Free camping in Capital Region of Denmark

The Capital Region is three different places wearing one name. Copenhagen and its suburbs. North Zealand behind the city, which is forest, lake and coast and is where most of the free overnight sites are. And Bornholm, a granite island in the Baltic that is administratively part of this region and 150km away from the rest of it.

What is mapped here

219 free shelters and tent sites, every one of them designated by a named public body. Naturstyrelsen, the Danish Nature Agency, runs the large majority through its Hovedstaden and Nordsjælland units. Bornholms Regionskommune and Naturstyrelsen Bornholm account for the island.

Two things decide whether a given one is any use to you tonight.

Whether you have to book. 106 of these need a reservation, 109 do not. That is close to a coin flip, and it is the single most important field on the page. Naturstyrelsen’s bookable sites go through book.naturstyrelsen.dk. In July and early August the popular ones near Copenhagen do sell out.

Whether you can drive to it. Mostly you cannot, not all the way. These are shelters and lejrpladser: you park and walk in. That is fine if you are hiking or cycling and it is a problem if you were planning to sleep in a van.

Where they sit

Vestskoven and the western forests put free shelters within half an hour of the city centre. Sites at Lindegårdsladen, Tusculanum and Kridtbjerg are all in that block of planted forest, and it is the easiest introduction to how the Danish system works if you have never used it.

Kongelunden, on the southern tip of Amager, is close to the airport and faces Køge Bugt.

North Zealand is where the density is: the state forests inland from Helsingør and Hillerød, with sites like Hareløkkerne and the Ravnebakken shelters. This is the part of the region worth planning a few nights around.

Bornholm is its own trip. 23 sites, a ferry to reach them, and a landscape that looks nothing like the rest of Denmark. Do not treat it as a day out from Copenhagen.

Season

Open all year on paper. In practice the water goes off for the winter at a great many Danish sites, so from September onward carry your own and treat a working tap as a bonus rather than a plan.

Late June to mid August is the short window when everything is running, and it is also when the bookable sites near the capital go first. If you want a specific shelter on a summer weekend, book it weeks out, not days.

Rules

Denmark is not Sweden or Norway, and this is the thing visitors get wrong most often. There is no general right to camp on open land here. What there is instead is this network of designated sites, which is why it is worth using. The Nordic right to roam page carries the cited position on what each Nordic country actually allows.

The posted sign at the site and Naturstyrelsen’s current word beat anything on this website.

Related

• Denmark country page
• The Denmark map
• The Nordic right to roam