North Jutland

One of North Jutland's great monuments lies on a hillside above the Limfjord at Nørresundby: Lindholm Høje, a burial ground of about 700 Iron Age and Viking graves, many outlined with stones in the shape of ships, that was buried by drifting sand in the Middle Ages and excavated only in the 1950s. Harald Bluetooth built two of his ring fortresses here around 980 — Fyrkat near Hobro and Aggersborg on the fjord's north shore, the largest of them all. Aalborg grew up at the fjord's narrowest crossing and became rich on Limfjord herring. In 1534 the peasants of Vendsyssel rose under Skipper Clement and beat a noble army at Svenstrup; that December Johan Rantzau's troops stormed Aalborg and killed some 2,000 people.

Sand is the region's other history. From the 16th century drifting dunes buried farms and fields along the whole coast; Skagen's medieval church was abandoned to them in 1795, and only state planting of marram grass and conifers in the 19th century brought them to a halt. Læsø boiled salt from its briny groundwater until the pans had consumed the island's forests and the trade collapsed in the 17th century. In 1825 a storm surge broke through the Agger isthmus, turning Vendsyssel and Thy into an island and the Limfjord into a salt-water sound.

The railway reached Skagen in 1890 and its harbour opened in 1907, by which time the painters had made the town famous. Aalborg became an industrial city of cement, tobacco and spirits. On 9 April 1940 German paratroopers seized its airfield in one of the first airborne assaults in history, to cover the invasion of Norway. Aalborg's shipyard closed in 1988; a university founded in 1974 and a rebuilt waterfront have taken its place.

People north of the Limfjord call themselves Vendelboer and Thyboer, and their dialects — vendelbomål still keeps three grammatical genders — mark them off even from other Jutlanders. The self-image is of stubborn, unshowy people at the far end of the country, shaped by fishing, small farms and a good deal of emigration to America. That last link is kept alive in the Rebild hills, where land bought by Danish Americans in 1911 has hosted a Fourth of July celebration almost every year since 1912.

Skagen is the great exception. From the 1870s painters gathered at Brøndum's Hotel — Michael Ancher, P.S. Krøyer, the Norwegian Christian Krohg, and Anna Ancher, the innkeeper's daughter and the only native among them — drawn by the clear light and the fishermen as subjects. Their museum was founded in 1908, the town's houses are still limewashed in "Skagen yellow" under red roofs edged in white, and the midsummer bonfire Krøyer painted is still lit on the beach each 23 June.

Aalborg has a louder tradition. Its carnival, held since 1983 on the last weekend of May, is reckoned the largest in Scandinavia, and Jomfru Ane Gade is a whole street of bars. Along the Jammerbugt coast, fishing boats are still winched up onto the open beach at Thorup Strand, Lild Strand and Vorupør, the last such landing places in North Jutland, while Klitmøller, a former fishing village, now trades as "Cold Hawaii". On Læsø, where the men were at sea, women ran the farms, whose houses were thatched with eelgrass.

With about 590,000 people, North Jutland is the least populous of Denmark's five regions. Aalborg is the fourth-largest city in the country, with around 120,000 people in the city and 220,000 in the municipality; Hjørring has about 25,000, Frederikshavn 23,000 and Thisted 13,000. Skagen has shrunk to under 8,000 year-round residents, and Læsø, with some 1,700 islanders, is Denmark's least populous municipality.

Aalborg lives on its university, its port, a wind-turbine blade factory and the Aalborg Portland cement works, which alone emits about 4% of Denmark's carbon dioxide. Skagen is Denmark's main fishing port, and Hanstholm has another large fishing harbour. Hirtshals and Frederikshavn earn their living from the Norway and Sweden ferries — Norwegians come across to shop — and Frederikshavn has a naval base. Thy and Himmerland are farming country, and the national test centre at Østerild in Thy raises prototype offshore wind turbines well over 200 metres tall.

The concerns are those of an edge. Young people leave Thy, Mors and Læsø for Aalborg, Aarhus and Copenhagen; the mink farms that were common here were emptied by the cull of November 2020; and the sea takes a metre or more a year from the cliffs around Lønstrup, where summer houses have gone over the edge and Mårup church was dismantled before it could follow. In summer the population of the coast multiplies, the beach between Løkken and Blokhus becomes a road and car park, and the evenings stay light until nearly eleven.

Aalborg gave its name to Denmark's akvavit: Aalborg Taffel, a caraway-flavoured spirit first distilled in 1846, was made in the city for almost 170 years until production moved to Norway in 2015. The older and more local habit is bjesk, snaps steeped at home with St John's wort or other herbs and berries gathered in the dunes and heaths of Vendsyssel, each household to its own recipe. Thisted Bryghus brews the dark Limfjords Porter, a beer first made in Aalborg.

The harbours set the table. Skagen's harbour warehouses, designed by Thorvald Bindesbøll, hold restaurants serving fried plaice, fish cakes and marinated herring; boats landed on the sand at Thorup Strand sell their catch a few metres from the surf. Læsø is known for jomfruhummer, langoustines, boiled or grilled with little but butter and celebrated at the island's own langoustine festival. The Limfjord around Mors supplies blue mussels and wild native oysters, celebrated at the yearly shellfish festival in Nykøbing Mors.

Læsø salt, has been seethed again since 1991 in the medieval manner, and the island's heather honey comes from a protected strain of the dark northern bee. Inland, Himmerland raises beef cattle, the woods of Rold Skov supply venison, and Thy lamb grazes behind the dunes.

Aalborg's old town holds Jens Bang's four-storey stone house of 1624, Budolfi cathedral, the half-timbered Aalborghus castle and the Monastery of the Holy Ghost, founded in 1451. Along the waterfront stand the Utzon Center by Jørn Utzon, who grew up in the city, and the House of Music, with Alvar Aalto's Kunsten art museum on the hill behind and Lindholm Høje across the fjord. To the south are the heather hills of Rebild Bakker and the forest of Rold Skov, the Fyrkat ring fortress near Hobro and the old town of Mariager.

Skagen has the painters' museum, the Anchers' house, the church tower left standing in the sand and the grey lighthouse of 1858, now a bird-migration centre. A tractor-drawn bus runs out to Grenen, where the Skagerrak and the Kattegat meet in a line of colliding waves, and to the south-west lies Råbjerg Mile, the 40-metre shifting dune. Down the east coast are Sæby's small harbour and Frederikshavn, from where the ferry crosses to Læsø — seaweed-roofed farmhouses, a working salt works, salt meadows rich in waders and a spa in a former church.

The west coast is sand and wind. Rubjerg Knude's lighthouse stands among dunes on a cliff near Lønstrup; Løkken and Blokhus have white bathing huts and beaches driven like roads; Hirtshals has the large North Sea Oceanarium; and Børglum Abbey recalls Vendsyssel's medieval bishops. Beyond the limestone bird cliff of Bulbjerg lie the Hanstholm bunker museum, built into the largest German fortification in northern Europe, the surf of Klitmøller and the dune heaths of Thy National Park. On Mors, the 60-metre Hanklit cliff shows folded layers of pale moler clay.