasticine. Well worth a trip.

I worked in Copenhagen a couple of years ago. It didn’t seem to be a hot-bed of forteana but the sudden influx of pissed Swedes on a Friday night gave the normally calm and sophisticated city the air of a war-zone, which was pretty strange, and an American neo-nazi tried to recruit me in a gun shop which resulted in somewhat of a rumpus.
 
A Danish gun-shop? I suppose you must mean one of those hunting shops.

BTW, I remembered that there have also been a few sightings of ABC in Denmark. But Denmark only has one cryptozoologist, so not much investigation was done.

As for Regnar Lodbrog(I think that is how you spell it) I have never heard he should come back. I think you must mean Holger Danske. He is supposed to come back when Denmark is in real trouble. There's a statue of him sleeping under Rosenborg Castle.
 
Xanatic said:
A Danish gun-shop? I suppose you must mean one of those hunting shops.

I just remember lots of rifles and an awful lot of survivalist literature and stuff in the They Can Have My Gun When They Prize it Out of My Cold Dead Fingers type of vein. I was giggling at the photograph of some massively fat US Militia man who had written a book called something like Fitness for Survivalists (I swear) when said incident occured.
 
An interesting link.

There was another interesting castle in Denmark built by the last and possibly greatest of the pre-telescopic era astronomers, Tycho Brahe. Not exactly Fortean, except that in those days there wasn't the modern distinction between astronomy and astrology, so many people practised both. (The castle was called Uraniborg, by the way.)

As for sleeping heroes, I believe some legends have Merlin still sleeping somehere under a Welsh mountain. (Others put him in Scotland...) No doubt there's a ton of stuff on the web (I haven't dared look!), but if you use google I suggest excluding 'aircraft' and 'engines' from your search!

But that reminds me of an almost fortean story of my own. Back in the 80s I skippered a sail training boat, mostly in the southern North Sea. On one trip we were heading into Dunkirk, a port we frequently visited. The second mate was an elderly fellow who'd been in the RAF in the war, and he struck up a friendship with one of the young trainees who was a keen aircraft modeller. I overheard them having an intense discussion about the Rolls-Royce Merlin engines (which powered many RAF planes in the war). Apart from thinking that it was a good thing for crew members to get on well like this, I thought no more about it.

Soon we moored up in Dunkirk and went ashore. Imagine my amazement when we found TWO Merlin engines on display on the quayside - they hadn't been there on my previous visit! There was also a wartime German a/c engine there: all three had been caught up in fishing boat nets and brought ashore. There were small stainless steel items on the Merlins which were still bright despite decades under the sea.

(I have one or two B&W .jpegs of a Merlin in Dunkirk: if anyone's interested, I could post them up somewhere or email them.)
 
Xanatic said:
Hmm, do you by any chance have name or adress of that shop?

No afraid not. I've just dug out the street map I bought back then but it hasn't helped. All I can tell you for sure is that it was relatively central - within about 15 minutes walk of The National Museum, you had to go down steps to enter it and that on the other side of the street was water - a rather grand canal or something like that. The window display consisted of Binoculars, Maglites, Leathermen and other such gadgety bits. The heavy stuff was all downstairs at the back but the books were all on the left hand side by the door when you entered.
 
Hmm, probably not enough to find it. And the police is probably aware of it.
 
rynner said:
Francis Drake is another one who will return to our aid in time of trouble - we just call him by beating on his drum, which is kept in Devon somewhere.
That's the phone exchange in Exeter, isn't it :D?

Anyway, back OT (if rather late :eek:) there's this:
A ghost of King Valdemar IV, the "psychic king," appears in Gurre Wood near Helsingor, Denmark. Another Danish monarch, King Abel, appears at Poole near the city of Slewig whenever some crucial event is about to happen.
..Helsingor being Elsinore of Hamlet fame, IIRC.
 
Spook said:
I just remember lots of rifles and an awful lot of survivalist literature and stuff in the They Can Have My Gun When They Prize it Out of My Cold Dead Fingers type of vein. I was giggling at the photograph of some massively fat US Militia man who had written a book called something like Fitness for Survivalists (I swear) when said incident occured.

