Ancient sights on South West Fyn

The area around South West Fyn seems to have attracted humans for millennia and they have become fairly prosperous from an early time. The early farmers needed to make a mark on the land and they certainly did this with several major burial sights spread around the area.

The ancient places are difficult to find without the exact GPS coordinates and fortunately you can pick up a brochure at the tourist information in Faaborg of the ancient sight including the different GPS coordinates for the places. Then it is just a matter of following the coordinates and sees where they take you. At the different places there is some information of what you are looking at – the most detail information is in Danish only but there is a short version in English and German as well.

In ancient times there were about 25,000 of this kind of burial sights spread across Denmark. But during the last few centuries the modernization of the society has meant many of these places were torn down. Some of the burial mount was just plain level with the ground to make for better farming of the land and others were destroyed because the stones inside the burial mount were great for building roads. Fortunately 6,000 of these old sights have survived this onslaught and are now all historical landmarks and it is illegal to farm them anymore.

We went to a few of the places and saw some of the ancient places. The first stop was a burial mount called Røsebjerg – apparently the name should indicate it was a burial mount build by stones and not grass – but like most burial mount in Denmark it was built with a core of large stone and then a lot of grass turf on top of it. There are many of this kind of burial mount dating back about 5,000 years spread all across Denmark – and this one wasn’t one of the biggest but if you haven’t seen a lot it is interesting to see it and from the top of the small mount you can actually have a pretty good view of the surrounding area.

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Next we head to Duered Vænge where there are a burial mount which still has its stone core – another burial mount has lost the grass turf which used to cover it – but this has resulted in the option to actually see the stones which used to be inside standing freely outside.

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The most interesting place we went to was Knoldsborg dysserne where there are a series of stones. These are located inside a large plantation of Christmas trees so you can fairly easily get to the top of the hills without destroying the farmers crops. At the top with the stones you have an amazing view of the area. This location of the stones has probably helped preserve the stones through the ages – since the stones have been used as a marker for the local fishermen when they were out at sea.

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Even for people with little interest in the ancient sights it is worth heading to the top of these hills for the view of the sea below and the gentle hills of the area.