Hello and goddag!
It’s winter, it’s a Monday morning,
and I’m standing at a t-junction in the middle of the Danish countryside.
And let’s face it, you all know why I’m here.
Denmark is the country with the lowest highest point of any country in Europe,
aside from the microstates of Monaco and Vatican City.
In fact Denmark’s highest point is so small
that they’ve spent years trying to find it.
Originally everyone agreed it was here,
but then they realised oh no actually it’s here,
before someone said no you idiots it’s there,
and then there was a long argument about whether it was here or there
before they decided no actually it was here all along,
until they checked it again in 2005
and discovered it was neither here nor there.
But how can it be this difficult to find your highest point?
Or does the point actually change?
Does it somehow move around the country?
Well let’s climb it and find out.
Welcome to the highest mountain in Denmark.
So, the plan this morning was to get a train from Aarhus to Skanderborg,
and then the bus from Skanderborg to a place called Tebstrup,
erm, and then walk from there.
But the train was late, which meant that I missed the bus
and had to get a taxi from Skanderborg.
Er. So I could have got the taxi straight to the top of the hill!
But that felt a little bit like cheating.
So I got it to drop me here in a place called Ris,
and we’re going to climb the mountain from here.
In other words,
we’re going to be attempting a winter ascent
of the east face of the mountain.
But before we start,
I just want to clear up a little bit of pedantry.
We are going to be climbing the highest point in Demark,
but it’s not the highest point that Denmark possesses.
Officially the Kingdom of Denmark also includes the Faroe Islands and Greenland,
both of which have much higher peaks than what we’re climbing today.
So we’re climbing the highest point in metropolitan Denmark,
the Denmark that most people mean when they say “Denmark”.
- There’s not a lot going on in Ris…
And as we leave the village behind, the road starts to climb sharply upwards,
and we are now hitting the lower slopes of the mountain itself.
- Now, there has been some criticism on these videos
from a few people who claim that I keep saying things are mountains
when they’re "not really mountains”.
So. This is the mountain.
Ok I admit, having now seen the mountain,
I’m beginning to understand why they had trouble finding it.
So how is this the highest point in the whole country?
Surely the Danes have got something bigger?
Well they sort of do.
This is the much more impressive looking Himmelbjerget,
and for hundreds of years, it was considered to be Denmark’s highest mountain.
In fact the name translates into English as The Sky Mountain, or The Mountain of Heaven.
(Huh! Guess I’m not the only one who calls everything a mountain).
And the climb from the lake at the bottom up to the tower at the top is over 120m.
For a Swiss person, that’s a walk to the shops.
But in Denmark, that’s unrivalled.
No other hill on the Danish mainland can compete with that kind of climb,
or the views that you get from the top.
But in the 1800s,
during one of the biggest shakeups the world of mountain measuring has ever seen,
Himmelbjerget lost its title.
And who was to blame?
That’s right, the British.
And specifically, an engineer called John Augustus Lloyd.
- I propose that from now on, we should measure all elevation
not in terms of height from top to bottom
but in terms of height above the level of the sea.
* general agreeing noises *
To be clear, Lloyd was not talking about Denmark there
- he was more interested in the level of the river Thames -
but his idea of measuring elevation from sea level spread around the world,
and it didn’t take long to reach here.
Between 1847 and 1875,
Danish surveyors went out and made measurements around the country.
They discovered that the 147m summit of Himmelbjerget
was only the fourth highest point in the country.
And first place went to the 172m Ejer Bavnehøj.
Which I hope I’m pronouncing somewhere near correctly,
because it turns out Ejer Bavnehøj is just up this road.
And this is what it looks like.
It’s got a great big tower,
built in 1924 to commemorate the end of World War One,
an information kiosk,
toilets,
ample parking space,
and a stone engraved with the words
“you have now reached the highest point in Denmark”.
The only problem is, you haven’t.
And that's because of a monumental cockup.
During the construction of the tower, the builders had first excavated and removed
a Bronze Age burial mound that previously lay on the summit.
Not only was this somewhat distressing for local archeologists,
it also meant they’d shaved nearly 2m off the top of the hill.
And that was a problem.
Because just 3 kilometres northwest of here
is another hill called (ahem) "Yding Skovhøj",
which is also a Bronze Age burial site,
and because it still had a burial mound on its summit,
it was now 1m higher than Ejer Bavnehøj.
From what I can tell, no-one actually noticed this for a few years,
but when they did, it started a massive argument
about which one was really Denmark’s highest mountain.
One side argued that Yding Skovhøj was the highest,
because fundamentally, it was;
and the other side argued that no, Ejer Bavnehøj is still the highest,
because the burial mound is man-made,
and only the natural part of the hill should count.
And it didn’t end there.
At one point the astronomer Carl Luplau Janssen waded in to say,
"I’ve done my own research,
and I can tell you Yding Skovhøj is higher - even without the burial mound.”
To which the Ejer Bavnehøj fanclub replied
“well why don’t you move the tower there?”
In all honesty, I’m not sure if Carl was being serious or just trolling everyone,
but what I can tell you is that the tower is still here.
I wonder if this is open...?
(Extremely manly voice) Ooh!
So the tower may not have moved, but the argument raged on for years,
and it was only when the national Geodetic Institute stepped in in 1953
that it was finally settled.
They ruled that only the highest natural point of each hill should count,
and they were going to use their latest instruments to measure both summits
and deliver a final verdict once and for all.
And when the results came in,
Ejer Bavnehøj reclaimed the title by just 6cm.
So this is officially Denmark’s highest natural point.
Or at least it was,
until 2005,
when they realised that that farm over there
is *very slightly* higher.
So I guess I have to go over there now.
And as we wander over to the farm,
I think we may have uncovered the mystery of the moving mountain.
Basically, there are 3 hills around here
which are all within a few centimetres of each other in terms of elevation,
and it only takes a small inaccuracy in the calculations,
or a careless construction crew,
or even just a bit of erosion over the years,
to change which one is the highest mountain in Denmark.
But for now, it’s this one.
- Here we go – Mollehoj.
Or in English, “Mill Hill”.
But this does kind of raise the question: is Mollehoj still the highest?
Has anyone checked recently?
By the time you’re watching this video it could have changed again!
For all I know, the farmer might plough the field tomorrow
and accidentally give Denmark a new highest point.
But until then, this is it.
- Want to do this properly...
Oh and by the way,
when they made those new measurements in 2005,
they also downgraded Ejer Bavnehoj
putting in third place behind Yding Skovhoj.
Yep, turns out that crank Carl Luplau Janssen was right the whole time.
If you’d like to climb two of Denmark’s three highest points
- and the third one isn’t far away if you want to go for the hattrick -
the easiest option is to drive straight here and park at Ejer Bavnehoj.
Otherwise it’s a 40 minute hike uphill from the bus stop in Tebstrup,
which is served by the number 170 from Skanderborg.
And Skanderborg is only a 15 minute train ride from Denmark's second city, Aarhus.
Also, it’s worth mentioning the tower has a lift
if you want to avoid the steps up to the top.
And that’s about it for today.
Thank you for watching as always,
and I’ll see you soon.
MOOOOOOOO