Vorupør

Vorupør
Help on coat of arms Vorupør
Basic data
State :	Denmark
Region :	North Jylland
Region :	North Jylland
Municipality (since 2007) :	Thisted
Coordinates :	56 ° 57 ′  N , 8 ° 22 ′  E Coordinates: 56 ° 57 ′  N , 8 ° 22 ′  E
Founded:	1801
Population : (2010)	686
Postal code :	7700
Vorupør landing area with typical coastal boats (back) and sideline boats (front).

Vorupør is a village in the Danish municipality of Thisted . The fishing and holiday resort is located in the Thy landscape in northwest Jutland on the North Sea . It is divided into a northern and a smaller southern district, Nørre Vorupør (631 inhabitants, 2010) and Sønder Vorupør (55 inhabitants).

Place name

The correct pronunciation of the place name is approximately wo-rubb-´ör , with an emphasis on the last syllable.

The part of the name Vorup is derived from the old Danish wara (district, common land) and thorp (village, single farmstead). The ending -ør denotes a stony beach.

tourism

Vorupør is a popular vacation spot. A 310 m long pier (renovated in 2013) shields the boat landing area from the prevailing south-westerly winds and acts as a groyne to soften the washing away of the sand. Inland are dunes , small forests and lakes and Erika , lichens , crows , noise and cranberries covered Moore . The conditions for surfing are also good. Vorupør and especially Klitmøller , a few kilometers further north, are known abroad for this. The conditions for sport fishing are also available all year round.

In Vorupør there is a local museum, a North Sea aquarium as well as a few restaurants, a supermarket, butcher, EC machine, church, elementary school and a campsite. In summer, cafes, art galleries, kiosks, clothing and fishing shops are also open. However, Vorupør has not lost its original character as much as other vacation spots on the west coast of Jutland .

Nørre Vorupør has had Denmark's first sea bath since August 2014. Bathers can now enjoy the North Sea without having to worry about offshore wind and surf recurrent. The system cost around 1.8 million euros.

fishing

The importance of local fishing has decreased significantly. Several coastal boats and many dinghies leave the landing area all year round. The latter are operated on a sideline basis and are locally called “Pram” ( Kahn, Prahm ). The catch is processed in two local smokehouses or sold fresh. Today, fishing from the open beach is only practiced in three places on the northwest coast of Jutland: Besides Vorupør, there are Lild Strand and Thorup Strand . The larger boats are lowered into the water with a motor winch and pulled onto the beach. The wire ropes run around a wheeled anchor block about 100 m out in the sea, so that the boats can be pulled up or out in a few minutes.

Long lines have traditionally been used as a fishing technique in Vorupør, especially for cod . These consist of long cords with many hooks. The lines are baited at home with mussel meat and arranged on boards, then brought to the sea and released. Upon return, the bait must be removed and the lines arranged on boards where the hooks fit into a special, slotted rod. The whole process is very laborious, but was workable in times of large families. Several attempts were made to design a machine to open the mussels, but apparently it failed because the fish only wanted to bite into hand-opened mussels. For this reason, nets intended for catching plaice are more frequently used today. The fish caught with longlines would have a higher quality because it is not crushed. The secondary catch is very low and is considered more sustainable than trawl fishing.

history

1800 to 1940

In 1801 the fishing village with then 120 inhabitants (including 21 fishermen ) was first mentioned in a document. In the 19th century , the inhabitants of the isolated villages along the coast of Thy lived on fishing and small- scale farming ( sheep roamed freely in the village until the 1950s ). The coastal residents had to let their (often many) children continue to work inland as servants for the farmers. The fish was loaded into back baskets and taken away for sale on the farms . Drunkenness and poverty were widespread.

In 1878 a church was built on a sand hill east of the village, where the idyllic old cemetery is worth seeing. Until then, the residents had to walk across the heather to Hundborg to go to church. In 1902 the current church was consecrated in the middle of the village, partly built from stones from the old church. In the old cemetery, the armory of the demolished church serves as a mortuary chapel.

