Dancing Forest on the Curonian Spit: What secret do the dancing trees of this anomalous place keep?

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

In the Kaliningrad region, near the village of Rybachy, there is a strange, eerie place. However - just as beautiful. The Dancing Forest is a very popular and very mysterious local landmark, shrouded in an aura of legends and superstitions. The incredibly curved tree trunks seem to be circling in some kind of frantic dance, and the reason for their "behavior" is still not precisely determined. This forest, which is part of the Curonian Spit National Park, attracts tourists and photographers like a magnet.

Strange place

The forest appeared here in 1961 - it was artificially planted in order to strengthen the sands. More than half a century has passed, and during this time the conifers that have grown here have acquired very intricate forms. What was the force that bent them so bizarrely? Scientists are still puzzling over this. It seems that the trees have arranged a dance, and those who risk walking around this place say that the further you go into the forest, the more aggressive the "dance" becomes.

It is especially strange that in this forest you can hardly hear birds singing and there are almost no animals. Well, the people who have visited this place, for the most part, admit: the sensations are strange. Some of the visitors feel a sharp surge of energy, while others, on the contrary, have a headache and a feeling of fatigue and apathy.

Even more terrifying is the deathly silence in the forest. It is only violated by excursion groups that periodically come here, because this place is a very popular tourist route.

It is worth noting that on the Round Dune, where the Dancing Forest grows, not all trunks have a strange shape - the "dancing" trees are concentrated on a certain (albeit rather large) area.

What is the reason for this "dance"?

Researchers have not come to a consensus on the cause of the curvature of tree trunks.

According to one of the versions, the deformations could have been facilitated by some natural phenomena that supposedly appeared in this place - for example, a sharp change in the direction of the wind, temperature drops. There is a hypothesis about the special composition of the soil in this place.

Adherents of another hypothesis blame everything on insect pests, the invasion of which was allegedly once observed in the forest. A version has been put forward that the trunks were damaged by the gluttonous caterpillars of a wintering shoot-out butterfly.

Scientists confirm their hypothesis with information that the shoots usually damage young shoots of pine trees, and, moreover, it mainly devours the apical buds, and almost does not touch the lateral ones. As a result of the disappearance of the apical buds, the lateral buds of the tree begin to actively grow, which further causes the curvature of the trunk. Scientists pay attention that these caterpillars most often eat pine shoots growing on poor soils, poorly saturated with groundwater - just like those on the Curonian Spit. However, to the question "Why did the caterpillars spoil only a certain area of the forest, and not all the trees?" There is no definite answer.

Supporters of the third hypothesis see the reasons for the "dance" of trees in the mobility of local sands. Geologists say that the Round Dune stands on a "cushion" of clay, which causes such mobility - in combination with the constantly changing direction of the wind, the angle of inclination of the dune, they say, is constantly different. Hence - and the curvature of the trunks. Other dunes of the Curonian Spit, according to the authors of this hypothesis, do not have such features.

In favor of the "non-mystical" versions, it is said that many trunks in the Dancing Forest are bent not along their entire length, but only in the lower part - which means that they were deformed only at the initial stage of plant growth.

There are also those among researchers who see the reason for the deformation of trees in the powerful energy of this place, which has not yet been studied by the scientific community.

Mystic?

Fans of horror stories and mystics put forward their versions. According to one of them, the trees were influenced by some chemicals that the Germans sprayed before World War II - at the time when the famous German gliding school was located on the Curonian Spit. By the way, many famous record pilots came out of its walls. The last flight at the gliding school took place in January 1945.

There are also those who argue that the reason for the curvature of the trunks is in the sacredness and "special and mystical status" of the forest. They say that in ancient times, very ancient oaks and beeches grew here. The local pagans considered these trees sacred. They worshiped them to such an extent that they once killed a famous Christian missionary for disrespecting trees, or, more simply, for violating the boundaries of the sacred grove.

The most mystical of the versions is that this place is a kind of portal to the otherworldly worlds.

Legends

Locals, of course, compose beautiful legends about this forest. For example, that one day young witches allegedly came to the forest for their Sabbath. They began to whirl in their wild dance, but in the midst of the dance, for some reason, they suddenly froze as if rooted to the spot in their strange poses. So the sorceresses remained forever in this forest, turning into winding pines. In this regard, a strange omen even appeared - they say if you crawl inside the spiral of such a twisted trunk, you can rejuvenate by one year. And if you climb twice, you will become two years younger and so on.

There is also a more romantic fairy tale legend. Like, once, many years ago, a pagan prince hunted in these parts. Suddenly he heard a beautiful mesmerizing melody and went to the sounds. Going out into the clearing, the young man saw a beautiful woman playing the lyre. They immediately fell in love with each other, but the girl set a condition for the prince: she would marry him only when he would accept Christianity. And to show her pagan beloved the power of the Cross, she made the trees around them dance.

They say that 13 years ago, an experiment was conducted in this forest - young pines were planted to see how they would grow. Time passed, but the trees did not begin to bend. True, they grow very slowly, which again suggests that there is clearly something abnormal in the forest.

Are the trees threatened?

But local environmentalists are sounding the alarm. They pay attention to the fact that trees require careful handling. In particular, walking in the forest is allowed only on specially designated walkways, fenced with railings. The administration asks tourists not to hug the pine trees (the bark is erased from this) and not to trample the soil. Conservationists and the park administration point out that the most unique and popular trees of the Dancing Forest have already died.

For example, the famous ring tree died a few years ago - its bark was damaged and the root system was disrupted. This is due to the fact that tourists constantly sat on a tree, crawled through the ring, touched the trunk, trampled on the ground. For ecologists, a forest is not a mystical place or a photo zone, but above all a unique natural monument.

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