There will be more about Skagen itself later in this cruise travelogue series, but this and the follow-up post will cover the excursion we took along the coast to the area around Frederikshavn.

First up, just for completeness, a few views from our balcony aboard Sky Princess in the morning. With the direction the ship was facing we didn’t get much of a feel for what Skagen was like until we’d boarded the tour bus and driven through it. Our general feeling even then was that it was small with not a lot to do or see, but we’d come to a completely different conclusion by the end of the day.

Our tour started with a visit to the Coastal Museum of Bangsbo, part of the Nordjyllands Kystmuseum group of museums in this area.

The museum is situated in the grounds of a manor that dates from 1364 but which saw its most interesting period of history at the turn of the twentieth century when it became a hub for Scandinavian artists and writers, including those associated with the Modern Breakthrough movement. The grounds were lovely and peaceful, with the moat surrounding some of the buildings acting as a wonderful mirror for the picturesque location. We’d actually turned up so early that the museum hadn’t opened when we arrived so had more time than anticipated to take in the views.

The overall theme for the tour we’d taken in this part of Denmark was World War II-related so the primary point of this initial visit to the Coastal Museum of Bangsbo was to see the exhibition about the German occupation of northern Denmark with a focus on the resistance movement. Danish resistance during the war was slow to evolve. The Germans had allowed the Danes to mostly govern themselves with some censorship and a ban on trading with allied forces being the only major impacts to general life. As a result, initially there was little in the way of a desire to fight the relatively small occupying force. However, there were those opposed to the Nazis and there were communication channels open to Britain so cells did start to form, initially for spying purposes, then increasingly towards sabotage and more lethal acts towards both the Germans and collaborators in their country. Britain regularly parachuted in people and equipment to assist in the effort.

We’ve seen a fair number of war exhibitions at museums around Europe and we never tire of them; it’s a fascinating part of history and a useful reminder about what you should do when you see a Nazi or see someone expressing support for their position. The Bangsbo museum is well worth a visit to see their collection and read about the Danish resistance.

In the same building there was a space dedicated to Danish seafaring through the ages. This made sense, given it’s a coastal museum, after all. We didn’t really have enough time to give this exhibit any justice but there were some nice models of vessels – and being cruise fans and natives of a naval port city we always like boats and ships in any form – and some interesting figureheads.

The showpiece of the Coastal Museum of Bangsbo gets a building all to itself. This building housed reasonably well-preserved remains of an old ship that at first sight, and given this part of the world, you might imagine is Viking in origin, but it’s actually a little later than that, dated by specialists to 1163. The medieval ship is fourteen and a half metres long and would have traded with Scandinavian and Baltic countries. Its discovery in 1922 in a stream suggests that a natural harbour once existed in the part of Denmark in which it was found.

Our short but interesting visit to the Bangsbo Coastal Museum finished with a walk past the lovely view of the manor grounds once more as we made our way to the bus.

In the next part of this cruise travelogue series covering what we did while docked at Skagen, we’ll be visiting Bangsbo Fort, part of the Atlantic Wall defences constructed by Germany to protect their invaded lands from allied attacks.

Bangsbo Fort was constructed as part of Hitler’s Atlantic Wall defences for Germany’s invading forces during World War II, and its primary purpose was to protect the port of Frederikshavn just to its north which was an important transportation hub to Norway. The high vantagepoint on the cliffs – the bunkers are situated between sixty and seventy metres up – gave it a long range and wide field of view and cover. In total, the Germans laid down seventy bunkers in this clifftop location. A further ten were added after the war by the Norwegians who still maintain overall control of this fort.

After a bit of a look around outside we were eventually led into three of the bunkers that are open to visitors. The museum element of Bangsbo Fort came to the fore here and there were plenty of rooms in the tight spaces with war memorabilia in the form of German equipment, weaponry, mines (deactivated, I hope), and flags. One room was set up how it would have been for the soldiers stationed inside who would have been expected to survive bombing and gas attacks and remain within for some considerable period.

