Skagen, the Town at the Tip of Denmark

 On Thursday, July 17, we spent the day in the town of Skagen. The Danes, like the Dutch, have their own way of pronouncing the letter 'g'. Where the Dutch make a very gutteral sound, in Danish the 'g' sounds more like an 'aay', so Skagen is actually Skaayen.

Our excursion took us to the very, very, very tip of the Jutland Peninsula, where the Skagerrak (Skaayerak), the North Sea, meets the Kattegat, the Baltic Sea, which is called Grenen. The area from just outside of the town to this tip is entirely sand so there are lots of dunes, and our guide was telling us about the way one long 40 metre high dune called the Råbjerg Mile moves across the peninsula at about 15 metres per year due to the constant winds. Eventually it will cover the main road between Skagen and the rest of Denmark, but will move off about 40 years later. I think the Danish government is already planning how they will deal with this when it happens.

The beach at the end of the dunes

People walking their dogs near the last dunes
before the sand spit

When we arrived at the visitor centre, we boarded a Sandworm, which is a large carriage towed by a tractor to get people out to the end of the peninsula.

It was only a 10-minute ride to where the Sandworm let us off to enjoy the scenery and walk all the way to where the waves from each sea flow into each other. 

The Skagerrak side has more wave action than the Kattegat

You can see the difference between the 
two seas here, only about 30 metres from the tip

The sun was too bright for us to see the difference
in the water colour between Skagerrak and Kattegat

Larry standing almost at the tip of Denmark

Looking back from the tip you can already see
the difference in the seas

It was an interesting experience to be on such a flat 'beach' where two seas meet up. No crashing waves; they just lapped against each other. Of course we would have had to wait a while to get our own photos at the tip; someone was always trying to do some interesting pose for their camera. The other issue was that we were there when the sun was almost straight ahead of us, so the people were pretty much silhouetted, but it was easier to see the direction of the water.

After our time at Grenen, we were taken into the centre of town for a visit to the Art Gallery. In the late 1800s a group of Danish painters established an artists' colony here, where their subjects were the fishermen and residents of Skagen and life there in general. Painters in the colony were women as well as men, and they all contributed to depicting daily life in the area.

The gallery was fascinating, and I couldn't resist taking photos of some of the paintings. They are all quite beautiful.

Outside the Gallery, a sculpture of two
of the founding members of the Skagen Painters

This building, now a hotel, was the original
meeting place for the Skagen Painters.

Some of the paintings of the fishermen and sailors
are so realistic you would swear they were photos

Our final stop on the tour was at the Sand-Covered Church. This was a rather large church built in the 14th century a short way outside of the town. In the 18th century the moving sand dunes started to encroach on the church and they had to constantly dig it out. Eventually this became impossible to continue and the church elders decided to abandon the building. They emptied out and auctioned off everything they could, but it is said that the altar was left, probably due to superstition, and the church was left for nature to take her course. Now all that is left above ground is the church tower.

From a short distance away it looks like a house,
but it is the original church tower

The interior of the tower. There is a staircase
to walk up higher, but it is very narrow. Our
tour guide did her best to discourage anyone
from climbing it.

After this visit, we went back to the ship. We weren't leaving until 6:00 but I had an appointment at the spa for a manicure and pedicure and we had a dinner booked in the evening.

Skagen was certainly a different and somewhat unexpected port stop that we enjoyed very much.