Nørre Vorupør, Fishing and Surfing Village in Thy, Northwest Coast of Jutland.

 

Nørre Vorupør( daily called  Vorupør) is a coastal town and a fishing village in the western part of Thy, close to the North Sea and 22 km northwest of the town Thisted. The place is known for its fishing , here is (like at Thorup strand) still some commercial fishing with boats on the open beach, being pulled ashore with a winch. Vorupør is a part of Nationalpark Thy.  In Nørre Vorupør is a Fiskeri- og Redningsmuseet, Nordsø Akvariet and Vorupør Museum.

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The nearest villages are Stenbjerg 4 km to the south, Hundborg 8 km to the east and Klitmøller 15 km to the north. Like Klitmøller is Vorupør a place for the surfers. It is one of five best windsurfing posts in Europe. Vorupør is today one of few places in Denmark from where is still coastal fishing. The boats are pulled ashore with a hydraulic winch. On the beach lies a restored ship Thabor, where you can go onboard and feel the daily life of a fisherman.
Violent sand drifts ravaged the district in the Middle Ages and large dunes drifted over the land. The sand drifts destroyed the fertile fields and forced the inhabitants to move to other places and find livelihood elsewhere. That's why the fishing villages along the coast were established.

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The place by Vorupør is mentioned the first time in 1689 in a lawsuit. Vorupør is also called Klitten at that time (= the Dune). In 1664 and 1668 were mentioned 7-8 houses in the dune, probably only small huts. In april 1680 came the Sandflugtskommissionen (sand drain commission) to Hundborg parish and reported about the conditons in a very disheartening way that some farms were ravaged by sand drift. "The sand flies across the fields, and the meadows are destroyed by sea water and sand". In 1793 was established the first experiments with planting to restrict the sand drift, and in 1820 was Tvorup Klitplantage laid out.

fisherman's old house

Nørre Vorupør started as a town to which people moved from Stenbjerg and Sønder Vorupør. During the 1800s was Vorupør not in good conditions. People said: "Rich Jannerup, Proud Hundborg and Poor Vorupør". The informations about the fisher population describe in a simple way how poor they were. There was no opportunity to do farming, so the fishing was the only  way to earn a living. At that time the fishermen did the fishing from barges, open three-men-boats - this was riscy and dangerous and without any big earnings. The catch of fish was sold on the beach, or the fisherman went with a basket to buyers at farms inside the country. The sight of the poor fishermen often led to derision and mockery from the prosperous farmers. In 1851 had Vorupør its first rescue station.

You don't have to buy fish! I don't like fish!

In the second half of the 1800s began a more organized fishing trade from Nørre Vorupør, and when the Thy-railway was inaugurated in 1882,  they began to export fish to Germany. Still in 1882 are the fisher population in Nørre Vorupør mentioned as poor people, living in old houses with no curtains in the small and few windows. In the 1870s came the inner Mission-revival to Vorupør. The combination of the dangerous life on the sea and the snaps had opened up a new way of life. There were some tragic drowning accidents which caused prosperity for the inner Mission. A mission house was built and the revivalism got a good hold in the fisher population. In 1982 were experiments made with new and larger boats, but in 1893 drowned 49 fishermen on the west coast of Jutland. The catastrophe meant a new prosperity for  inner Mission and a large polarization between "the saints and the unbelievers". Later was built new and safer boats.

rescue station

Today is the coastal fishing in Vorupør still visible although it in a degree happens like in a living museum. The reason is that the young fishermen have not continued the fishing tradition. It is not possible to do full-time fishing anymore.

photo Nørre Vorupør June 2011: grethe bachmann