German bunkers were pretty much standardised across a few designs to make their construction easier and quicker so entrances at right angles, steel doors, protected ventilation systems and secure telephones, and emergency escape routes could be found everywhere here, and most likely in any other Atlantic Wall bunker still standing to this day. The Channel Islands contain the best preserved bunkers simply because Hitler considered them the most important (a symbol of taking British land) while the allies considered them strategically worthless and bypassed them completely.

Our guide gave us some warning about the last of the bunkers we visited, stating that it was down a steep slope and steps, and that anyone who wanted to stay up top near the café could do so. Regular readers – or occasional readers who’ve hit the big time and read the few articles where I’ve mentioned this before – will know that my wife has a bit of a reputation with slopes and steps and twisted ankles and knees so I did check with her and she decided to risk it. As it was, the slope was not that steep and the steps were very few. We’d been imagining somewhere out on the cliff edge perhaps but this was like walking down a small, grassy hill, mainly because it was exactly that. We got to pass by the impressive concrete structure of the observation bunker, and as someone with a keen interest in brutalism in architecture, and as someone with a keen interest in cruise ships (which this looked like the bridge of, a little), this was lovely to observe.

The last of the bunkers we visited was actually a gun battery, backed by the manufacturing and storage areas and the delivery rails that would have moved shells to the weapon. Quite how deafening it would have been in here when the gun was firing shocks me to think about it.

During the rapid expansion of the Atlantic Wall defences, getting hold of parts was sometimes an issue for the teams of German engineers so they took what they could from the occupied lands. The gun in place here at Bangsbo Fort came from an artillery ship called the Niels Juel which had been decommissioned in the interwar years before the need for training amidst rising European tensions saw her re-enter service with the Danish navy. Following Germany’s invasion of Denmark, the Danes were allowed to keep their fleet for training purposes, but increased resistance in the population (see the previous post in this series for more about that) led the Germans to suddenly move to seize all the vessels. Niels Juel was able to make a break for freedom but was spotted and attacked by the German fleet leading the Danish crew to attempt to scuttle the ship. This was only partially successful and the ship was eventually refloated, towed for repair, and disarmed.

Is it just me, or does the gun battery at Bangsbo Fort look like an elephant?

One of the weirdly impressive elements of this visit to Bangsbo Fort bunker museum was that as we gathered together at the end of our allocated time we could gaze out from the cliffs and spot our cruise ship docked in Skagen to the north along the coast. The size of the ship compared to the town is stark, and even more so when you consider that the distance between these two points in Denmark as the crow flies is around thirty five kilometres.

A very enjoyable visit indeed, aided by some lovely weather affording us splendid views over land and sea. We always enjoy museums, and if you’re visiting Europe then it’s hard to avoid any of that pesky war stuff since we’ve had a few over the centuries, but why would you want to when it’s all so fascinating?

That brought our organised tour to an end but we were given the option to be dropped off in Skagen on the way back to the ship, and since we had plenty of time before Sky Princess was due to leave that’s exactly what we opted to do. You can read about our look around Skagen in the next post in this cruise travelogue series.

“Lars, I hear you’re the mayor of Skagen!”

“Yes, that’s true, Viggo. How nice to hear from you after all this time. To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“Well, Lars, I come with an amazing offer. I happen to have come into possession of more yellow paint than I can handle and I’m willing to let you have it for less than cost price. I’m taking a loss here and you’ll be doing me a favour while also getting an amazing bargain!”

“I… I don’t really know what to say, Viggo. I don’t think I need any yellow paint.”

“But your town, Lars! Picture it! Skagen. The yellowest town on Earth. Tourists will flock there!”

“It’s an interesting offer, Viggo, really it is. But I don’t think I can really…”

“How is your wife these days? Did you ever tell her the story of how you were also seeing my sister Kamilla when you were first dating her?”

“That yellow paint. How much did you say you wanted for it?”

