Qualla: Voergaard Castle

Voergaard Castle: Introduction

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wmpearl, CC0. Twelve train cars of art, shipped from France to rural Denmark with the blessing of the French government. That is how the paintings attributed to Goya, Rubens, Raphael, and El Greco came to hang in a red-brick Renaissance castle surrounded by a moat on the North Jutland peninsula. Voergaard Castle's collection would be remarkable in a major city museum. In a manor house ten kilometers north of Dronninglund, it borders on the surreal. The story of how it got there involves a peasant uprising, a ghost, a wartime love affair, and a Dane who left home for France in 1906 and came back half a century later with enough art to fill a palace.

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Image: Wmpearl | CC0

Voergaard Castle: Bishops, Peasants, and a Formidable Woman

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wmpearl, CC0. Voergaard's recorded history reaches back to 1481, when the castle belonged to Stygge Krumpen, Bishop of Borglum. During the Count's Feud, a civil war that tore through Denmark in the 1530s, Skipper Clement's army of peasants seized it. The Reformation followed, and the Crown con...

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Image: Wmpearl | CC0

Voergaard Castle: From Prime Minister to Empty Rooms

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lipothymia, CC BY-SA 3.0. Over two centuries, Voergaard changed hands repeatedly and much of its land was sold off. In 1872, Peder Bronnum Scavenius, a politician and landowner, purchased the estate and set about reassembling what had been dispersed. By his death in 1914, the property covered 1,944 hectar...

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Image: Lipothymia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Voergaard Castle: Twelve Train Cars from Bordeaux

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Image: J Th Hansen (1848-1912), Public domain. In 1955, Ejnar Oberbech-Clausen bought Voergaard. He was a Dane who had left for France in 1906 and married Marie Henriette Chenu-Lafitte, the widow of his former employer and daughter of Jules-Emile Pean, one of the great French surgeons of the nineteenth century. Through his ma...

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Image: Image: J Th Hansen (1848-1912) | Public domain

Voergaard Castle: Renaissance Brick and Royal Gifts

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jørgen A. Larsen/ ultraman/ ultramandk, CC BY 3.0. The castle itself is a two-winged, L-shaped structure built in red brick, flanked by two octagonal corner towers. Its most striking architectural feature is the sandstone portal on the east wing, a gift from King Frederick II that was originally designed for Frederiksborg Castle....

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Image: Jørgen A. Larsen/ ultraman/ ultramandk | CC BY 3.0

Voergaard Castle: A Gallery in the Fields

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit After Peter Paul Rubens, Public domain. The art collection now includes works attributed to Francisco Goya, Peter Paul Rubens, Raphael, El Greco, Antoine Watteau, and Frans Hals. The furniture includes pieces that belonged to Louis XIV and Louis XVI. Visitors walking through rooms hung with Old Masters in a moated cast...

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Image: After Peter Paul Rubens | Public domain