The Danish Lake District and the river Gudenåen

Among the Municipality of Skanderborg’s great natural attractions are the many lakes and Gudenåen, the only Danish waterway large enough to be classified as a river. The landscape of Central Jutland, with its broad waters cutting through some of the highest hills in Denmark, is very appropriately called the Danish Lake District.

Here you will find Mossø, Jutland’s largest and Denmark’s third-largest lake at 16.6 square kilometres. Skanderborg Lake (8.6 square kilometres) is smaller but is nevertheless ranked as the sixth-largest in the country.

Also Julsø (by Himmelbjerget) – whose southeastern brinks are within the Municipality of Skanderborg – is among Denmark’s ten largest lakes at 5.8 square kilometres.

Via its small branches, Gudenåen is connected to most of the lakes in the Danish Lake District, creating a comprehensive system of lakes and streams. An exception is Stilling-Solbjerg Lake, which drains into Aarhus Å.

Formation of the landscape
The landscape of the Danish Lake District was formed during and after the last ice age. The enormous ice masses that covered the entire area pushed earth and rocks before them, thus shaping the underlying land into hills and valleys.

At the end of the ice age, meltwater rivers ran under the ice mass and in ice-free areas through large east-west running valleys formed by underground tectonic motion. This created one of the main characteristics of today’s landscape, the large lake-filled valleys running east-west. Elsewhere, the meltwater forced its way in other directions, especially north, which has resulted in the northerly course of Gudenåen towards Randers Fjord.

When the few remaining huge ice blocks finally melted, they created depressions in the terrain that have become the deep lakes you see today. This is the reason why e.g. Ravnsø, a relatively small lake, has a depth of 33 metres.

Life by the water
When the ice had disappeared, plants and animals moved in, followed by humans. The many settlements that have been found by Gudenåen and the lakes are evidence that this was an ideal place for hunters and fishers during the Stone Age.

Ancient man made boats from hollowed oak trunks. In fact, this type of dug-out was used in the Danish Lake District until the first half of the 19th century when it was known as a ‘knobskib’, a local Danish word for a boat made from a whole tree trunk. During the Iron Age, other types of boat were also built, as indicated by the find of a stretched dug-out dating from about 500 AD in Mossø. This type is halfway between a dug-out and a clinker-built boat.

In ancient times, the Danish Lake District already had a road system including fords and bridges. At Fuldbro Mill, Mossø, remains of a stone-paved ford dating from the 7th century have been discovered.

At Falgård, just south of Ry, a 70-metre bridge and dam system has been dated to the end of the 10th century, i.e. during the reign of Harald Bluetooth. Sunken roads in the area indicate that this was the site of one of the most important east-west running roads in ancient times and the Middle Ages.

Many of Denmark’s 12th-century monasteries were founded next to lakes and rivers, including Lake District monasteries such as Ring Monastery at Skanderborg Lake and Øm, Voer and Vissing Monasteries at Mossø. In these places, the monks and nuns were able to use their knowledge of dam and watermill construction. They also developed weir fishing, which was of great importance as fish was the only meat allowed during periods of fasting.

The watermills kept working long after the monasteries were closed in the 16th century. However, it was not until the end of the 19th century that the watermills of the Lake District were used industrially, particularly in the production of pulp, e.g. at Klostermølle and Ry Mill. At Ry Mill, a small electricity-generating plant was also constructed, and it still works today.

For centuries, fishing was an important source of both food and income for the inhabitants of the Danish Lake District. The 20th century, however, saw a gradual decline in both the size of catches and the number of fishermen. By the 1920s, a dozen fishermen at Mossø were still able to make a living from the fish they caught in the lake. Today, there are only two commercial fishermen left in the entire Lake District – although fishing, now in the shape of angling for e.g. trout, zander, perch, pike and eel, continues to attract locals and visitors alike to the area’s lakes and streams.