The bunkers in the dunes: the history beneath the sand on the west coast
Walk in the dunes on the west coast and sooner or later you meet them: heavy grey blocks of concrete, half buried in the sand, with empty gun slits facing the sea. They are not nature. They are history, part of the Atlantic Wall from the Second World War, and they tell a large story about a small stretch of coast.
What the Atlantic Wall was
During the occupation the German forces built an almost continuous chain of defences along Europe's west coast, from Norway to France. The Danish west coast was part of it. Thousands of bunkers were cast into the dunes as protection against an invasion that never came this way.
The scale is worth pausing on. Denmark is a small country, but it got a disproportionate share of the works, because the coast is long, flat and easy to land on. Concrete, cement and labour were brought in on a large scale, and the building left marks on local communities that outlasted the war itself.
The invasion came, as everyone knows, in Normandy. The works here were never used for what they were built for, and that is exactly why they are still standing: no fighting destroyed them, and after the war removing them was too expensive and too difficult.
Why they move
Many bunkers have slid down the dunes over the years and now sit on the beach or at an angle in the sand. The coast eats slowly inland, and bunkers that once stood high in the dunes now stand with their feet in the water. That makes them a powerful image of how much the coast changes.
It is also the best free lesson in coastal dynamics you can give a child. A bunker is a fixed point: it was cast in one place and has not moved by itself. Everything that has changed around it is sand and sea. If it now stands at the water's edge, you can see exactly how much coast has gone.
The mules at Blåvand
At Blåvand stand some of the best known: the artwork of large concrete mules by the artist Bill Woodrow, turning old bunkers into a herd of animals climbing out of the sand. It has become one of the most photographed places on the coast and a good target for a walk.
It works because it does not try to hide what the bunkers were. The shape is still clear beneath the animals, and the whole point is the contrast between something heavy and military and something alive. You do not need to know anything about art to get something out of it.
Seeing them yourself
You will find bunkers along most of the coast, most densely at Blåvand and Hvide Sande, with works at Søndervig, Henne Strand and Nymindegab too. Some can be entered, others are closed for safety.
- Never go into a bunker that looks unstable, and stay out if the sand around it has slipped.
- Watch for sharp edges and reinforcing bar sticking out of concrete worn by the sea.
- Take a torch. There is no lighting and the floor is rarely level.
- Do not touch any metal that looks like ammunition. It is rare, but it happens, and then you call the police.
- Stay on the paths on the way there. The dunes are protected, and the marram grass holds the sand in place.
Tirpitz, if the weather turns
If you want the history without wind in your face, Tirpitz sits at Blåvand: a museum built down into the dune around a German gun emplacement that was never finished. The building alone is worth seeing, because it is dug in rather than raised up, and inside there is both the bunker history and an amber collection.
It is the obvious plan B on a wet day, and it works for adults and older children alike. Combine a couple of hours there with a short walk to the mules afterwards and the day is covered, whatever the weather does.
If you want more stops on the same trip, Blåvand lighthouse is a few minutes away, and from the top there is a view over the whole southern stretch of coast. That is three very different experiences within a small area, which is rare in West Jutland.
Why they still matter here
The bunkers are not just curiosities. For the communities along the coast they are part of the landscape alongside the dune plantations and the sluice, and there are still people in the area whose families remember the building work. That is one reason nobody paints graffiti on them or uses them as a bin.
They have also become one of the most used subjects on the coast, and they draw visitors here outside high season, when little else does. A bunker in November makes a better photograph than a bunker in July, because the light is low and there is nobody in the background.
Worth knowing if you have children along
Bunkers are among the best things the coast offers school-age children, because they are big, dark and real in a way a museum is not. It works best with a little preparation: explain what they are before you are standing at them, bring a torch each, and keep a firm rule that nobody goes in before an adult has looked.
It is also a trip that works in bad weather. In the rain the dunes and the concrete actually look more dramatic, and the walk is short enough that nobody gets cold.
Take it home as a story
The best thing about the bunkers is that they need no guide. You stand next to something large and old and the rest follows. With children along, it works to let them find the next one themselves: they rarely sit alone, and there are usually several within a few hundred metres.
If you want to know more afterwards, the local archives in Blåvand and Ringkøbing-Skjern hold material on how the building work affected the area, and that is a different story from the military one.
And the house, when you get back
A day in the dunes means sand in the hallway, wet coats and sandy shoes. That is part of the deal. We are a local cleaning company based in Bork, and we clean holiday homes between guests in Hvide Sande, Søndervig, Henne Strand, Nymindegab, Blåvand and Bork Havn, so the next group walks into a house with no sand underfoot.