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.
Read more about this topic: Thy (district)
Famous quotes containing the word nature:
“Westminster Abbey is nature crystallized into a conventional form by man, with his sorrows, his joys, his failures, and his seeking for the Great Spirit. It is a frozen requiem, with a nation’s prayer ever in dumb music ascending.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“I wish to say that, in so far as I can, I hope to promote the enactment of further legislation of this character.
There’s nothing else one can say about me—I’m superfluous, in a word. A supernumerary—that’s all. Nature evidently didn’t count on my appearance, and consequently treated me as an unexpected, uninvited guest.”
—Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818–1883)
“Our bread need not ever be sour or hard to digest. What Nature is to the mind she is also to the body. As she feeds my imagination, she will feed my body; for what she says she means, and is ready to do. She is not simply beautiful to the poet’s eye. Not only the rainbow and sunset are beautiful, but to be fed and clothed, sheltered and warmed aright, are equally beautiful and inspiring. There is not necessarily any gross and ugly fact which may not be eradicated from the life of man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)