We decided to rent a car for a couple of days to make it easier to get around to the small villages.
There was no Thrifty, Europecar etc but we did find an ad for Hertz. Turned out they contract with someone here and have access to one or two cars - no automatics! We went ahead and booked it but weren't sure where we would have to pick up. Our hotel is 3km from downtown so it could be anywhere. It was our lucky day the garage was across the street. It was pouring with rain so we were glad not to have to bike or walk too far.
We made it to Mygdal!
There is nowhere to eat in Mygdal so we picked up food for lunch.
Very tasty buns.
We had arranged to meet the minister at the church at 1pm
The minister and his wife met us and were very helpful. The caretaker also came to help as he is in charge of the grave yard.
The inside of Mygdal church.
In Denmark grave yards are down very differently than I have seen before. They are divided into family plots separated by hedges. Each plot has room for several headstones. However the graves are only there for 30 years at which point they are then dug up and reused unless the family pays for a longer period. So we had no luck searching for graves as they were no longer there. Recently they have started putting the old headstones into an area at back of grave yard so you can see them still. Previously they had broken up the headstones. We were very lucky though as the caretaker went and found an old list of all the burials and we found a listing of some of our family.
The burial record of my great, great grandmother Ane Kathrine Jensdatter. She died in 1888.
In talking to the minister and caretaker we talked about the farm where the family had lived. The caretaker knew the family that lives there now and called them. They were quite interested and said they had some old pictures that might be our family. The minister offered to drive us there so we took him up on his offer and went to Little Grontved.
The current owners Thorkild and Agneth have had the farm since 1976 and it has been in Agneths family since about 1910.
Thorkild is a blacksmith and they don't farm the land (11 hectares). One of the buildings - the barn is likely the only building that may have been there in my great grandmas time.
Picture from 1902 of family that bought farm after my great great grandfather died.
The barn from the centre of farm yard. Most Danish farms seem to built in a U shape or almost square around a central yard.
They invited us to have coffee on their deck. They had much old paper work including mortgage papers from when the farm was sold in the early 1900s.
The view from their deck including a fish pond.
When we left the farm the minister drove us around a little and then to the local archive. This was in a room in the basement of a school and is only open 2 hours a week. We lucked out that it was while we there! The man there hunted in some files and found us a list of people who had owned the farm.
We were having a great day indeed!
We went back to pick up our car from church and take a few more pictures.
The older headstones moved to back of yard.
The view from the church
Our car parked at church.
The church bells are not in a steeple on church but in a separate structure in the grounds. The caretaker rings them twice a day.
We were happy campers with all our finds today so decided to do a little sightseeing while we had the car. We headed to the beach on the west coast. You are not too far from the beach West, North or East in Mygdal. In this area there are big sand dunes. Some of had trees planted to help block the wind .
Then we headed to Skagen and on to Grenen. The northern most part of Denmark.
It was very windy and cool so we actually didn't walk the 3 km to the tip but we did get quite close!
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