Historical maps of Denmark

Last updated: 23 August 2026

Historical maps show the landscape as it looked over a hundred years ago — before motorways, suburbs and merged fields erased the old traces. For a detectorist they're a shortcut to the places where people lived, travelled and lost things: vanished farms, old roads, mills and inns that are long gone. Here's what the old maps show, why they lead to finds, and how to use them alongside the rest of Muld.

What are historical maps?

The historical maps in Muld are the survey sheets — the topographic maps the country was measured onto from the mid-1800s. Muld shows three official series:

• Høje målebordsblade — the oldest nationwide series, from the 1800s.
• Lave målebordsblade — the newer series, from the early 1900s.
• Prussian survey sheets — the mapping of Southern Jutland from when the region was under Prussia/Germany (1864–1920).

The sheets are scanned and georeferenced, so they can be laid over the modern map. You can switch the old map on at the spot you're standing — and compare then with now.

What the old maps reveal

On an 1800s survey sheet, things stand that are gone today:

• Vanished farms and houses — a lone farm that was torn down and ploughed over is still there on the old map.
• Old roads and hollow ways — abandoned roads and tracks show where people walked.
• Mills, inns, smithies and brickworks — places of activity, where things were dropped and left behind.
• Old field boundaries and land divisions — how the land was split before the fields were merged.
• Place-names — "Møllebakke" (mill hill), "Galgehøj" (gallows mound), "Vadested" (ford) — the names give away what happened there.

Why old maps lead to finds

The basic rule of detecting is simple: people lose things where people were. A house, an inn or a field track that vanished a century ago may have left coins, buttons, buckles and tools in the ground — and they often still lie there, under the plough soil of a field that looks empty today. The modern map shows nothing; the old map points you to where to look.

Read the place-names too. They're often the oldest thing left of a place, and they point to churches, mills, markets and gallows sites long after the buildings are gone. An old map is never a promise of finds — but it's the best guide you can get to where there was life.

Historical maps, LiDAR and aerial photos

Three layers, three answers. The aerial photo shows what's on the ground now. LiDAR terrain shows physical traces in the terrain itself — low mounds, hollow ways and field boundaries. The historical maps show what stood at the spot back then: buildings, names and land use.

Put them together and you can go from an old house-name on the survey sheet, to the rise LiDAR picks up, to the field you're standing in today. It's the same patch of ground across three ages.

Historical maps in Muld

In Muld you switch the historical maps on as a layer over the map, and compare them with aerial photos and LiDAR at the same spot. The Høje and Lave series cover the whole country, and the Prussian maps cover Southern Jutland. Historical maps are part of Muld+.

From map to field

An old map points you to places worth searching — but it doesn't change the rules. The site of a vanished farm might today sit inside a protected ancient monument, where detecting is banned on the monument itself and within 2 m of it, or inside another protected zone, and however promising the spot looks, you need the landowner's permission before you start.

Muld draws parcel boundaries and protected zones on the same map as the historical layers, so you can see whom to ask and where you can't dig. See also our full guide to the rules for metal detecting in Denmark.

Official sources

This page is a plain-language introduction — not a technical manual. If you want to go deeper into the maps or the rules, go to the official sources.