"something rotten in the state of denmark" me thinks!
 
Dont forget Christiana.

www.christiana.dk

The Danish goverment want to close down this alternative commune that has been going for 30 years or more.
On the 30 August 2003 there will be a gathering in Christiana in support of it future.
If you cannot be there you can give support via the internet(check site above).
Please give your support to Christiana.
om-shanti-om
Peace.
 
Overdue Update

I,m actually the first poster and have been living in Denmark for the last 10 years. And after a struggle with the language (said to be more of a throat disorder than a language), I,ve managed to collect a few good tales.
But by far my favourite is the tale of the Headless, three legged Hare of Drovtemosi.

Danish Link

Have not got the translation at hand, so will post it later today along with some other tales of three legged beasts from Danmark.
 
Possibly the most bizarre thing that has ever happened to me happened in Copenhagen. I'm sure I've told the story elsewhere so I won't bore everyone with the details again - but it ended with me being arrested in the early hours whilst sat on a prostrate and spectacularly drunk and emotional ginger Finn in a very loud suit. I don't speak Danish so it took all night to explain to the peelers that I was not usually in the habit of sitting on Finns but that in my own somewhat inebriated state it had been the only way I could think of preventing him from jumping into the canal. I wouldn't have minded but it took them the best part of half an hour to turn up, I was desperate for a piss, and the f**ker wouldn't stop wriggling.

(edit - Sorry, not at all Fortean - but I felt the need to share)
 
In Copenhagen they have a lot of interesting stuff lying around in musea like:
- a huge metal meteorite
- well preserved bog corpses
- ghost travel drawings by authentic Inuit shamans

And I think this is in Denmark too:
- Hamlet's castle
- Tycho de Brahe's castle (of burst bladder fame)

Then they have a lot of still undudg grave hills that lie around in the landscape. Should be fun to visit at night :)
 
The excellent Ghosts and Scholars website has a link to an article called "The Rules of Folklore" in the Ghost Stories of M.R. James, which investigates that author's habit of employing aspects of Danish and Scandinavian folklore in an English setting. As the article explains, James had visited Denmark on several occasions, was familiar with the works of the folklorist Evald Tang Kristensen and confessed to being 'much engrossed with the folklore of Jutland, which peoples its wide and lonely heaths with many strange beings'.

Well worth reading.
 
Thanks for the link will check that out.

Heres the translation, bit ropy but i think I,ve got the full meaning right.

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Teacher David Schjær Jacobsen mentions in his memoirs "A field called Drøvtemosi, and
there I would not go when it is dark. I could that is risk at meet "Drovtehari", who was headless.

I once asked Johannes Hytteballe from Lindekildevej in Vester Skerninge, if he knew of this matter."Yes" eplained Hyteballe, "the three legged hare called Drøvtehari,shot my great grandfather"

(This is the literal translation that the hare shot his great grandfather but most danes I speak to believe this should say "skød af min bedstefar" Shot by my great grandfather)

He owned a peice of land in Ollerup Skovmark. Hytteballe can very lively describe how the hare sat and grassed on the greenest spot one could imagine.

But none of the areas hunters had tile then been lucky enought to kill the hare, not even Hytteballe.

He found advice though from a family in Vester Skerninge who loaned him an old front loading rifle,(not sure about this next bit, something about "so lucky it him at he shoot the
hare").

"But how,Hytteballe?" asked the amazed neighbours.

"Yes see", said the old Hytteballe "Lead does nothing, it needs to be Silver "(Guess he means the shot or bullets)

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Found this story a few years back and to my joy found another headless three legged hare again on the central island of Fyn.
Danish Text

Not had time to translate this story yet but will post it as soon as I get time.

Was also pleased to find recently its not just hares. Theres also the Corpse Lamb (Liglammet), again a tripod of a beast that was seen as a warning of a upcoming death.

Danish Text

Slighly more scary we do get Hell Horses, which again are warnings of a forecoming death. And again only had three legs.

Danish Text
 
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