Many fishermen were killed because of the dangerous fishing with open boats. The villages on the west coast of Jutland were particularly affected by drowning in the 1880s and encouraged a Christian revival movement . A grave from 1885 with eight fishermen can be seen in the old cemetery east of the village. In 1887 Fiskercompagniet was founded, an example of Christian collectivism . The merging of the individual boat communities into a larger unit enabled year-round fishing as well as reselling and exporting without intermediaries. The participating fishermen were committed to a Christian way of life, and the earnings were originally distributed according to needs (number of children in the household). This principle was abandoned after a year or two.

Around 1900 the open boats were replaced by deck boats. In 1908, the pier was built to protect the landing area from the surf, increasing the number of days with fishing opportunities by 50%. During the First World War the fish was exported to Germany for good prices . From 1910 to 1930 there was relative prosperity and instead of the previously poor, thatched roofs , solid, whitewashed houses were built, which are still typical today.

Vorupør pier in a storm

A railway line Sjørring – Nørre Vorupør with connection to the railway line Thisted – Fjerritslev was planned with the Railway Act of May 27, 1908 , but never implemented. The fish was still transported to Sjørring by horse-drawn cart and then loaded by rail. Because of the booming fishing industry, the building of a port was required; however, such a port was not realized until 1967 and north at Hanstholm .

In 1940 a local son, Claus Sørensen, invented a motor winch system that made it possible to transport larger boats. Until then, the boats were pulled ashore with a hand winch; eight to twelve men had to carry them into the water.

Second World War

The German occupation of Denmark in World War II brought about the construction of many fortifications . In Sønder Vorupør there was a 42 m high radar tower . The school was confiscated for military headquarters. In the middle of the long village street was a checkpoint where passers-by had to identify themselves. There was one fatality there, a young local woman who was friends with a German soldier and who normally could easily ride through on a bicycle . One day, however, the post was occupied by a soldier coming directly from the Eastern Front , who shot the girl when she overheard his call on hold.

On May 2, 1942, a mystical German and English speaking gentleman arrived in Vorupør on foot and rented a bathing hotel under the name Beaverbrook. When the police came to check his identity, the man shot himself in his room. According to research by a historian, it was probably an agent of the Polish secret service, Peter Rudyard Aitken, son of the British newspaper mogul and supply minister Lord Beaverbrook , who appeared as a German officer under the names of Günther Reimere, Wolf Weltner or Adolph Mewes and from his quarters in Aalborg run away. There is speculation about a connection to espionage in the later bombed Vemork heavy water facility near Rjukan in Norway .

On August 29, 1944, a Lancaster bomber was hit by German artillery near Vorupør on the way to a bombing raid on Stettin . The plane crashed near the Ålvand bog east of the village. The seven dead airmen from England, Northern Ireland , Australia and Canada were buried in a grave directly in the moor, but in 1947 they were transferred to an official warrior grave in the village cemetery.

post war period

From the 1960s onwards, the number of tourists increased. The first holiday homes , built very simply from wood, date from this period . Many local residents also rented rooms in their own home. At the end of the 1960s, the coastal road was built, among other things so that the local fishermen could fish from the harbor in Hanstholm . In contrast to the neighboring towns of Stenbjerg and Klitmøller , the fishermen from Vorupør kept their boats in place.

After Denmark's accession to the EC in 1972, the situation for coastal fishing became increasingly unfavorable, as the issuing of fishing quotas did not take into account the environmentally friendly fishing methods used by small coastal boats. Large trawlers could usually exhaust the quotas in front of the small boats. Compared to the 27 boats that went out around 1920, there were 10 around 1980; by 2000 there were four. Many commuted to work in Thisted and Hanstholm , and tourism is also a main source of income. In the 1980s and 1990s, many luxury holiday homes were built, which, however, only provided the locals with few permanent jobs.

The formerly strong Christian character of the village has recently declined again. However, until 1980 the motor winch was not operated on Sundays and therefore no fish was landed. Significantly, the yellow-washed “Filadelfia” mission house next to the church was renovated by the diocese of Aalborg in 1999 and used as a parish hall: the few members of the mission association in Vorupør could no longer afford to maintain the house. The former mission house of Sønder Vorupør, like almost all of these houses on the west coast, has long been sold and converted into a residential building.

Local politics

Vorupør belonged to the municipality of Hundborg-Jannerup until 1970, from then to the new municipality of Thisted. As of January 1, 2007, this was expanded to include the neighboring communities of Sydthy and Hanstholm. At the same time, they moved from the Viborg district to the North Jutland region with their headquarters in Aalborg .

