Kongeegen (the King Oak)

Three ancient oaks made this forest famous. Two of them are dead, Storkeegen since 1980 and Snoegen since 1991, and the third is the reason to come. Kongeegen, the King Oak, is a hollow shell held upright by supports, and the foundation that owns the forest still writes about it in the present tense: the oldest tree, still alive. A tree-ring investigation in 1965 put it at 1,500 to 2,000 years, which would make it the oldest oak in northern Europe. The estate's own page enjoys the thought that it may have sprouted around year zero. It was larger once. At its peak the trunk was four metres across and fourteen metres round. The last main limb broke off in 1973, and half the shell and a side branch have gone since, so the Danish Dendrological Society's figure of 12.55 metres describes a tree already past its own maximum. The crown, for something this old, is in surprisingly good order. The name comes from Frederik VII, who lived at Jægerspris Slot from 1854 and had the first props installed under it. Local telling has the king and Countess Danner sitting side by side on horseback inside the hollow trunk. In 1986 Prince Henrik planted a graft taken from it in the castle park, so there is a young copy of this tree a short distance away. The forest is open and free. The tree is fenced, and you look at it from outside.