Qualla: Egeskov Castle

Egeskov Castle: Introduction

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit KurtVl BE, CC0. The name means oak forest, and legend says that is precisely what it cost. To carry Egeskov, the story goes, an entire forest of oaks had to be driven into the bed of the lake — a tale with no documentary backing, but a tale that gets one thing right. The castle really does stand on oaken piles, in a small lake five metres deep at most, and for a long time the only way in was over a drawbridge. Frands Brockenhuus raised the structure in 1554 on an estate first recorded in 1405. He was not building for the view.

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Image: KurtVl BE | CC0

Egeskov Castle: A House to Fight a Civil War From

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Danielle dk, CC BY-SA 4.0. Denmark in the 1530s and 1540s had given its nobility every reason to be nervous. The Count's Feud — Grevens Fejde — was a war of succession that turned into a civil war, and it ran straight into the upheaval of the Protestant Reformation. Noblemen responded by building homes tha...

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Image: Danielle dk | CC BY-SA 4.0

Egeskov Castle: Inside the Double Wall

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Reannanross, CC BY-SA 3.0. That thick central wall is not solid. Concealed staircases run inside it, and so does a water well, reachable from the servants' kitchen in the east house — the point being that a garrison cut off from the lake still had something to drink. The brickwork is the oversized medieval...

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Image: Reannanross | CC BY-SA 3.0

Egeskov Castle: What Hangs Inside

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Emelie Graven, CC BY-SA 4.0. Among the contents is a massive iron chest dating from at least the 16th century, brought here from Hvedholm Castle, an estate about twenty kilometres west that once belonged to Egeskov. The walls carry a great many oil paintings, and the one that dominates the great hall on the ...

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Image: Emelie Graven | CC BY-SA 4.0

Egeskov Castle: A Hundred and Four Fuchsias

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hubertus45, CC BY-SA 3.0. The park around the castle covers 20 hectares and has been divided, over the centuries, into a collection of quite different gardens. The Renaissance garden has fountains, gravel and clipped topiary. The fuchsia garden — one of the largest in Europe — holds 104 species. There is ...

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Image: Hubertus45 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Egeskov Castle: Motorcycles in the Park

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit (WT-en) Disonyxiated at English Wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 1.0. The estate runs to a further eight square kilometres, two and a half of them forest and the rest farmland, and a good part of it has been given over to collections that have nothing to do with the 16th century. Egeskov houses vintage automobiles, vintage motorcycles, aircraft and...

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Image: (WT-en) Disonyxiated at English Wikivoyage | CC BY-SA 1.0