Not too long ago I made a post about the Sanded Church of Skagen that was abandoned due to being buried in sand, but the “sand problem” is much larger than the church.
If you look at Denmark on a map you might notice a white dot near the very top of the country.
That my friend is a huge sand dune that arose out of the sea 300 years ago and is slowly eating its way through the landscape at 18 meters a year.
And if you look closer you might notice that it’s heading straight for the towns Rannerød and Hulsig and when that happens no one will come to save them because the dune is protected. At least they’ll see it coming.
That means that in a few hundred years we won’t just have a sanded church, we’ll have sanded towns with more roofs and towers sticking out of the dune than any tourist bureau could wish for.
Because the dune is a very popular tourist spot. I myself have been to it a few times and it’s quite the experience for a child to suddenly be in a “desert” in Denmark.
If you feel sad for the people in the towns just remember that’s nature. The reason why the dune is protected is because the area used to have many more but people made an effort to destroy them and it fucked up the ecosystem in the area. The dunes leave moist wetland behind that loads of rare creatures thrive in.
So today the inevitable end of the towns are viewed as sort of romantic poetry about nature, the march of time and appreciating the now.
And isn’t it kinda beautiful? To know that something like this exists in the world that will destroy our towns, roads and railways that we could
easily eradicate with our modern technology but we choose not to simply because we know it would be wrong.
