Surfing, hiking and a spot of stargazing: five of the best outdoor activities to do in Denmark

There’s something about Denmark that turns even the most ordinary of activities into an adventure worthy of a fairytale. It helps that the nation of islands is the homeland of Hans Christian Andersen, of course. Danes love their friluftsliv – which loosely translates to “outdoor living” – and it’s easy to see why. This is a country where windy beaches become playgrounds for blokarters (land yachters) and kitesurfers, Dark Sky zones offer midnight safaris and sand dunes turn into desert hiking opportunities. Join us on an action-packed tour of the best of Denmark’s outdoor activities.

Adventures in the dark
About two hours south of Copenhagen, there’s so little light pollution on the island municipality of Møn that it was designated Scandinavia’s first Dark Sky Park and community in 2017. It sets the scene for an extraordinary array of Dark Sky activities: stargazing of course, but also guided safaris, moonlit night swimming in the sea, and a hike along the Camøno Trail lit by only the moon and stars. As they say, when the sun goes down, adventure comes out; it’s so much more than a five-star experience.

• Famous as Scandinavia’s first Dark Sky Park, the island of Møn shines day and night. Photographs: Astrorms/Ruslan Merzlyakov; LABAN Stories; Getty Images/iStockphoto

Local hotels and B&Bs have signed up to a Dark Sky agreement, keeping the area as dark as possible, and, along with the dark, it’s beautifully quiet. It’s a memorable feeling to sit on the sandy beaches and enjoy the peace and darkness together in the moon shadow of the great chalk cliffs of Møns Klint. The best times to experience the Dark Sky zone are in spring, autumn and winter, largely because the long light summer nights reduce the amount of darkness you experience, though of course you’ll still see the stars when they emerge a little before midnight.

Surfing a different Hawaii
Denmark’s premier watersports spot is Klitmøller, a small town in the remote north of Jutland, which goes by the nickname of Cold Hawaii. It certainly got the first part right; this cold curve of sandy beach has an exposed point break and an offshore reef to kick up waves, attracting surfers from all over the country to ride waves here and at other beaches nearby. It’s no Newquay (for good and bad), with just a handful of beach bars and rental shops, but it does offer plenty of options for surfing, kitesurfing and windsurfing. You can also try stand-up paddleboarding, on the days the waves aren’t pumping.

• The breaks at Kitmøller, Denmark’s burgeoning surf town. Photograph: Mette Johnsen

Beyond the beach, this wild and remote part of North Jutland, which includes the country’s oldest national park at Thy, is wonderful for nature lovers and hikers in particular. There’s a real sense of drama in the waves crashing on the west coast of our shared North Sea, and hiking the “Rescue Road” along the coastline is the best way to see it. This path by the sea and the dunes was once plied by teams rescuing shipwrecked sailors, and it doesn’t take much to imagine yourself back in the time of wave-drenched ships and cargo littering the clean, sandy beaches.

Harnessing the power of the wind
There’s no getting around the fact that some parts of Denmark are very windy. The pretty sandy island of Fanø, part of the Wadden Sea National Park on Denmark’s west coast, is one of them. It’s a popular family holiday spot with plenty of summer cottages to rent, but it’s fair to say that days at the beach here aren’t quite like you might imagine: the winds make it hard to build sandcastles and sunbathe. So instead, the locals use the beaches for other things: blokarting and kite landboarding being just two of them.

• Photograph: Kim Wyon

Blokarters race around the broad, flat beaches with the wind in their hair on three-wheeled, sail-powered buggies; kite landboarders stand on oversized skateboards, holding kites to steer across the beach at speed – just like kitesurfing, but on land. You can also kitesurf and paddleboard on Fanø, but even these activities turn into something else here – with resident seal populations on Fanø year-round, there’s a safari element to add to your active adventure.

Hiking in the dunes
Sand of another kind provides a different adventure in the north of Jutland. Råbjerg Mile, close to the beach town of Skagen at Denmark’s tip, is the largest migrating sand dune in northern Europe. Take the chance to go a little “Lawrence of Arabia” in the “desert” here, where you’re almost guaranteed to get sand in your shoes as you hike the sandy trails. Every year, they move about 15 metres to the north-east, affecting the landscape of the entire area as they blow. As you go, look out for quicksand (it might be one of the only times in your life you’re likely to encounter it) and buried buildings. There’s a beautiful whitewashed 14th-century tower to visit in the area. It’s all that remains of a church that was abandoned to the dunes back in the 1700s.

• The vast sandy trails near Skagen in the north of Jutland are an unlikely scenic wonder. Photographs: Jørne Skoven; Csaba Labancz; Christian Faber

Sailing the South Funen archipelago
Denmark is a nation of islands – 444 or so at last count (depending on how you class an island) – and most of them are uninhabited. In the South Funen archipelago, 55 low-lying islands offer a wide range of experiences and landscapes, from cutesy, fairytale Ærø to pastures with wild horses on Langeland, and the sandy beaches of Avernakø.

• Setting sail from Svendborg harbour; Birkholm island, which is inhabited by fewer than 10 people. Photographs: Michael Fiukowski & Sarah Moritz; Simone Juul Borring

You can charter your own sailboat through a local operator, where you spend your days making the most of that wild Danish wind energy as you island-hop with views of pale yellow beaches, cornflower blue skies and pretty fishing villages. Taking the sea routes around Denmark also gives you access to otherwise inaccessible islands, and allows you to swan into little marinas and order towers of seafood in charming designer beach hotels, known as badehoteller. If you don’t sail, public ferries ply many routes, allowing you to island-hop to their schedule.

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