Welcome to Skagen - the northernmost town in Denmark. Denmark’s No. 1 tourist destination is Copenhagen, but Skagen is the runner-up. Population 7.700 very nice people all year round, but in the high season approximately 50-60.000 very nice guests come to visit us every day - a total for 2 million guests per year. Tourist is attracted to Skagen by the culture, the history of the artists, the nature and the beaches
But tourism isn't the most important trade - fishing is. Skagen is Denmark’s largest port measured on the amount of landings and the value of these landings. We are the centre of the maritime highway - approx. 100.000 ships pass the spit every year. We have several of Denmark’s largest fishing vessels - one local fisherman has the right to catch 10% of the total Danish quota. The most common species landed is herring and mackerel for consumption and sprats and other protein fish for industrial purpose like fish meal and oil.
The name Skagen derives from the old Nordic word Skaga that means appendix, a branch or a chin - or in this case a peninsula/sand spit.
Skagen was a prosperous town in the middle Ages, and was in 1413 granted municipality rights, which gave the rights to their own court and administration, sole rights on trading and exemption from military service etc.
But for a period of approx. 250 years from 1550 to 1800, the region was hit by a series of catastrophes, like climatic changes, misuse and destruction of the spares vegetation, which led to a horrible sand drift - migrating sand threatened the houses and actually buried the church. The fishing was bad, wars ravaged, diseases flourished. Population dropped from 2000 to 650 in 1787.
In the 19th century things started to turn to the better again. Artists discovered the town and tourist followed. Around the turn of the 20th century we have a railway and a harbour, which had a tremendous impact on the town’s development.
But we didn't have a proper road until 1932.
Østre Strandvej
The harbour was built in the years 1904 to 1907. Until then the town consisted of 3 settlements, Højen on the north side, and Østerby (East end) and Vesterby (West end) the middle part where we are now was practically uninhabited. The houses in Østerby were placed in between the dunes to provide shelter from the strong wind, and there were no straight roads. But that changed with the harbour - it became fashionable to live near the harbour and straight roads were built and the houses placed along the road instead of between the dunes. This is the case here.
Holst's Gård og Hotel Plesner
On your left side you see a building in red bricks, a hotel and on you right hand on of the oldest houses in Skagen - the Holst Farm.
The red brick hotel was designed by an architect by the name Ulrik Plesner and built in 1907 as a grocery shop and living quarters for the son (Jens) of Lars Holst, who lived in the Holst farm on the other side of the street.
Ulrik Plesner came to Skagen in 1891 to supervise the construction of a lighthouse, and he had a tremendous influence on the architecture in Skagen right till his death in 1933 at Brøndums Hotel here in Skagen. The hotel that gave his first assignment that started his work in Skagen.
On your left the Railway Station - no longer in use as a station, but also designed by Ulrik Plesner, who actually designed all stations buildings along our local railway to Frederikshavn some 40 km (24 miles) south.
Sct. Laurentiivej 2
On your left side another red brick building by Ulrik Plesner, built as a school and was in 1907 used to exhibit paintings by the artists called the Skagenpainters. In 1907 the king of Siam, now Thailand, Rama V, king Chulalongkorn visited Skagen and the exhibition here at this building.
This was the beginning of Skagens Museum which was founded the year after in 1908.
This area of land is no more than 8.-9.000 years old. After the latest Ice Age 15.000 years ago, the ice retracted and the sea bed began to rise, and the ice began to melt. Around 7.000 years ago the coastline was approximately 30 km (18 miles) from here.
The Skaw Spit is a 30-40 km (18-24 miles) long, sandy spit with an area of about 300 km² (115 sq miles)
All of Skagen spit originally consisted of raised sea bed and sand washed up by the ocean currents. The first 20 km (12 miles) mostly raised sea bed and a little sand, the last 20 km a little raised sea bed and a lot of sand.
There is erosion on the south side, and sand is added on the north side.
Due to the process of adding sand to the spit, lighthouses had to be placed in a new position almost every 100 years.
