The historical site features re-creations of several types of shelters used by people in Denmark at different times. One interesting one of these is the reindeer hunter's tent. During the time period after the last Ice Age, the temperatures of the climate increased dramatically. This forced the reindeer, which preferred colder climates, much further north. This then forced early European hunters, who relied on the animals for food, to follow the migration of the reindeer, and resulted in human presence in much northern territories such as Denmark and other Scandinavian countries. This exemplifies on of the earliest ways that humans reacted to changes in the landscape.
One of the major ways that humans shaped the landscape in Denmark was the dramatic removal of trees during the Bronze Age around 2600 BC, which can be dated by pollen preserved in peat bogs. After agriculture was introduced to the area around 3,000 BC, humans began to remove trees in order to form an agronomy based society, which included small villages and large expanses of land for livestock and for crops. The affects of this can be seen at Lejre, where there are some trees but much of the land consists of open fields with scattered areas of forest. Much of the land at Lejre was also being used for the roaming sheep, which would have provided clothing materials and food for the early people of Denmark.
The site also provided an interactive example of what a village during the Iron Age might have looked like. There were several long houses made to house families and Livestock made with small doors, wooden bunks and fire pits in the center for cooking and heating the house. These were located slightly away from the iron smith's home, for protection from potential fires. The iron worker's home was located nearby the small swampy lake, which seemed to me to be very intentional because much of the early iron ore was found in the bogs. This choice of putting a village near a small body of water shows how the early people of Denmark most likely were positioning themselves in the landscape in a place where they could access its resources.
The people during this time also impacted the landscape by creating burial mounds to house their dead, and these changes in the landscape can still be seen today throughout Denmark, including in the area where Lejre is located. The guide who took us on a tour of the area explained the chemical process that allows for incredible preservation of the dead and their belongings within these mounds, suggesting that the clearly purposeful ritual of pouring water on the dirt before the final layer may have been done consciously and intentionally by the people to preserve their dead.
Unlike modern day societies in other parts of Denmark and in the rest of the world, the societies of these early people's of Denmark seem to have a much more integrated relationship with the land, as can be seen in one style of dwelling created at Lejre that is literally built within a hillside. This shelter, that looks somewhat like a mythological hobbit hole, shows the degree to which the people of this time were connected to and reliant upon the landscape for survival.
This trip was extremely informative, interesting and fun, and I highly recommend that anyone interested in this field of study go to see their methods of experimental archaeology to better understand the development of relationships between humans and the land in Denmark.
I also recommend to all my peers who spent the day at Lejre on Friday to go to the national museum in Denmark. I took a trip there this weekend and saw the Aurochs skeleton that the guide told us about, as well as the highly ornamental piece of pottery we saw a re-creation of while there.
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