The Harly Forest (german: Harly-Wald, also ''Harlywald'' or just ''Harly'') is a hill range up to above NN in the district of

Goslar Goslar (; Eastphalian: ''Goslär'') is a historic town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is the administrative centre of the district of Goslar and located on the northwestern slopes of the Harz mountain range. The Old Town of Goslar and the Mines ...

in southeastern

Lower Saxony Lower Saxony (german: Niedersachsen ; nds, Neddersassen; stq, Läichsaksen) is a German state (') in northwestern Germany. It is the second-largest state by land area, with , and fourth-largest in population (8 million in 2021) among the 16 ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

Geography

The low ridge is situated in the northern foothills of the

Harz The Harz () is a highland area in northern Germany. It has the highest elevations for that region, and its rugged terrain extends across parts of Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia. The name ''Harz'' derives from the Middle High German ...

mountain range, stretching southeast of the Innerste Uplands from the

Salzgitter Hills The Salzgitter Hills (german: Salzgitter-Höhenzug, also ''Salzgitterscher Höhenzug'') is an area of upland up to in height, in the Lower Saxon Hills between Salzgitter and Goslar in the districts of Wolfenbüttel and Goslar and in the territory ...

to the

Oker The Oker is a river in Lower Saxony, Germany, that has historically formed an important political boundary. It is a left tributary of the River Aller, in length and runs in a generally northerly direction. Origin and meaning of the name The ...

river. It is located about —

as the crow flies __NOTOC__ The expression ''as the crow flies'' is an idiom for the most direct path between two points, rather similar to "in a beeline". This meaning is attested from the early 19th century, and appeared in Charles Dickens's 1838 novel ''Oliver ...

—northeast of

and immediately north-northwest of the municipality of

Vienenburg Vienenburg is a borough of Goslar, capital of the Goslar district, in Lower Saxony, Germany. The former independent municipality was incorporated in Goslar on 1 January 2014. Geography It is situated in the north of the Harz mountain range and eas ...

, surrounded by the villages of Weddingen, Lengde and Beuchte (all part of the

Schladen-Werla Schladen-Werla is a municipality in the district of Wolfenbüttel, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It was formed on 1 November 2013, when the municipalities of the former ''Samtgemeinde'' ("collective municipality") Schladen: Gielde, the town of Hornb ...

municipality). The range is about long by wide and its eastern edge overlooks the Oker valley. It may be reached via the A 395 motorway from Brunswick, the B 241 and B 82 highways, as well as by several side roads and tracks branching off those roads. The highest hill in the Harly Forest is the Harlyberg, roughly 256 metres high, atop which an observation tower, the Harly Tower (''Harlyturm''), stands.

Geology and Ecology

The Harly is a tectonic

salt Salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl), a chemical compound belonging to the larger class of salts; salt in the form of a natural crystalline mineral is known as rock salt or halite. Salt is present in vast quant ...

formation. In the technical language of geologists the Harly Forest is classed as a "Geological Anticline" (''Geologischer Schmalsattel''). Ecologically the Harly Forest is a near-natural hillside forest (''naturnaher Hangwald'') on warm-dry

chalk Chalk is a soft, white, porous, sedimentary carbonate rock. It is a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite and originally formed deep under the sea by the compression of microscopic plankton that had settled to the sea floor. Ch ...

and silicate habitats.

Harly Castle

The southeastern edge of the ridge lies immediately above the Oker Valley and from 1203 was the construction site of an

Imperial castle An imperial castle or ''Reichsburg'' was a castle built by order of the Holy Roman Emperor, whose management was entrusted to '' Reichsministeriales'' or ''Burgmannen''. It is not possible to identify a clear distinction between imperial castles an ...

, built during the German throne quarrel between the

Welf Welf is a Germanic first name that may refer to: *Welf (father of Judith), 9th century Frankish count, father-in-law of Louis the Pious *Welf I, d. bef. 876, count of Alpgau and Linzgau *Welf II, Count of Swabia, died 1030, supposed descendant of W ...

and

Hohenstaufen The Hohenstaufen dynasty (, , ), also known as the Staufer, was a noble family of unclear origin that rose to rule the Duchy of Swabia from 1079, and to royal rule in the Holy Roman Empire during the Middle Ages from 1138 until 1254. The dynast ...

dynasties. It was erected at the behest of by the Welf king Otto of Brunswick to control the trade route to the

Imperial City In the Holy Roman Empire, the collective term free and imperial cities (german: Freie und Reichsstädte), briefly worded free imperial city (', la, urbs imperialis libera), was used from the fifteenth century to denote a self-ruling city that ...

of Goslar, whose citizens had allied with his rival Philip of Swabia. After Philip's assassination, Otto, crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 1209, stayed at the fortress several times. Upon Otto's death at the nearby '' Harzburg'' in 1218, Harly Castle passed to his Welf heirs. At the 1290 Imperial diet in

Erfurt Erfurt () is the capital and largest city in the Central German state of Thuringia. It is located in the wide valley of the Gera river (progression: ), in the southern part of the Thuringian Basin, north of the Thuringian Forest. It sits i ...

, the

Hildesheim Hildesheim (; nds, Hilmessen, Hilmssen; la, Hildesia) is a city in Lower Saxony, Germany with 101,693 inhabitants. It is in the district of Hildesheim, about southeast of Hanover on the banks of the Innerste River, a small tributary of the L ...

prince-bishop

Siegfried II of Querfurt Siegfried II of Querfurt (mid 13th century – 5 May 1310) was Prince-Bishop of Hildesheim from 1279 to 1310. Biography Siegfried was from a noble family of Querfurt (which now belongs to Saxony-Anhalt). He was head of the chapter at the Cathed ...

accused Duke Henry I of Brunswick of using its favourable location for ambushes and highway robberies of bypassing merchants. He had the castle besieged for several months and eventually completely

slighted Slighting is the deliberate damage of high-status buildings to reduce their value as military, administrative or social structures. This destruction of property sometimes extended to the contents of buildings and the surrounding landscape. It is ...

Potash works

A vestige of former mining activity in the area is the historic Vienenburg

potash Potash () includes various mined and manufactured salts that contain potassium in water-soluble form.

works and fertilizer plant with its old shafts: numbers I, II and III. In operation from the 1880s, the mine was closed after a massive brine inrush in 1930. The former Cistercian monastery of Wöltingerode, located on the southern perimeter of the ridge west of Vienenburg, and its abbey distillery are also worth seeing.

External links

Ecological and geological information

The Harly as part of the Harz-Brunswick Land- Eastphalia Geopark
{{DEFAULTSORT:Harlywald Vienenburg Forests and woodlands of Lower Saxony