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Chap. LII.
ALLINGE—HAMMERSHUUS.
337
lengthways—for it has rocks below and above, purple
rocks clothed with moss, lichen, and delicate ferns,
growing out from its clefts and interstices. Allinge possesses
for its fishing-boats a little home-constructed harbour and
basin, hewed out of the solid rock, without the aid of
engineer, and there lay a flotilla of barques, protected
behind the rubble jetties. There is something fresh and
exciting, as we drive along, in the air and appearance
of the country: fine green turf, like emerald velvet, and
those rocks of purple marble—marble used in the
construction of the noblest buildings of Denmark, but not
the fashion, for in Bornholm stand only four churches
composed of this material. Search where you like,
you will not make them out; they are tastefully covered
over with, at least, six inches of whitewash. We turn
into a forest—not a Danish forest of beech, but
scattered clumps of oak, elm, ash, and hawthorn, rising
among monster boulders, mossy swards, and creeping
junipers—drive up to a striped farm-house, sheltered
from the blast by a protecting group of trees, pass
through a wooden gate, and the ruins of Hammershuus
stand before us.
Hammershuus was a chateau fort of early date. Some
writers ascribe its erection to Valdemar the Great ;*
probably it was the handiwork of some Archbishop of
Lund, of whose diocese Bornholm formed part and
parcel, and whose authority here reigned supreme.
* Valdemar the Great was proud of the buildings he caused to be
erected. On the plate found placed at the head of his coffin in the
abbey church of Ringsted, it is expressly mentioned how he constructed
the castle of Sprogø with burnt bricks ; would he then have omitted
to make mention of so much more important a work as the far-famed
castle of Hammershuus?
VOL. II. Z
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