Viking Tales - Samsø
The wind of the Raven god, Odin will guide your sails to Samsø, and you will sail straight into the heart of the sagas.
From Ballen harbor, you can explore “The mountain of Odin” (Onsbjerg), and Samsø also holds the most famous of all legends, the legend of king Angantyr. Angantyr was a furious Berserker who carried the cursed sword called Tyrfing. Tyrfing granted endless power and victory in battle, to whoever owned it, but along followed a dark curse of doom to its owner.
The sword demanded blood and so Angantyr conquered all of Denmark and founded the first Danish state with its center on Samsø.
He constructed a massive canal straight through the island, which is called the Kanhave- kanal, and with this in place, Angantyr placed his dragon fleet in Stavnsfjord, from where it could strike both east and west.
When you dock at Langør harbor, you find yourself in the center of Angantyrs navy base, and coming ashore, you can explore the area and find the remains of the famous Kanhave-kanal, where dragonships used to pass.
In the Viking age, Mårup vig was called Munarvagr (bay of endless longing). Here the clouds of war gathered over Angantyrs kingdom and Tyrfings curse finally caught up with the king. In a mighty and tragic battle against an invading army, Angantyr and his 11 berserker-brothers all died in the year of 728 AD, and afterwards the king was buried in a gravemound with his cursed sword by his side, and his brothers lying beside him on the shores of Munarvagr.
Today you can dock at Mårup harbor, and walk in the path of Angantyrs last fight, ore find the gravemounds called the thombs af Angantyr, near Sælvig, which hold their own legend.
The ghost of Angantyr and his Berserker-brothers wouldn’t rest in their mounds, because Odin wouldn’t grant them entry into Valhalla, with the cursed sword Tyrfing in their hands, so at night Samsø was haunted by fire and lighting, coming from the graves of the ghost-warriors.
This continued until the day, Angantyrs daughter, the famous shieldmaiden Hervør, came to the island, walked through the fire and lightning and was granted the cursed sword by her father’s ghost, and since then Samsø has been a place of peace and natural beauty.
