First morning on Tåsinge island was warm and sunny. So far so good! It wasn’t possible to make a hot beverage, and we just had water and fruit for breakfast, together with bread that Mette baked before out trip.
A local cat came by, very slowly and without paying any attention to our promises of good food and unconditional love:
Mette and I took our bikes and got on the road. We wanted to see the northeast part of the island. I’ve heard, a small town of Troense was worth visiting. And then, of course, the Valdemar’s Castle.
In Troense, we walked through the streets back and force – to our delight, there were many old beautiful houses with nice rose gardens. Troense has the Denmark’s largest concentration of protected houses, with over 30 of them.
On Tåsinge, everything is about Elvira Madigan! Or at least, that’s how it felt. The airport is called “Elvira Madigan airport”. Wherenever you look – there are either signs about or mentionings of Elvira Madigan. That was a true story that unfolded in 1888 – 1889.
Elvira Madigan (civil name Hedvig Jensen) was a circus performer who was born in Flensburg, Germany. When performing in Kristianstad in Sweden in 1888, she was seen by lieutenant Sixten Sparre. He was married and had 2 children, but felt madly in love with Elvira. They were exchanging letters for a year, and eventually ran away together and arrived to Troense, escaping the bills (Sixten had been heavily in debt). After a few days, they went into the nearby forest area, where Sixten shot Elvira, and then killed himself.
The tragedy was excessively romanticised. In 2021, Kathinka Lindhes, the great-grandchild of Sixten, published a book based on her own investigation of his life and the event, where she sheds quite a different light on the story. The truth is, we will never know how it evolved, we can only have our own interpretations.
Mette and I picked up a tourist brochure about Elvira and Sixten on Tåsinge island. There was a long route of many kilometres with different places one could visit, to follow in the footsteps of the couple. We didn’t even dream of doing that route, but tried to see a couple of houses, related to the story, in Troense. To our surprise, the houses were demolised long time ago 🙂 But tourists were welcomed to look at the places where those houses ones stood!
Troense marina with some beautiful views over the strait:
We were getting hungry, and found out, there was a small grocery shop and cafe called Storms Hjørne (The Storm’s Corner). Christian Storm established a hawker shop in 1881 at that place, and it functioned till 1984. Later, there was a hairdresser and an artist gallery. In 2016, the residents of Troense brought the grocery shop back, where volunteers from the island work on a shift basis. It is also in charge of the tourist information, and serves as a meeting place for the town’s residents.
The Storms Hjørne had a small cafe inside, a green garden with tables outside, they sold freshly baked bread and pastries, local products, and oher useful stuff. I bought some canned fish and beer that was brewed specially for the shop – for gifts, I don’t drink beer myself.
Mette and I got a loaf of free ryebread. It was a couple of days old, and therefore offered for free. The volunteers from the shop cut it for us on a bread slicing machine. We bought some ham and cheese, and our lunch was ready! We enjoyed it in the garden. The weather was warm and sunny, that Indian summer in September was so pleasant.
The Storms Hjørne had Skarø ice-cream, which we had for desert. Skarø is a tiny island of 2 km2 and 26 inhabitants west of Tåsinde, and they produce lots of quality ice-cream. I didn’t like it, but Mette tried several varieties, and she loved it.
After lunch, we continued to the Valdemar’s Castle through the streets of Troense:
A beautiful alley led us to the entrance to the castle:
The tea house by the pond:
Valdemar’s Castle was built in 1644 by King Christian IV. It was intended to be the home for his son Valdemar, who has never occupied the minor but was killed during a battle in Poland. Admiral Niels Juel, the naval hero, was given both the castle and the island of Tåsinge after his victory over Sweden in the Battle of Køge. The castle has been in the family ownership since then.
It was great to finally go for a swim!
The beach by the castle was nice and sandy, but with a row of small stones one had to get over.
It was wonderful to stay there for a while.
Our next stop was Ambrosius oak, a tree that was planted around year 1600, with a circumreference of 7.30 metres:
That older than 400 years tree was named after the poet Ambrosius Stub, who stayed in the castle in 1750 (when the oak was already 150 years old, worth noting).
There were animals here and there on Tåsinge, and we always stopped to say hello:
Eventually, Mette and I came by the Landet church, where we accidentally discovered the memorial site of burial place of Elvira Madigan and Sixten Sparre in 1889, the story I described earlier in this blogpost. Nowadays, it has become a tradition for weddings (!) for the bride to place her bouquet on Elvira’s grave.
In Elvira’s dress pocket was found a paper with a poem that she had written by herself just before her death. The poem was written in a mix of languages, and later translated into English as follows:
“A drop fell into the water,
faded out slowly.
And the place where it fell
surrounded from wave to wave.
What was it that fell?
and where did it come from?
It was but a life,
and but a death that came
to win itself a track.
Now the water rests once again.”
Sad story… Never get into a relationship with married and financially broken men… We left the graveyard and continued to the supermarket in Strammelse – to buy something for dinner. That day, we biked around 25 km:
When Mette and I got back to our camp, the sun was getting down. We needed to have dinner before the night would be over us.
By the way, the night before I got up and was amazed by the stunning view of the Milky Way. I tried to take pictures and make a video – they didn’t turn out to be good. I was going to get up in the midlle of the night again and watch the Universe.