Gilleleje

Gilleleje is, with a population of 6,491 (1 January 2011), one of the main towns of the Gribskov municipality in Region Hovedstaden in Denmark. The town is at the northernmost point of Sjælland in Denmark. The name, pronounced [ɡiləɑ], is the conjunction of the Danish words gil, which is a crevice or cleft and leje, which is a place where fishermen come in specific seasons to fish. It was probably concatenated from Gilbjerg Leje, where Gilbjerg ("cleftmountain") is a rather dramatic name for a rather mundane point just west of town limits. The towns ending in -leje are often from the 16th century, when the fishermen actually settled and regular townships appeared. Compare with the Swedish ending läge. The earliest confirmed permanent...