Rebild Hills
Read about the unique nature in Rebild Municipality.
Rebild Bakker is a magnificent and beautifully rolling heath landscape. Visitors are met with new impressions all year round: in spring, everything bursts into fresh light green; in late summer, the heather blooms like a purple carpet; in autumn, the landscape glows in beautiful shades of red, brown and yellow; and in winter, nature rests – dark and quiet or beneath a blanket of snow.
The area is home to many beautiful hiking routes, such as the Rebild Bakker Trail, which takes you past a wide range of beautiful, fascinating and truly unique places.
Nature
Rebild Bakker offers steep climbs, beautiful views, as well as springs and streams. When you make your way to the top of the hills, you get the feeling of being high above the landscape – but in fact, the hills were formed when deep meltwater channels eroded down into a moraine plateau. In geological terms, the high hills are therefore what are known as “false hills”.
At the end of the Ice Age, a shift in the chalk bedrock beneath Lindenborg Valley is believed to have formed a channel for the meltwater, creating the tunnel valley. The ice melted in stages, and in the hills you can see terraces at several levels – remnants of former ice lake beds.
The rugged, hilly terrain consists of moraine, shaped by meltwater, Arctic soil movement, drifting sand and other natural forces. Later, the Stone Age sea reached inland through the river valley as far as the road between Rold Storkro and Lars Kjær’s House.
Rebild Bakker offers steep climbs, beautiful views, as well as springs and streams. When you make your way to the top of the hills, you get the feeling of being high above the landscape – but in fact, the hills were formed when deep meltwater channels eroded down into a moraine plateau. In geological terms, the high hills are therefore what are known as “false hills”.
Sønderkol is the highest point in Rebild Bakker – 102 metres above sea level. The effort of reaching the very top is rewarded as soon as you take in the magnificent view: not only down into “Gryden”, where the Rebild Festival takes place, but also across Lindenborg Valley, where you can see the unique hill formations, the many walking paths and the sheep that help maintain the landscape by grazing.
The open slopes of the hills are home to a wide variety of vegetation. The beautiful hills are covered with heather, crowberry, lingonberry, bilberry, bunchberry, clubmoss, arnica, juniper and more. The thickets consist of aspen and beech, along with scattered oak trees.
If the area were left untouched, the aspen – and later the beech – would gradually spread across the entire landscape. To prevent the open hills from turning into forest, tree growth is removed from the most distinctive ravines and valleys. At the same time, sheep and cattle grazing is used as nature management, helping to care for the dwarf shrubs, heather, crowberry and other characteristic plants.
The springs – Ravnkilden and Kovadsbækken – are fed by groundwater that emerges between the chalk layers in the soil. They are home to a distinctive insect life because the temperature remains very stable all year round, at around 7.5°C. The flora in the spring areas is also rare and vulnerable. For this reason, walking in these areas is not permitted. In the meadows near the limestone-rich water, you can find beautiful orchids, which must not be picked.
The Rebild Festival
The Rebild Festival has been a tradition since 1912, when Danish-Americans donated Rebild Bakker to the Danish state and, at the same time, helped create Denmark’s first national park.
One day a year, the hills come alive with celebration and colour. On American Independence Day, 4 July, tourists, Danish-Americans, locals, world-famous speakers and occasionally even members of the royal family gather in the hills to take part in the annual Rebild Festival.
There is a very special atmosphere in “Gryden” among the hills, when thousands of people come together to celebrate and strengthen the friendship between Americans and Danes. The Rebild National Park Society organises the festivities on the day.
Attractions and Other Events
Rebild is, and remains, the centre of the large tourist area around Rold Forest. This is also where you discover why the area is often called “the land of small museums” – with several local attractions nearby, including Museum Rebild, Lars Kjær’s House, Top Karens Hus and Rebildcentret by Thingbæk Limestone Mines.
At Rebild Bakker, you can also experience Opera in Rebild, which takes place every year on the second Sunday in August. Here, visitors can enjoy excerpts from well-known operettas and operas, performed by the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra and the Danish National Opera, with appearances by well-known artists. Bring a picnic basket and enjoy the beautiful music in the wonderful open-air setting of Rebild Bakker.
Every year, Rebild also hosts Christmas markets. One of them is Rebild Christmas Market – an outdoor Christmas market full of festive atmosphere, Christmas cheer, horse-drawn carriage rides, warm seasonal drinks and delicious treats. Each year, the market welcomes around 5,000 visitors.
