Rætebøl is a tiny rural locality west of Aarhus, scattered between the villages of Brabrand, True and Årslev in East Jutland. Its name reaches back to the Middle Ages, when a village stood here before vanishing—likely to the plague—around the mid-1300s. For centuries the land lay as ordinary farmland, until True Watermill rose nearby in 1843. From the 1860s clay was dug here for brickmaking, and the Aarhus merchant Hans Broge became co-owner of the brickworks in 1872. Around 1909 the area was parcelled into smallholdings, which still shape today's scattered farms and houses. Rætebøl is curiously unplaceable: parish and district boundaries cut straight through it, and its children once walked to school in either True or Årslev. Quiet and unassuming, it offers a glimpse of everyday rural Denmark just minutes from the city.
