's axemen. 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. That they were farmers, not nomads, is
proved by the clear impression of grains of wheat and barley in
their burial urns. The seeds strayed into the clay and were burned
away, but the impression abides, and tells the story.

Clear down to historic times there was a thrifty population in many
of the now barren spots. But a change was slowly creeping over the
landscape. The country was torn by long and bloody wars. The big men
fought for the land and the little ones paid the score, as they
always do. They were hunted from house and home. Next the wild
hordes of the Holstein counts overran Jutland. Its towns were
burned, the country laid waste. Great fires swept the forests. What
ravaging armies had left was burned in the smelteries. In the sandy
crust of the heath there is iron, and swords and spears were the
grim need of that day. The smelteries are only names now. They
went, but they took the forests with them, and where the ground was
cleared the west wind broke through, and ruin followed fast. Last of
all came the Black Death, and set its seal of desolation upon it
all. When it had passed, the country was a huge graveyard. The heath
had moved in. Rovers and smugglers found refuge there;