Nature
Thy has a very varied landscape. In the north it is marked by flat coastal plains which were covered by sea in neolithic times, but fell dry because of the . These are interrupted with higher-lying plains that were islands in the neolithic sea. In the slopes that formed the coast in these times, high-lying limestone is often visible - hence the name of the Limfjord. The eastern stretch, facing the Limfjord, has quite fertile soil, is slightly hilly and dotted with small villages and farms like the landscape in most of rural Denmark. The landscape is marked by strong western winds, most trees bending eastwards.
The west coast has wide beaches and high dunes with Leymus grass and sea-buckthorn. Behind the dunes, there is heath with stretches of Calluna heather, Iceland moss, Cladonia, crowberry, bilberry, blueberry, cranberry and orchids including the unique Dactylorhiza majalis subsp. calcifugiens. This is the result of huge sand drift in the 15th to 19th centuries which covered much formerly fertile land. The sand drift affected the whole west coast of Jutland, and some other parts of Denmark as well. Since Thy is exposed to winds from both the north and the west, even from the North Atlantic, the sand drift went the furthest inland in this area, as far as 18 km (11 mi). Parts of the sandy stretches have been turned into conifer woods. A line of lakes, believed to have been caused by the sand drift's blocking the outflow to the sea, mark the border between the western, sparsely populated sandy area and the eastern, fertile farmland.
The wetlands Vejlerne in the northeast are the largest bird sanctuary in Northern Europe. Nearby is the bird cliff Bulbjerg.
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Famous quotes containing the word nature:
“Two well-assorted travellers use
The highway, Eros and the muse.
From the twins is nothing hidden,
To the pair is naught forbidden;
Hand in hand the comrades go
Every nook of nature through:
Each for the other they were born,
Each can other best adorn.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“No such sermons have come to us here out of England, in late years, as those of this preacher,—sermons to kings, and sermons to peasants, and sermons to all intermediate classes. It is in vain that John Bull, or any of his cousins, turns a deaf ear, and pretends not to hear them: nature will not soon be weary of repeating them. There are words less obviously true, more for the ages to hear, perhaps, but none so impossible for this age not to hear.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Man is fallen; nature is erect, and serves as a differential thermometer, detecting the presence or absence of the divine sentiment in man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)