And that’s the story behind Skagen’s yellow-plastered buildings with red tiled roofs. Probably.

There’s also probably a good story behind the prevalence of pizza places in Skagen. As we headed up through a pedestrianised area it seemed like every other place was selling pizza, and with it being so bright and sunny and with the cruise ship in port they seemed to be doing a decent trade. We, however, had another destination in mind.

We passed by plenty of market stalls before coming up a small square with a fountain and some modern art sculptures in it. These were designed by Poul Winther, an artist who was born in Skagen in 1939, and of whom there is very little other information available. We liked the artworks here; they’re our sort of abstract modernism.

The final landmark of note that we encountered before our intended destination was Skagen Church. It’s a hard-to-miss sight.

This building in this form dates from the turn of the twentieth century. A smaller church had existed in this spot for around fifty years prior to that but Skagen had become more religious than its size could cope with so it was extended and the taller tower was added by architects Ulrik Plesner and Thorvald Bindesbøll. Before that earlier church there had been other church buildings for the people of Skagen but this area of Denmark farmed to excess, removing too much vegetation in the area, and the result was shifting sand dunes that ended up winning the battle against man’s constructions. Indeed, if we’d not taken the war-related excursion earlier in the day then we would most likely have visited the still partly-buried church on the dunes instead.

“Father Henrik, long time no see.”

“Viggo? Is that really you?”

“It is I, Father, Jacob’s older brother, and I come with a bargain you and your congregation are going to love.”

“Yes, I bumped into Lars last week. How much do you want?”

Barely a minute’s walk from the church was what we really wanted to see: Skagen Brewery. This is the northernmost brewery in Denmark – which you probably could have guessed – and it boasts Denmark’s largest beer garden too. Established in 2005 in a former power-generating facility it brews its own beers and also distils gin. We tried the former in the garden and bought the latter to take back home with us. We are very fond of locally-produced drinks when we travel and I have to say that the beers were absolutely gorgeous, with different styles for all tastes.

After a very pleasant time in the sunshine we decided to make our way back to Sky Princess in the port. Now, if we’d paid a little bit more attention to the map then we’d have taken a shorter route – almost directly south – but we initially started off roughly heading back the way we’d come. This brought us in time to the statue of the Danish Fisherman and Rescuers dedicated to local heroes, which was nice enough but, it turned out, not that convenient for getting back to the cruise ship. We ended up having to double back on ourselves quite a bit in order to find the route that would get us back on board and that’s why there are perhaps more photos of Skagen’s waterfront area here than you might be expecting.

Back aboard Sky Princess we chatted and decided we really liked what we saw of Skagen, a place we’d never heard of prior to booking this cruise, and a place we’d neglected to look into too much. Skagen has a number of museums that look like they’d interest us, it’s got that dune-covered church we’d love to go and see, and there’s always the lure of a return visit to the brewery, so we’d jump at the chance to return here on some future trip.

We had plenty of time to chat about Skagen and gaze out at the sea because we ordered some snacks and drinks to our room. That took seventy five minutes to arrive. Not good, Princess Cruises.

We sat in a fairly empty lounge with the intention of having some drinks before dinner but after twenty minutes gave up waiting and placed orders on the app rather than hope some member of staff considered checking on the tables. Not good, Princess Cruises.

At sea in the evening we decided to dine in Alfredo’s after taking a look at the menu for the main dining room and not seeing anything that set us alight with excitement. The view from our table was very good and the food was lovely even if service was a bit sluggish. I say “sluggish”, but I mean “glacial”. The first courses were fine but dessert took forty five minutes to arrive after ordering it, and that was only after I’d attracted the attention of a waiter twice to see if we’d been forgotten (and we clearly had been). Not good, Princess Cruises.

In the next post in this Sky Princess cruise travelogue series we’ll be making the first of two visits to Oslo in 2022 and we’ll be heading off on an excursion that starts with a look around Vigeland Park.