The first lighthouse was erected in 1561 in order to guide the ships from the North sea around the dangerous Skagen Reef to the Baltic - and vice versa. The first lighthouses were not very effective - it improved with the construction of The Bascule Light - a wooden construction with a metal basket for the fire - in 1627.
In 1747 this White Lighthouse was the first lighthouse in Denmark built in solid brick, and was placed as far out as possible and with the same distance to both sides. Today it is very close to the one side only. Hundred years later in 1858 the next lighthouse was built 2 km (1 mile) further out. This was also placed in between to two oceans, but had we not built breakwaters to protect the Lighthouse, it would have fallen into the sea.
As you can see, this is the top of Denmark, where the two seas and the world meet. The Skaw spit is a 30-40 km (18-24 miles) long sandy spit that ends here at Grenen. The name Skagen comes from old Nordic word Skaga that means appendix, chin or a branch. The name Grenen is modern Danish for a branch (on a tree).
The Skagen spit is formed after the latest Ice Age some 15.000 years ago. When the ice retracted the seabed slowly started to rise. A strong ocean current along the west coast carried sand up the coast until the top, where it was deposited. This continued for thousands of years and combined with the rising of the sea bed Skagen spit was formed. This process still goes on today - the north side grows with an average of 8 meters per year. At the same time there is erosion on the south side causing the spit to have this special shape. (1.000.000 m3 = 1.3 mill sq yards)
The sand actually continues 4 km (2 miles) further out, but under water, forming a sand reef. The lack of lighthouses or inefficient lighthouses caused many ships to strand around Skagen. Even when there was an effective lighthouse - The Grey Lighthouse can be seen 20 nautical miles out from both sides, there was a lot of stranding and shipwrecks. In a period of 24 years from 1858 there was 1200 stranding in Denmark - a lot of them right here.
The bunkers was a part of the Atlantic Wall (from Spain to North Cape in Norway) built by the German army during WWII. At that time they were placed in the dunes - now some of them lays in the water. Many bunkers are now hidden underneath the dunes - a few has been removed, but that is quite expensive and they help to protect the coastline.
Protected area
Skagen Gren is protected - it is one of the designated areas protected under the so-called Natura2000 international network along with the huge migration sand dune at Råbjerg Mile and the heath area just south of Skagen. The initial conservations was in 1940, when 700 acres where protected, but it wasn't until the second conservation in 2007 that for example driving a car to the tip of Grenen was no longer permitted. There were also regulations for the museum, the tractor bus and us as visitors. Almost 3.000 acres of the sea is also protected. Skagen Gren contains at least 41 protected types of nature. (From a total of 58)
Ridges and swales
The ocean currents deposit a huge amount of stones, gravel and sand on the north side beach parallel to the coastline. This provides shelter for the sand blown around by the westerly wind and ridges are slowly built. In between the ridges there will be moist and wet swales, which eventually will turn into bogs. This will make the landscape look like growth rings on a tree - seen from the air or on an Arial photo.
The black period - Until about 1850 most houses in Skagen was made of wood tarred black and with thatched roofs, placed east west because of the westerly wind and lay between the sand dunes out of the wind. When the sand drifting made problems it was easy to move the house to a new place.
The yellow period - There is no clay in the ground here so bricks was expensive and had to be sailed to Skagen. The bricks were of poor quality and often of different kind, and maybe the wall was built in several steps, So to hide this poor bricklaying it needed to be plastered and whitewashed. The colours could be white, yellow or pink. The lime was mixed with ochre to make the yellow colour and this became very popular. It’s called the yellow period even thou the houses could be pink or white as well. Fire regulation demanded that the thatched roof should be replaces by tile. Because of the hard climate, the tiled roofs had to be plastered (pointed) from the inside. That’s impossible at the ridge and at the gable where it was done from outside and whitewashed to make it stronger – thus the white laces
The red period - After 1907 (the harbour) the quality of bricks got better and the houses didn’t have to be plastered. It was the start of the red period.
