Mols Bjerge Visitor Center Øvre Strandkær

Gateway to the Hills of Mols

Set amid gently rolling slopes shaped during the last Ice Age, Mols Bjerge Visitor Center at Øvre Strandkær functions as the natural hub of Mols Bjerge National Park. From the courtyard you look straight out onto open grasslands and low, rounded hills that rise far higher than typical Danish countryside, earning the area its nickname as Denmark’s “mountains.” This is where many visitors first orient themselves before walking, cycling, or simply sitting and taking in the expansive views. Inside the repurposed farm buildings you find a calm, light-filled introduction to the park. Displays explain how glaciers carved the landscape into moraines, kettle holes, and dead-ice hollows, and why these variations in soil and slope create such rich biodiversity. Large-scale maps and models make it easy to understand how the hills, bays, and forests fit together in a compact yet surprisingly varied national park.

Stories Written in Stone and Soil

One section of the exhibition focuses on geology, telling the story of how ice sheets advanced and retreated here thousands of years ago. Texts and models highlight distinctive features such as steep-sided hollows, dry ridges, and sandy outwash plains that now host heather, juniper, and tough grasses. You can trace how the same processes that shaped these hills also created the sheltered bays and inlets visible from the high points of the park. Alongside this, panels and objects explore human history in the landscape, from Bronze Age burial mounds on nearby hilltops to centuries of farming and grazing. Old photos and farm tools show how people learned to live with the thin soils and windy slopes, while still leaving space for wildlife. The center places the surrounding trails in this deeper context, so a simple walk becomes a journey through both natural and cultural time.

Wildlife, Grazing Herds and Open Grassland

Another key theme is the park’s flora and fauna. Exhibits introduce characteristic species of the dry hillsides, damp meadows, and small woodlands, including hardy grasses, orchids in select spots, and an impressive variety of insects and birds. Information boards explain how a mix of grazing animals and careful management keeps the grasslands open, preventing the hills from turning into dense forest. Just outside the visitor center you often see cattle or horses grazing in fenced areas. These animals are part of a deliberate effort to maintain sunny, flower-rich slopes that support butterflies, reptiles, and ground-nesting birds. The connection between indoor exhibition and outdoor reality is immediate: you can learn about a habitat in a display room and then step through the door to see, hear, and smell it for yourself.

Practical Hub for Walks and Picnics

The visitor center is designed as a practical base for a few hours or a full day in the hills. Entrance is free, and the building is typically open long hours from morning into the evening, allowing plenty of time to drop in before or after a walk. There are toilet facilities and an indoor picnic area, ideal on cooler or windy days when the weather on the ridges feels exposed. Staffed information points and self-service materials provide printed maps, suggested routes, and details about longer hikes such as the multi-stage Mols Bjerge Trail. Outside, waymarked paths of varying length lead directly from the site into heather areas, viewpoints, and glacial valleys. Benches and simple seating spots invite you to pause and look over the surrounding mosaic of hills, fields, and forest patches.

Experiencing the National Park from One Starting Point

From Øvre Strandkær you are well placed to discover some of the park’s best-known features, including nearby Bronze Age mounds on distant ridges and the highest points of the Mols Hills. The terrain around the center is undulating but not extreme, making it suitable for most reasonably fit walkers, while short loop trails provide gentler options for families or those with limited time. Interpretive material encourages a slow, observant approach. Rather than rushing between landmarks, you are invited to notice changing plant communities, track the shifting coastline in the distance, and watch for birds of prey circling on thermals above the slopes. In this way the visitor center serves not only as an information point but as a quiet place to tune into the character of Mols Bjerge.

Calm Atmosphere in a Working Landscape

Despite its role as a national park hub, the atmosphere at Strandkærvej remains distinctly rural. Former farm buildings, gravel surfaces, and simple fencing remind you that this is still a working cultural landscape shaped by agriculture as much as conservation. The combination of open skies, grazing animals, and modest facilities creates a relaxed, unhurried feel. Whether you stay briefly to gather information or linger over a picnic between walks, the visitor center offers a clear sense of place. It bridges indoor interpretation and outdoor experience, connecting modern visitors with an ancient landscape of hills, mounds, fields, and bays that has been evolving since long before Denmark existed as a nation.