See also: Administrative division of Denmark .

There was always tension between Vorupør and the town of Thisted. In Thisted they condescendingly said “ude i Vorupør” (out in Vorupør); The Vorupører reciprocated with the phrase "ude i Thisted" (outside in Thisted).

After unsuccessful attempts to represent the place in the local council by means of an electoral community, a representative from Vorupør was elected for the Liberal Party in 1997. The construction of some senior citizens' apartments was a success for the district; they used to have to move to the retirement home in Hundborg. In the municipality of Thisted, which was expanded in 2007, the Vorupører could no longer send their own representative to the local council. The citizens' association took part in several initiatives to ensure the school's continued existence and the security of the infrastructure.

Vorupør parish was spun off from Hundborg in 1980. The pastor is still shared with Jannerup and Hundborg, where the pastorate is located.

Sons and daughters of the place

• Jens Munk Poulsen (1863-1920). Initiator of the fishing company. His teacher training was paid for with funds raised locally. He later worked in Danish fisheries organizations and had the pier built . He was considered the "boss" of the believing part of the local residents and had great power over them and the fishing company. From 1901 he had unsuccessfully applied as a Folketing candidate for the Conservative Party ; 1913–1920 member of the Liberal Party. Knight of the Dannebrog Order . Is buried in the old cemetery at Vorupør.

• NP Madsen (1860-1916). Pastor. Born in Tune on Zealand . Lived and taught in Vorupør from 1899 to 1915 and was very popular with the locals. Wrote several spiritual books. Follower of the Revival and Holiness , a splinter movement from England that approached Pentecostal theology. Often disputes with the Indre Misson , the official strict Christian movement in Denmark.

• Claus Sørensen (1888–1976). Inventor of a motor winch system that is still used in several coastal locations for pulling boats in and out. Chairman of the West Jutian Fisheries Association. Like many other Vorupørers, he moved to Esbjerg , where he founded a ship salvage company and a deep-freeze store, which developed into today's refrigeration and freezing equipment group Claus Sørensen. Small monument not far from the landing area.

• Morten Poulsen (born 1971), football player in the Danish Super League .

Trivia

• The west end of the pier is the point in Denmark that is furthest from Copenhagen , namely 297 km.

• The second largest crane in the world at the time was used to build the pier . It was opened on August 8, 1908 in the presence of King Frederik VIII . It is common saying that three women from the neighboring village of Lyngby drank the water in which the king had previously washed his hands.

• In September 1985 the place became the scene of a bloody act. The merchant Hans Günther Stumpe invited a woman on vacation to Vorupør, killed her and sunk body parts in a lake. In 1986, Stumpe was sentenced to life imprisonment in Braunschweig. The case was processed in the Danish TV crime series Rejseholdet in 2002 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Statistics banks → Befolkning og valg → Kirkestatistik → KM1: Befolkningen January 1st, April 1st, July 1st and October 1st, so and folkekirkemedlemsskab
2. ↑ In the local dialect a bilabial w is used as in English , at the end the -r is spoken as in American .
3. ↑ Danmarks første havbad er klar (Danish) Danmarks Radio, accessed on August 16, 2014.
4. ↑ De aldrig byggede baner i Nordjylland. In: Nordjyllands jernbaner. Retrieved January 18, 2015 (Danish). 
5. ↑ Frank Weber: Krigsdrama i Thy 1942. (PDF (5 pages, 62 kB)) (Not available online.) Archived from the original on 27 September 2007 ; Retrieved on February 11, 2010 (Danish, Historisk Årbog for Thy og Vester Hanherred 1992, pp. 111-119). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
6. ↑ Søren C. Flensted: Lancaster PB202 III crashed at forby Hede heath 08/30 1944 Private site, accessed on August 16, 2014
7. ↑ Berlingske Tidende, April 7, 1997
8. ^ Thisted Dagblad, January 19, 2002

Web links

Commons : Vorupør  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Wikivoyage: Nørre Vorupør  - travel guide

• www.vorupor.dk - the official website of Vorupør
• www.vorupoer.info - German forum for Vorupør lovers
• www.north-sea.dk - North Sea Aquarium Nørre Vorupør