The Twisted Beeches in Troldeskoven

The twisted beeches in Troldeskoven have become an icon of Rold Forest. Their distinctive appearance is the result of a combination of the trees’ origin and the growing conditions they have experienced.

The beeches in Troldeskoven are the oldest beeches in the forest and direct descendants of the first beech trees that arrived in the area in the early Middle Ages. The oldest trees are more than 300 years old and are close to the maximum lifespan for beech trees.

Together with other native beeches from North Jutland, the Rold Forest beeches have a special characteristic compared with beech trees further south. When they are felled, new shoots grow from the stump and roots. Over time, these shoots develop into trunks. These so-called “røllebøge” can have up to 20–30 trunks, all belonging to the same individual tree.

This characteristic has been used in Rold Forest for centuries. The beeches could be “harvested” – or coppiced – again and again, without the need to plant new trees. Troldeskoven was also used for grazing, and the constant browsing by animals helped shape the “trolls”.

From time to time, the beech trunks grow together and form an “eye tree”. According to local superstition, you could avoid rickets, a disease caused by vitamin D deficiency, by crawling through an eye tree. In 1952, Queen Margrethe and her sisters were “treated” as children in an eye tree in Troldeskoven, now known as “The Princess Tree”.

Troldeskoven is marked as point of interest 7 on the Rold Forest and Rebild Bakker/Gravlev Ådal maps.

See the overview of the Danish Nature Agency’s updated hiking maps for Rebild Bakker and Rold Forest.