A chapel
was built on the spot. More than seven centuries later (in 1892)
they dug there, and found the bones of a man with skull split in
two.
The stump behind which the wretched Svend hid was probably the last
representative of great forests that grew where now is sterile moor.
In the bogs trunks of oak and fir are found lying as they fell
centuries ago. The local names preserve the tradition, with here and
there patches of scrub oak that hug the ground close, to escape the
blast from the North Sea. There is one such thicket near the hamlet
of Taulund--the name itself tells of long-forgotten groves--and the
story runs among the people yet that once squirrels jumped from tree
to tree without touching ground all the way from Taulund to
Gjellerup church, a stretch of more than five miles to which the
wild things of the woods have long been strangers. In the shelter of
the old forests men dwelt through ages, and made the land yield them
a living. Some cairns that have been explored span over more than a
thousand years. They were built in the stone age, and served the
people of the bronze and iron ages successively as burial-places,
doubtless the same tribes who thus occupied their homesteads from
generation to generation.
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