Erik Brøndum and his wife Ane had just received permission to run a guesthouse in 1859, when a very famous writer and storyteller by the name of Hans Christian Andersen visited the place on august 17th. Hans Christian Andersen wrote The Little Mermaid and The Snow Queen.
At that time there were only two ways to get to Skagen - by boat or as Hans Christian Andersen did, by the mail carriage mainly along the beach. A hard journey that took 7-12 hours and the mail carriage stop at the opposite end of town, so he had to walk along the sandy road to the guesthouse - so he was rather tired.
The innkeeper’s wife who knew that this was a very famous person sends the maid to the northern beach to buy the best Plaice for the guest. Unfortunately this took a long time, and Hans Christian Andersen got upset and angry - and left. He did, however, come back and enjoyed his dinner.
The innkeeper’s wife Ane, who was pregnant, was so upset because of this incident that she went to bed, and that night gave birth prematurely to her fifth child - the youngest daughter Anne, who later was to become a well-known painter married to the painter Michael Ancher. Her mother later said that Anne was artistic gifted because she was born on the night that Hans Christian Andersen stayed at the inn.
When the artists - mostly painters - started to come to Skagen, this was the place they would stay. Both Erik and Ane took good care for the artists, but especially the oldest son Degn Brøndum, who took over the business, got very well along with the artists. The artist colony that formed had its centre here at Brøndums Hotel.
The artists often stayed at Brøndums Hotel, or they met for lunch and dinner and held a lot of parties there. The innkeeper Degn Brøndum used to participated in the gatherings himself. In 1892 the painter P.S. Krøyer came up with the idea of decorating the dining room with paintings and portraits.
Skagens Museum was founded in the dining room at Brøndum’s Hotel in Skagen on the 20th October 1908. The enterprising pharmacist Victor Klæbel, the rich hotel owner Degn Brøndum and the artists Michael Ancher, P.S. Krøyer and Laurits Tuxen were elected to form the first board. The aim was to gather the works of the Skagen painters and to raise funds for the construction of a museum, so the art could be exhibited in the same place and environment as the motifs, which makes this museum unique
The first couple of years the exhibited at Technical School, and when P.S. Krøyer died in 1909, his house was used as museum.
In 1919 Degn Brøndum donated the hotel’s old garden to Skagens Museum. Here the building of the museum, planned by the architect Ulrik Plesner, was commenced in 1926. The building project was financed by private means and foundations, where the greatest contributors were Degn Brøndum, Laurits Tuxen and the New Carlsberg Foundation. The new museum was inaugurated on the 22nd September 1928. They had 325 paintings - many of them gifts from the painters themselves.
The museum has been extended a couple of times; the latest and largest will open this year.
This memorial was erected in memory of 8 rescuers who lost their life’s trying to rescue the crew from the Swedish brig Daphne that had stranded on the North Beach in 1862.
The rescue service was founded in 1852, and the rescue boat with a crew of 10 men set out to try to get close to the Swedish brig. The weather was terribly and the waves were high. They had to take care of other wrecks and not to get too close to the stranded ship.
The crew tried several times, and at one point, 4 crew members were exhausted and had to be replaces by volunteers.
Finally they got one Swedish crewmember into the lifeboat, when the lifeboat capsized and all the rescuers were through into the water. Only 2 men made it ashore alive - the Swedish sailor and 8 rescuers drowned, leaving 8 widowers and 25 fatherless children.
Later the weather cleared up a bit, and a group of local fishermen managed to save the rest of the Swedish crew in one of their own boats. One of these fishermen was Lars Kruse, who became very famous, but that’s another story.
The lifeboat was later found in Sweden and brought back to Skagen.
The painter Michael Ancher came to Skagen in 1874 and stayed at Brøndums - that is, the hotel had burned and moved to the Garden House, where he shared a room so small that he had to get dressed in bed.
Here he met the youngest daughter Anne Brøndum age 14, going on 15. They fell in love, got engaged on her 18th birthday and when they married in 1880 they moved in to the Garden House.
The artists Michael and Anna Ancher bought the house in 1884 after the birth of their daughter Helga in 1883.
