Ringkøbing Fjord

from an extensive hinterland and a growing fishing industry.
Ringkøbing County was established in 1794, and the
town thereby became Denmark’s smallest county capital.
The shipyard, the wind turbine industry, the window factory
and others arrived later, but a lot of this business has now
shut down, and strenuous efforts are being made to retain
just some of these activities or to create other industries.
The town has several secondary schools: an ordinary
secondary school, a Christian secondary school and a
commercial secondary school, and pupils come from
many parts of the country because one of these schools
is a boarding school. Ringkøbing is one of Denmark’s best
preserved market towns and it has always attracted lots
of visitors. They used to come to trade their animals at
the marketplace, but now it’s to visit the homely old town
with its paved streets and the attractive houses with their
red roofs, and also to visit the shops, many of which are
fitted up in attractive old houses designed by the architect
Ulrik Plesner, who was born on 17 May 1861 in Vedersø.
Plesner was a productive and trendsetting Danish architect
who very much made his mark on the period with national
Romantic style and new baroque in the period around the
First World War. He was born at Vedersø vicarage, where
the poet priest Kaj Munk later lived. His father was the
parish priest J.F. Plesner. He was a part of the generation
of architects who came from religious environments. The
simple building style with close closed buildings in red
coal-fired bricks, whitewashed cornices and bands became
a strong source of inspiration for the young architect.
A walk around the town with a look into some of the
many idyllic yards reveals the history of a town with many
merchants’ establishments and thus a lively trade. You
can imagine the rumbling of the horse-drawn carts over
the cobblestones on their way into the town with grain,
animals or other goods to be sold on from the various
182
merchants’ establishments with their aromas of all the
world’s goods from tobacco, which came from far away,
to ropes made in the merchant’s own workshop, the socalled
roperies.
The town’s market square is the centre, with historic old
houses and fine restored streets leading down to the
harbour, which is now used mostly by yachtsmen and
some fjord fishermen. The harbour has changed, and the
old houses now stand side by side with modern buildings
and the town hall. One of the old custom houses is
preserved and is attractively situated at the northern end of
the harbour area.
In summer, the night watchmen do their rounds every
night, and history is suddenly close, following them around
the town while they sing their song that it’s time to go to
bed and sleep, and listening to their stories about people
in the town or a night watchman’s life. But you have to
be prepared to wait outside a restaurant or public house
while the watchmen sing for the guests inside and are
thanked with a “nip”, for the town’s public houses like their
watchmen.
Art and culture thrive in the town, and visitors can see
various works of art in many places, out in the open and
in exhibition rooms and galleries around the town. Music
is played on the platform at the marketplace, there are
concerts in the town hall, the church or the halls, and in
the new music venue for young people – Generatoren
(the Generator). The town is attractively close to the fjord,
where there’s a view to the dunes to the west, and the
area offers lots of excursions to the swimming beach at the
fjord and the sea, to the dog forest, cycling on the many
paths, to gardens, to adventure golf, to football golf, and
much more.