July 2021
We usually wouldn’t travel in July since we live on a holiday island that offers plenty of attractions and experiences during the summer months. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, we had very few chances to travel anywhere, so when some friends invited us to visit their holiday cottage in Northern Jutland, we jumped at the opportunity.
We took a domestic flight with DAT (Danish Air Transport) from Bornholm, with a stop-over in Copenhagen and on to Aalborg Airport on the Northern part of the Jutland peninsular. Our friends picked us up in their car, and from there, we drove into the countryside and explored the surrounding area for the next three days.
Our first destination was Thingbæk Limestone Mines (Danish: Thingbæk Kalkmine) and the Rebildcenter museum. The mines have been a public attraction since 1935, when a Danish artist used them as an exhibition hall for his sculptures.
Even though a new visitor centre opened just outside the mine’s entrance in 2015, the many tunnels are still used to exhibit sculptures.
On the day of our visit, the Danish summer was at full effect, and the temperatures kept rising. However, after just walking a few meters into the mine’s entrance, you suddenly experienced a much more hospitable temperature. I managed fine with some shorts and a blouse, but it can get a bit chilly if you wander the tunnels for more than an hour.
A new Cold War attraction is scheduled to open sometime during 2022. Reagan Vest is a colossal bunker designed as a command central for the Danish government and royal family in case of nuclear war between NATO and the Soviet Union. The facility was top secret until just a few years ago and is now being turned into a museum.
A perfect combination of historical attractions and abandoned places. That is the experience you get when visiting the bunkers along Jutland’s Western coastline. Around 2.000 bunkers have been build in Denmark during the war as part of Nazigermany’s Westwall. This massive Atlantic fortification line stretches from the Spanish border to the arctic in Northern Norway. Today they lie abandoned and reclaimed by nature along the coastline.
Some bunkers housed massive naval guns usually used on Germany’s biggest battleships during the 2nd World War. Four of these enormous coastal batteries are situated in Hanstholm and have been turned into a modern museum.
Hanstholm Bunkermuseum is build as part of the old fortification and displays a number of interesting objects from the 2nd World War – including uniforms, weapons, litterature and the story of the Westwall building program.
From the museum’s main exhibition room, you follow a long tunnel into a well-preserved German bunker. Here can visit the personnel quarters, the ammunition rooms and various other facilities. This serves as a great contrast if you visit the abandoned bunkers along the coastline later.
After spending several hours in the bunker, we took lunch at Hanstholm Madbar, a few kilometres west of the museum. I can highly recommend the restaurant since the food was excellent and the staff was amiable. The restaurant is situated at the top of a hill and offers a great view of the harbour and surrounding countryside.
After lunch, we headed to the beach and the bunkers of abandoned bunkers of Stützpunkt Vigsö just east of Hanstholm. Around 20 bunkers lie scattered close to one another along the coast. Some are almost lost in the ocean, but quite a few are still accessible on the beach. We managed to climb/crawl into several to get a bird’s eye view from the roofs of the bunkers.
I know there are several places along the coast where you can see bunkers, but the cluster of bunkers a Vigsø offers plenty of opportunities to explore and snap some photos for Instagram.
After a long day exploring bunkers, we headed home, but there was time for one more attraction before nightfall. We headed to one of Denmark’s most instagrammable spots – the limestone cliffs at Bulbjerg.
Bulbjerg is Jutland’s only cliff and rises 47 meters above the sea. The area is nicknamed The Shoulder of Jutland because it looks like the peninsular’s shoulder on a map.
At the top of the cliff, you’ll find another abandoned German bunker, but also one of the most incredible landscape vistas in Denmark.
From the top of the cliff, you can follow a narrow path down to the beach, where you can get a true feeling of the cliff’s size and the many seagulls nesting along its side.
On our last day, we drove into Aalborg to visit the modern art museum Kunsten (Danish for “The Art”). I’m not exactly a connoisseur of contemporary art, but it has a fascinating temporary exhibit about American culture.
In the museum’s basement, we found an interesting exhibition about Danish furniture design. The collection was a true who’s who of great Danish furniture designers. As you moved through the displays, you also time-travelled from the 1960s through to the 1990s.
All of the attractions I have mentioned in this article are situated around Limfjorden (an inlet in Northern Jutland) within an hour’s drive from one another. I’m sure you can get around with public transport, but having a car just made it so much easier and allowed us to follow our own schedule. After three days packed with activities, we headed home, but there are plenty of attractions to visit for a second trip at some later date.