Parforce Hunting System and the Hermitage

by Jette Baagøe, Director of the Danish Museum of Hunting and Forestry

Upon the Reformation in 1536, the reigning monarch, King Christian III, seized control of all of the Catholic Church’s property and consequently came into full possession of thousands of properties all over the country. This ultimately proved to be deleterious to both the supervision of these properties and the administration of the nation’s wildlife. As a result, sometime later on in the sixteenth century, the kings tended to amass their real property into continuous estates. One of these was the North Zealand estate, the center of which became Frederiksborg Castle in Hillerød.

The hunt offered status
The hunt was important to the king, both as a status symbol and as source for supplying nourishment for the people in his court; and the rolling countryside of North Zealand, with its extensive marshes and wooded areas, was an ideal place for hunting deer.

Here, at the end of the seventeenth century, the absolute monarch, King Christian V, laid out a consummate so-called “par force hunting landscape”, following the French paradigm. This landscape is still preserved in North Zealand’s forests today.

A hunt to the bitter end
While he was still Denmark’s crown prince, the later King Christian V paid a visit to “The Sun King,” Louis XIV, in France and participated in the French monarch’s par force hunt, a special manner of hunting where hunters on horseback, with aid of relays of dogs, would pursue a deer (more precisely the hart, an adult male of the red deer variety) until it simply could not run any longer. The dogs would then hold the stag at bay, long enough for the most prominent member of the hunting party to move in and make the kill, using a sword or a spear. Along the way, the hunters would send forth signals with shouts and sounds made by the hunting horns.

The Sun King’s par force hunt was an impressive spectacle, with hundreds of colorful and beautiful howling dogs, hunting staff in brightly colored uniforms and huge sounding horns.

The par force hunt was an impressive spectacle, with hundreds of colorful barking dogs, hunting staff in brightly colored uniforms and huge sounding hunting horns

In the seventeenth century, antibiotics had not yet been discovered. Consequently, par force hunting could be hazardous to the health. But Crown Prince Christian, who was congenitally hunchbacked, was an enthusiastic participant in this hunting ritual. The Sun King praised him and encouraged him to devote himself to practicing par force hunting when he returned to Denmark.

Par force hunting in Dyrehaven [The Deer Park]
In 1670, Crown Prince Christian was granted permission to surround Boveskov [Beech Woods], near Ordrup, north of Copenhagen, with a fence, in order to set up a deer park where he could run down the par force game without creating a nuisance to the king’s farmers. Later that same year, his father, King Frederik III, died. As the ascending monarch, King Christian V immediately turned his attention to his par force hunt project and dismantled the village of Stokkerup that was located just north of Boveskov and expanded the deer park so that its area came to encompass what is presently Jaegersborg Dyrehave and Jaegersborg Hegn. Ibstrup Castle, south of Dyrehaven, was given the name “Jaegersborg,” and high on the plain, the king built a hunting pavilion, Hubertus House, which was eventually replaced by the Hermitage Castle in 1736.

A star-shaped system of paths
Later on, in the 1690s, King Christian V decreed that all the wooded areas in North Zealand be divided up into demarcated sections partitioned by straight roads or clearings, which were supposed to intersect with each other in such a way that regular star shapes would be formed. Inside the stars, small mounds were supposed to be constructed and a stone was placed in Store Dyrehave [Great Deer Park] that was embossed with a compass card and the king’s name.

The guiding idea behind the hunting path system and the star was that participating hunters who were stationed, during the chase, at lookout posts with well-rested horses and dogs could follow the course of hunt with their eyes and quickly ride on out to the scene as soon as they got the signal to do so.

The path system also allowed the royal hunting party to follow along with the action at a distance, as the lymers and huntsmen rode after the deer, and could then quickly move into position as soon as the dogs had the hart at bay. In Jægersborg Dyrehave, the star, known as the “waiting place,” was located just beside Hubertus House.

The unfortunate monarch
It was precisely at this particular house that, on a par force hunt in the year 1698, King Christian V, who by this time was not able to walk without difficulty, was waiting for the stag. While the dogs were holding the stag at bay, the king approached it and stabbed it with his sword. However, the stag fell to the ground in such a way that unfortunately, the hind part of its body crushed the king and on top of this, the animal kicked the king’s leg with such force that the horrified onlookers thought it was broken.

King Christian V managed to survive the accident for half a year but had to make do with being moved around in a wheelchair.

Revolutionary riders
Par force hunting was abolished in 1777 when revolutionary ideas, the Romantic sensibility and the Enlightenment all served to render this resource-intensive, high-maintenance form of royal hunting outmoded. Absolutism was moving through a stage of heavy decline at this time and the hunting customs of the ruling powers were correspondingly undergoing a number of changes. In 1805, Denmark was placed under a body of legislation governing the supervision of its wooded areas, according to which the forests were supposed to be fenced in and cultivated. The par force hunting paths, however, proved to be useful for haulage, both inside and around the forests, and they were preserved.

In 1848, the absolute monarchy was abolished and the royal forests became government property. But the grandiose trails of absolutism’s par force hunt still cut right through them. Every year, the echoes of the hunt’s excitement whistle through the viewing audience as the Hubertus Horsemen take the Springdammen [Spring Pond] in Jægersborg Dyrehave by storm.

Candidate for World Heritage
The North Zealand par force hunting landscape is proposed as a candidate for inclusion on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in the category of “Landscapes that have been deliberately planned and created by human beings.”

It is universally unique as a cultural landscape insofar as it represents a combination of natural and man-made creations. It also bespeaks a course of development within man-made societies under the influence of the changing – both external and internal – societal, economic and cultural forces.