Get close to the
impressive engineering
of the Stone Age
More than 5,000 years ago the people of the Stone Age built great burial monuments of stones weighing many tonnes. How they moved and raised stones of up to 20 tonnes with muscle power alone, without modern machines, is still astonishing. The Tustrup dolmens show what people were capable of even then.
Walk the marked trail system and experience the great stone monuments at close hand. Three Stone Age graves lie gathered on the site: two dolmens and a passage grave. A passage grave is a large Stone Age tomb with a burial chamber you could enter through a long passage. The passage grave here is the largest in eastern Jutland, and the chamber is around 10 metres long. The dolmens were built in the Neolithic as burial monuments, but the area was also part of a wider cultural landscape where people lived, farmed the land and kept livestock.
The walk takes you through beautiful country of woods, open land and the Hevring river valley. Along the way you see not only the ancient monuments but also gain a feel for the landscape that has surrounded people for thousands of years.
On the walk:
Follow the marked trail system around the monuments. At the passage grave you can get close to the
impressive stones and get a sense of what an enormous undertaking it was to build it more than
5,000 years ago. The largest stones weigh around 20 tonnes.
Good to know:
At the car park you will find a small indoor exhibition about the monuments and the landscape,
which you can visit before following the marked trail out to the Stone Age graves.
See the 50-krone dolmen too:
While you are at Tustrup you can also stop by Stenvad Langdysse, better known as the 50-krone
dolmen. The long barrow was built around 5,400 years ago in the Neolithic. A picture of the dolmen
was printed on the back of the Danish 50-krone banknote issued in 1957.
It makes a fine little detour if you want to experience yet another of Djursland's striking Stone
Age monuments.
Have a great trip!
