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:
“It is an agreeable change to cross a lake, after you have been shut up in the woods, not only on account of the greater expanse of water, but also of sky. It is one of the surprises which Nature has in store for the traveler in the forest. To look down, in this case, over eighteen miles of water, was liberating and civilizing even.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“All nature wears one universal grin.”
—Henry Fielding (1707–1754)
“If from the earth we came, it was an earth
That bore us as a part of all the things
It breeds and that was lewder than it is.
Our nature is her nature. Hence it comes,
Since by our nature we grow old, earth grows
The same. We parallel the mother’s death.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)