Silkeborg

Denmark’s outdoor capital, set on the Gudenå in the hilly, lake-strewn Søhøjlandet and surrounded by the country’s largest forest district; the lakes running east towards Ry are known together as the Silkeborg lakes. The town is younger than it looks, grown around the Drewsen og Sønner paper mill of 1844, which took the river as power, raw material and transport at once. Michael Drewsen ran it and is reckoned the town’s founder. The population went from thirty in 1844 to 1,204 by 1855; the railway arrived in 1871 and market town status in 1900.