Southern Denmark: Funen & South Jutland

Ribe, on the marsh edge of south-west Jutland, began as a seasonal market in the first years of the 8th century and is Denmark's oldest town; its stone cathedral, begun in the 12th century, was built of tufa imported from Germany. At Jelling, near Vejle, Harald Bluetooth raised his great runestone in memory of his parents. In Odense — Odins Vi, Odin's shrine, first recorded in 988 — King Canute IV was killed before the altar of St Alban's church in 1086 and canonised in 1101. Nyborg Castle hosted the Danehof, the medieval parliament, until 1413, and at Ribe in 1460 Christian I was elected ruler of both Schleswig and Holstein on the promise that they remain "forever undivided".

That promise shaped the south. The First Schleswig War of 1848–51 is remembered for the Danish sortie from the fortress of Fredericia on 6 July 1849; the second was decided at Dybbøl, outside Sønderborg, where Prussian troops stormed the Danish redoubts on 18 April 1864 after weeks of shelling. Denmark lost everything south of the little Kongeå river, and Esbjerg was founded in 1868 as a new North Sea harbour to replace Altona, lost in 1864.

North Schleswig spent 56 years under German rule; some 30,000 of its men were conscripted in the First World War and more than 5,000 died. In the plebiscite of 10 February 1920 three-quarters voted for Denmark, and on 15 June 1920 North Schleswig rejoined Denmark. The Little Belt Bridge of 1935 and the Great Belt link of 1997–98 ended Funen's isolation, while a carpenter's workshop in Billund, which began making wooden toys in 1932, became Lego.

The region holds two of Denmark's most distinct identities. Funen calls itself the garden of Denmark, a rolling island of hedgerows, half-timbered farms and more manor houses than anywhere else in Denmark, and its own dialects, known together as fynsk. Hans Christian Andersen was born in Odense in 1805; the composer Carl Nielsen in 1865 at Sortelung near Nørre Lyndelse, recalled in his memoir My Childhood on Funen; and around 1900 the Funen Painters — Johannes Larsen, Fritz Syberg, Peter Hansen — turned from Copenhagen's salons to the island's fields and coasts. Larsen came from Kerteminde, Syberg and Hansen from Faaborg.

South Jutland, Sønderjylland, was formed by the border. Its dialect, sønderjysk, defeats many other Danes. Under Prussian rule the inns where the Danish-minded met were often refused licences to sell alcohol, so they built assembly halls, and out of those evenings grew the sønderjysk kaffebord, a coffee table of seven soft cakes, then layer cakes, then at least seven kinds of biscuit. A German minority of about 15,000 has its own political party, the Schleswig Party, an arrangement mirrored for the Danes south of the frontier.

The summer calendar is local. Ringridning, tilting at a small ring from horseback, fills Sønderborg and Aabenraa in July; Fredericia remembers its battle of 6 July 1849; Fanø's islanders bring out their old wedding costumes for Sønderhodag; Tønder, once rich on lace-making, holds its folk festival on the last full weekend of August.

About 1.2 million people live in the region, some 500,000 of them on Funen and its islands. Odense, with around 185,000 in the city and 210,000 in the municipality, is Denmark's third city; Esbjerg has about 72,000, Kolding and Vejle just over 60,000 each, Fredericia 41,000, and Svendborg and Sønderborg under 30,000. Vejle is the administrative seat, and Ribe and Tønder, for all their history, have about 8,000 people apiece.

Family-owned manufacturers anchor small towns here: Lego at Billund, which built the airport that now serves all of western Denmark; Danfoss, founded in 1933 and still headquartered at Nordborg on Als; the shoemaker Ecco at Bredebro. Odense lost the Lindø shipyard in 2012 and has rebuilt itself around robotics — Universal Robots was founded there in 2005 — its university and a light-rail line opened in 2022. Esbjerg, once the country's largest fishing port, is the main town for Denmark's oil and offshore activities, and its harbour is expanding for the wind-turbine industry. Pig and dairy farms cover the land between.

Along the border the lorries queue at Padborg, Danes drive south to fill their cars with cheap beer and sweets from German border shops, and commuters cross in both directions. In July German visitors fill many of the rented summer houses of Blåvand, Henne Strand and Rømø. The small islands and the Tønder marsh are losing people, while Tønder, the first town over the border, has been a popular place to elope to since the 1960s.

Funen's signature is brunsviger, a soft yeast cake drowned in melted butter and brown sugar, eaten warm from Odense's bakeries and shaped into a "cake man" for children's birthdays. Rygeost, a sour-milk cheese smoked over straw or nettles and sprinkled with caraway, is known above all from Funen and is Denmark's only wholly native cheese. Odense's Albani brewery, founded in 1859, makes the strong Giraf lager, first brewed in 1962 to pay for a new giraffe at the city zoo.

South Jutland cooks with a German accent. Kålpølser, spiced beef-and-pork sausages, come with grønlangkål, stewed kale, at New Year; spegepølse, a smoked salami, is sliced onto rye; and solæg, "sun eggs" boiled with onion skins and kept for a few days in brine, are eaten with mustard, vinegar, oil and a glass of snaps. The kaffebord's showpiece is brødtorte, a layer cake made with rye bread, and Christiansfeld has been known for its honey cakes since 1783.

The Wadden Sea adds lamb from the dyke pastures, brown shrimps and Pacific oysters gathered from the flats on guided winter walks. Fanø and Esbjerg share bakskuld — dab that is salted, dried and smoked, then fried in butter.

Odense is built around Hans Christian Andersen: the museum of 2021 by Kengo Kuma, much of it underground beneath a garden, stands beside the yellow corner house of his birth, with his childhood home, St Canute's Cathedral and the Funen Village open-air museum close by. South of the city, Egeskov, finished in 1554 on oak piles in a small lake, is Denmark's best-preserved Renaissance water castle. Around it lie Nyborg's royal castle, the Viking ship grave at Ladby near Kerteminde, the Svanninge hills above Faaborg, and Svendborg, the port for the South Funen archipelago — Ærøskøbing's 18th-century lanes, Marstal's maritime museum and the Archipelago Trail.

Across the Little Belt, where the 1935 bridge can be climbed on a guided walk, are Kolding's fire-scarred castle Koldinghus, Fredericia's ramparts, the UNESCO-listed Moravian town of Christiansfeld, and Jelling's runestones, mounds and church. Billund has Legoland, opened in 1968 around a Miniland that now holds more than 20 million bricks, and the Lego House. Sønderborg's castle faces Als Sound, with the Dybbøl redoubts and mill on the hill opposite, the royal summer palace at Gråsten nearby and the 84-kilometre Gendarme Path along Flensburg Fjord.

The west belongs to the Wadden Sea National Park. Ribe has its cathedral tower, half-timbered streets and Viking centre; tractor buses cross the seabed to Mandø; Rømø's Lakolk beach is wide enough to drive on; and Møgeltønder's cobbled Slotsgade leads towards the Tønder marsh, where starlings gather in huge flocks for the "black sun". Fanø, twelve minutes by ferry from Esbjerg and its four white seaside giants, Man Meets the Sea, has the thatched skippers' village of Sønderho. North of Esbjerg the North Sea dunes run to Blåvandshuk, Denmark's westernmost point, and the Tirpitz bunker museum.