Jaegersborg Deer Park

Dyrehaven was enclosed as a royal hunting ground in 1670 and has never been farmed or built over since, which is why it still looks like open wood pasture: single ancient oaks standing in grass, avenues cut dead straight through the trees, and around two thousand red, fallow and sika deer moving freely across it. On a low rise at the centre sits the Eremitage hunting lodge of 1736, closed to visitors but visible from every direction. The grid of straight rides comes from the old par force hunting system, and that pattern across north Zealand is why the area was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2015.

History

In 1669 Frederik III ordered the beech wood of Boveskov, once owned by Valdemar the Victorious and recorded in his census of 1231, to be fenced in with a ditch, an earth bank and woven fences, and deer from the surrounding land to be driven into it; the work was unfinished when he died in 1670. His son Christian V, who had seen par force hunting with hounds at the court of Louis XIV, enlarged the park to 16 square kilometres, taking in the fields up to the village of Stokkerup, whose people were ordered to pull down their houses and resettle on farms left empty since the Northern Wars, with three years free of tax in return. Jægersborg Hegn was part of the park until 1832, and in July 2015 Dyrehaven became one of the three forests of the Par force hunting landscape in North Zealand World Heritage Site (Wikipedia, Jægersborg Dyrehave).

What you'll find

• The deer herds - red, fallow and sika deer grazing in the open, used to people but not tame.
• The Eremitage lodge - a white hunting lodge of 1736 on the highest ground, seen from outside.
• The hunting rides - straight avenues cut through the wood in a geometric grid.
• The old oaks - gnarled trees several centuries old standing alone in grassland.

When to go

September and October for the rut, when stags roar and gather harems and photographers line the routes. Spring brings leaf and calves, winter bare trees and long sightlines. The park is open at all hours, and early mornings before the joggers and dog walkers arrive give the best chance of animals out in the open.

Good to know

It is very close to Copenhagen and correspondingly busy, especially on sunny weekends when the meadows fill with picnics. The deer look approachable and are not; people are hurt during the rut most years. There is no shelter deep in the park, paths turn muddy after rain, and the lodge itself cannot be entered.

Nearby

The Bakken amusement park sits inside the forest; Klampenborg beach and the coast road are alongside.

Key facts