In Russia lies the town of Kalingrad and there you will find a forest, the Curonian Spit National Park. The special thing about this forest is in its nickname, the dancing forest. The locals even like to call it the drunken forest. The trees grow in different shapes just as if they were dancing. Theories as to how this came about vary, from unstable ground to even a possible side effect of the Chernobyl disaster. Of course there is also a nice legend about this.
Unstable ground
Curonian Spit National Park was created sometime between 1960 and 1980. There are several trees that have grown in arches and loops. The cause of this could be the type of soil. The sand in this forest is quite unstable. This is because the park borders the large white beaches of the Baltic coast with many dunes. This creates a loose and sandy soil, which prevents the trees from getting enough grip.
Experiment
As an experiment, a shoot from a tree was sometimes planted on another piece of land and it grew straight up there. They also tried to place new trees there in about 2006, it was noticed in 2014 that they grew upright, but very slowly. The soil consists mainly of moss, grass and lots of mushrooms, but not of leaves and branches as we are used to from forests.
Legend
A local legend that can tell the cause of this forest is that of a Prussian prince. This prince Barty was hunting a deer when he heard enchanting beautiful music. Looking for the source of this, he found near a field, the girl Predislava while playing on a winch.
Marry
He knew this was the girl of his dreams and wanted to marry her. However, Predislava was a Christian and she could not marry anyone who was not. At this the prince wanted to repent with all his heart, but he convinced her to show him that her faith was stronger than the trees around them. Predislava played her music and all the birds around them fell silent, then the trees began to dance. The prince immediately gave his word to marry her and they became engaged. Years later, the dancing forest began to grow.
Wind and snow
Due to a high degree of wind force in this area, it is also widely believed that this may be the cause. When the trees were young, the strong wind could direct them in all directions. Here it remains debatable why some trees are twisted in a full loop and others are only bent. It would be more likely that the wind would push all trees in roughly the same direction. This should simply occur in any area with a lot of wind.
Young trees and the influence of the weather
But there are also plenty of trees that just grow straight up. How did these escape the dance? Of course, one tree can be more comprehensible to it. It can also get very cold in this area. During the time that young trees grow up, they can be sensitive to all kinds of weather influences. Snow is, of course, a big part of that. If snow stays on the young trees for a long time, it can greatly affect growth.
Energies and radiations
A psychologist has investigated this place and claims that it is a collection of positive and negative energies that converge. There is also a superstition that the place where the tree trunks form rings are gateways between positive and negative energy. If you go through it on the right side, you will get an extra year to live.
Water veins
There are water veins that run underground and end up in a well. In conjunction with the moon and the sun, this can be converted into negative earth radiation. This can also occur in your own home and turn into a headache, but you can simply move the furniture. These trees had nowhere to go and therefore literally grew in all directions.
Chernobyl
In 1986, an accident with catastrophic consequences happened in one of the Chernobyl nuclear reactors. The reactor exploded in the middle of the night, becoming one of the worst disasters in history. Even today, there are still consequences to be found here. In fact, there are Russian tourists who believe that the consequences of this disaster could be a cause for the distinct growth in this forest.
The red forest at Chernobyl
The forest that grows near Chernobyl is completely red colored by this disaster, but the trees continue to grow straight up. Now this is because these trees have absorbed too much radioactive radiation, but the trees in Curonian Spit National Park were still growing at this time. This may cause them to be affected by the radioactive radiation, but not to such an extent that they die. Combined with the unstable soil, snow and earth radiation, this can be a serious cause of the separate vegetation.