The family lived for 30 years in the long, low wing facing the road. When they felt the lack of space, they had the architect Ulrik Plesner design a studio building (completed 1913) to the north of the original house and with a link access to it.
Maybe it took so long, because Michael Ancher had difficulties making up his mind whether or not they should extend the house.
After the death of Michael Ancher in 1927 and Anna Ancher in 1935, the house remained unoccupied. Helga Ancher, who died in 1964, had laid down in her will that everything she left was to be used to create a fund, The Helga Ancher Foundation. The house in Markvej together with the paintings and contents was restored and opened as a museum in 1967.
It contains a lot of paintings by the couple and others that Ancher purchased. All the furniture and interior decorations remains as it was when Anna Ancher died.
Saxilds farm and bakery had been in the saxild family until 1959, when writer Ole Vivel bought the house. He was a member of the Helga Ancher Foundation board and agreed to sell the house to the foundation in 1984. It is now used for different exhibitions in contrast to Anchers House which is a permanent exhibition.
Holger Drachmann was born in 1846 in Copenhagen. In 1866 age 20, he was accepted at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and graduated as a marine painter, but is more known as a writer.
In 1872 he visited Skagen with the Norwegian painter Fritz Thaulow, and he returned frequently during the next 30 years.
Holger Drachmann was quiet a womanizer - he was married three times and had some affairs in between.
He bought a house in the town in 1902; a house built in 1828 that had been owned by a schoolteacher and a baker.
At this time he was preparing for his third marriage, to Soffi Lasson. He extended the house by adding a studio with a large, four-sectioned window, and called the house “Villa Pax” - and gave the house to his wife Soffi.
Drachmann took a genuine interest in the local population. When a rescuer, Lars Kruse, was denied his medal of honour because of a minor offence as a young boy, Holger Drachmann wrote an article about this which helped Lars Kruse to receive his medal - even though 20 years late.
And in 1904 when they started building the harbour, all the politicians and civil servants were invited to a grand party, but not the fishermen and workers - so Drachmann invited them to punch and dancing in his own garden.
1908, only six years after he bought the house Drachmann died at a Nerve Sanatorium in Hornbæk, Zealand, and an urn containing his ashes was placed in a burial chamber on the famous sand spit Grenen that forms the northern tip of Denmark.
Immediately after his death the idea arose to convert “Pax” into a memorial for him. The house was opened to the public on June 4th 1911.
The museum’s collection of oil paintings consists mostly of Drachmann’s marine paintings, but there are also pictures by many of the painters from the artists’ colony at Skagen: P.S.Krøyer, Laurits Tuxen and Anna and Michael Ancher.
In the annex to the museum there is a photographic exhibition about Drachmann.
Byfoged Lund og Jan Leton
1809 the town bailiff Ole Lund had this house built. A town bailiff was a royal appointed civil servant, who was both mayor, chief of police and judge. Bailiff Lund was also sand drift commissioner.
At that time many ships stranded here and many sailors drowned. But some survived, and survivors often had to stay in Skagen for a long period of time until they could go home.
On winter an American ship stranded. The captain survived and came to stay at the bailiff. They talked a lot and became good friends. Ole Lund told the captain about his plan of a plantation to shelter from the migrating sand. And the captain told the bailiff about his home in South Carolina. They were both sad when the captain had to leave.
Next winter at ship anchored outside Skagen and a small boat was rowed in. There was no port or harbour. A man was set of at the shore.
The fishermen approached the man, but they were terrified when they saw him. They thought that it must have been the devil himself. They had never seen or even hear of a black man.
The lighthouse keeper was a little more enlightened and he went over to the man and saw that he had a sign around his neck saying: "For bailiff Lund"
The captain had sent a slave as a gift to the bailiff. Jan Leton - former slave from The West Indian Islands. Jan Leton became the servant of bailiff Lund and helped him plant the trees for this plantation. One of the first successful attempts to plant trees in the dune landscape.
Ole Lund and Jan Leton is buried side by side at our cemetery