9 kmNørre Omme Cemetery as a Sensory Garden
Quiet village churchyard with a sensory garden and old grave memorials, suited to peace and local history.
Ølstrup Church lies quietly in the village, but the central panel of the altarpiece makes the church interior unusual. Here hangs Emil Nolde's Supper at Emmaus, painted specifically for this church and now back in its place after a turbulent later history.
The motif is based on the story of the meal at Emmaus, where the two disciples recognise Jesus. In Ølstrup, the painting does not seem like a detached work of art, but rather as part of an older altarpiece and a space where several periods lie on top of one another.
Look up in the chancel: here, the vault forms an eight-pointed star, and stylised painted palm leaves spread out from the star's points. The contrast with the nave's flat beam ceiling makes the transition between the church's spaces clear.
The furnishings take the church further back in time than the Nolde story. The Romanesque granite font, the pulpit and parish clerk's pew from the beginning of the 17th century, and the 14th-century crucifix provide small, fixed points of reference in a church interior that has been altered over time.
In the churchyard lies a large mound, a more uncertain trace of the past. Very large stones have been found here, which is why the possibility is mentioned that the mound may conceal a dolmen or passage grave. This has not been proven, but it makes the churchyard seem older in thought than the church walls themselves.
When Emil Nolde’s altarpiece was stolen, Alice Ravnholt from the parish painted a temporary altarpiece for Ølstrup Church in 2014. The motif is The Women at the Tomb, but the tomb is not a distant biblical cave: it is based on a burial chamber at Langdyssevej outside Ølstrup.
After Nolde’s image returned in 2019, Ravnholt’s work lost its place in the altarpiece. According to the parish, it now hangs on the north wall of the nave.
The altarpiece Meal in Emmaus was painted by Emil Nolde for Ølstrup Church in 1904. The motif is linked to the Gospel of Luke’s account of the meal in Emmaus, where the disciples recognize the risen Jesus.
The artwork’s more recent history is almost too dramatic for the small church interior: stolen in March 2014, found again heavily damaged in northern Germany in 2018, and returned after restoration in 2019. On 1 December that same year, it was reconsecrated in its place.
