Returning to the city of Esbjerg—the fifth largest in Denmark and the main urban area of Jutland that until the decision was made to establish a harbour there in the mid-1800s only consisted of a few farmsteads—we explored the industrial seaport which was built up per royal decree when the Danes lost their major port on the North Sea, Altona (now part of the Hanseatic City of Hamburg) to the German Empire during the Second Schleswig War in 1864—handling most of the kingdom’s oil and offshore activities, the petroleum business being superseded (Maersk Drilling is still headquartered there) by the construction wind turbines and agricultural and fish export. Just to the west of the marina, overlooking the beach at Sædding, is the monumental sculpture Mennesket ved Havet (Men at Sea or Man meets the Sea)—opposite the fisheries and maritime museum, by artist Svend Wiig Hansen, informed by precolumbian Mesoamerican designs and and the monoliths of Easter Island—commissioned the nine-metre tall landmark to celebrate the centenary of the municipality’s founding in 1894.
We took a short ferry ride to the neighbouring island of Fanø, a commuter service running every twenty minutes, the sandy embankment marking the northern extreme of the Danish Wadden Sea. We walked through the heath and stunted pine woods to the beach east of Rindby, south of the larger settlement of Nordby and explored more WWII bunkers—some three hundred structures in total, remnants of the Third Reich’s Atlantic Wall (see previously
here,
here,
here and
here) scattered amongst the dunes. The massive turbine assembly station of Esbjerg can be seen along the horizon. We also visited the old windmill (Vindmølle—English
Wikipedia’s representative picture for the entry though the Danish one chose Stegø in Fyn) at the southern tip of the island in the village of Sønderho, which preserves its overall eighteenth century character of a fishing settlement and sea-going point-of-departure with thatched roofed cottages, cobblestone streets, protected from the wind and water with dikes.
