A quaint little town visited by more than 150,000 tourists annually, and not without reason. Jelling boasts some of Europe’s most prominent Viking Age monuments, which in 1994 were included in the UNESCO World Heritage list. 

The two mighty burial mounds and two rune stones erected by the kings Gorm the Old and Harald Bluetooth in the 900s and Jelling Church mark the transition from paganism to Christianity and can also be seen as Denmark’s ‘birth certificate’, since one of the rune stones carries the oldest inscription with mention of Denmark as a nation and the Danes as a people.

Jelling Church was erected around 1100. The Romanesque stone church was constructed on the site of Harald Bluetooth’s wooden church from the 900s. In 2000, King Gorm the Old was reburied in the chamber tomb in the church.

The Royal Jelling visitor’s centre relates the awe-inspiring story of the monuments – their construction, their significance and the scientific and popular interest they have garnered for more than 400 years since the late 1500s when the magnificent monuments were first rediscovered.