Denmark - Jelling Church

It's my first card from Denmark! :) Maybe it's hard to believe, but I hadn't had any Danish card until I received this one, although I've been to Denmark twice. My uncle lives in Copenhagen and I went there with my mother in 1996. I was just 5 years old then, so I don't really remember much. The 2nd time was in 2003, when I visited the Bornholm island on the Baltic sea and I remember it a bit better :) But I still wasn't a postcard collector at that time, so I didn't bring any Danish postcards home.

I received this card from Genek through the UNESCO tag :) The Jelling monuments were included in the UNESCO World Heritage List as symbols of the transitional period from paganism to Christianity.


Jelling Church was built around year 1100 and is the fourth church. Three wooden churches – the first, which was built in the eighth century by Harald Bluetooth as a sort of mausoleum for his father, Gorm the Old, burned down.

The Roman church was built in travertine. In the late Middle Ages, the low western tower was added.

In the beginning, the first Danish frescos were found in the chancel, clearly inspired by Byzantine art. They were, however, not found worthy of preservation and were destroyed in 1875 and the same year replaced by Magnus Pedersen copies. In 1926, the frescos were restored by Johan Thomas Skovgaard, who also did the frescos on the south wall.

The churchyard boasts some of Europe’s finest monuments from the Viking period: Denmark’s two largest grave mounds and two runic stones built by the kings Gorm the Old and Harald Bluetooth in the eighth century.