This article is part of a lecture held on November 13 19:00–21:00 in English.
It is believed that modern humans spread into Europe and Asia around 60,000 years ago.
If we imagine this time span as one single year, humans arrived in Lyngby-Taarbæk about two months ago; the church was built just six days ago; the industrial age began less than a day ago; and the major population growth of the 1930s and 1940s happened only ten hours ago.
Below, I will look back in time to explain what laid the foundation for our municipality.
The climate shaped our landscapes and living conditions
Climate determines the conditions for plant and animal life, and thereby the basis for human existence.
When the temperature drops, the snow does not melt, and large ice sheets begin to form. At the same time, sea levels fall because ocean water is locked away in the ice.
Within the last 400,000 years, three major ice ages have covered Lyngby-Taarbæk in ice — in some periods more than 2 km thick.
The lower sea levels also meant that Lyngby was at times connected by land to Europe; outside of Denmark, England was joined to the continent, and in North America it was possible to walk to Asia!
The most recent ice age is named “Weichsel”, which covered all of Denmark — except for the western part — and shaped the landscape we know today. See figure “1” top-left below showing the iceline:
When the ice melted, new land and new shorelines emerged. Deposits of mussel shells and traces of vegetation in different soil layers reveal the course of the coastline during the ice ages. Yoldia arctica is a mussel that gave its name to the “Yoldia Sea,” whose extent is shown in figure 2 above. The figure illustrates that around 15,000 years ago Lyngby was ice-free and lay by a freshwater area.
Tundra landscapes developed, where hunters followed reindeer herds and settled in our area during the summer season.
Summer temperatures rose to 13–14 °C, and large parts of the tundra gradually became overgrown with open birch forest. This created good conditions for herbs and grasses, which in turn attracted herds of reindeer, elk, and deer.
The oldest traces of humans in Lyngby-Taarbæk Municipality come from Skovmosen near the Helsingør Motorway, where flint tools and arrows from the “Bromme culture” (ca. 11,000–10,500 BCE) have been found.
Around 10,600 BCE, a new cold period set in. The average summer temperature dropped to around 10 °C, and winters were marked by heavy snowfall. The open, light birch forest could not survive under the harsher climate and was replaced by expansive tundra. For humans, this meant that hunting once again focused on reindeer in the tundra, particularly in the regions south of present-day Denmark.
Because of the weight of the ice, the earth’s crust had in some places been pressed several hundred meters below its current level. When the ice melted away, many areas were flooded, but gradually the land rose again. This is why in Denmark, mussel layers and deposits are sometimes found 20–50 meters above sea level. Figure 3 shows that around 9,000 years ago all of southern Scandinavia was ice-free. The Baltic Sea had now become a large lake with an outlet through the Danish straits.
About 8,500 years ago, more ice melted — including in North America — which led to rising sea levels. Figure 4 illustrates the area as it gradually developed into what we know today as Denmark.
Our landscapes bear witness to this development. The map below shows analyses of the soil in our municipality.
The reddish and brown-colored areas are glacial deposits created by the ice.
As the glacier slid over the ground, it left behind a layer of moraine clay (the brown areas).
Around the ice, meltwater streamed toward the glacier front in large channels, filling them with sand and gravel — these are the light pink areas.
There were also channels under the ice. The dashed lines in the figure above mark “buried valleys” under the ice, where meltwater flowed westward (to the left) and helped form the lake “Mølleå” and “Ermelunden”.
We owe the Ice Age our fertile agricultural soils of moraine clay, as well as our lakes and access to the sea, which provided excellent conditions for fishing.
In “Dyrehaven”, we find a varied and hilly landscape shaped by the Ice Age, with forests, lakes, open plains, and valleys such as “Ulvedalene” – a beautiful example of an Ice Age landscape shaped by meltwater, which left traces in the form of small depressions, valleys, and plains.
Archaeological remains in the municipality
Ever since the ice disappeared, Lyngby-Taarbæk has offered ideal conditions for hunters, gatherers, and later settlements.
People of the past have left their mark.
Lyngby-Taarbæk has the highest number of protected archaeological remains per square kilometer in the Copenhagen area, as large parts of the municipality are subject to nature conservation. Below is a map from the Danish Agency for Culture and Palaces showing the number of archaeological remains in the municipality.
The archaeological remains prove that people have lived in the area since the Early Stone Age – here a timeline with archaeological remains:
One of the archaeological remains is marked on the map above with a red circle. It is the “Hvidegårds Grave,” a remarkable burial mound dated to around 1000 B.C., i.e., from the Bronze Age.
The find itself is described as follows: On August 14, 1845, Count “Trampe” from “Sorgenfri” Castle sent a letter to the Old Norse Museum. The letter read: “A man in Lyngby has today discovered an intact giant grave. Under the top large stone, a sword can be seen protruding.”
It was the farmer “Erik Hansen” from “Hvidegården”(name of a farm) who, while digging clay for filling around his farm, discovered the grave.
The burial mound contained a stone coffin with a body that had been cremated before burial. The bones were wrapped in woven cloth and placed on a cowhide.
The bag found in the grave had a completely unique closing mechanism consisting of small, oppositely positioned leather loops held together by an inserted bronze pin. It is literally Denmark’s earliest known “zipper.” Inside the bag were a number of small items, including a piece of amber, a flint knife, a scraper, a bronze tweezers, a wooden die, the belly and a side of a grass snake’s tail, a Mediterranean shell, a bird of prey’s claw, and the left lower jaw of a young squirrel, as well as a bark container that likely held food or a drink.
Based on the presence of a sword in the grave, the deceased is interpreted as a man. The unusual objects may have served as his amulets and magical tools used in rituals, and the buried individual is therefore thought to have been both a priest and a magician.
As P.V. Glob writes, the contents of the bag suggest: “That the buried man, 3,000 years ago, was the chieftain, healer, sorcerer, and local leader of the Lyngby area. He was laid to rest in a massive mound on the ridge with a view over all his land, surrounded by the mounds of his family.”
Today, the magician’s bag with its zipper is exhibited at the National Museum, which has taken over the collections of the Old Norse Museum.
Below is a drawing showing the burial mound with the stone coffin and the objects that were found:
Here is a recent photo of the objects from the National Museum:
Explanation: Bronze fibula with cross-shaped head (9220d), flint in case (9220g), bronze frame-handled knife in leather case (9220h), bronze scraper knife with horse-handle in leather case (9220i), narrow bronze tweezers (9220k), leather case (9220u), wooden fragment.
Sources for this article:
- National Museum
- “Den Store Danske Encyclopedia”
- Danish Agency for Culture and Palaces
- “Lyngbybogen 1948”
