Port of Esbjerg - from 250 meters quay to 12 kilometers

An incredibly exciting and fascinating story about the port of Esbjerg and its development over the last 150 years.

Today, it is impossible to get a general overview of the harbor from a publicly accessible place in Esbjerg. 12 km of quays bend along the coastline and are a living organism, constantly expanding and adapting. A place where change is both a condition and a condition.

You came to the same place for approx. 150 years ago, Esbjerg was just a small settlement with two farms, three houses and 23 inhabitants, which were part of Jerne Parish. The inhabitants lived by agriculture and supplemented with a little fishing for household needs. 

With the loss of the duchies after the war in 1864, Denmark no longer had ports on Jutland's west coast, as they all fell to Prussia at the conclusion of the peace. From the Danish side, however, they did not want to use these now foreign ports, but wanted their own.

After thorough investigations, the choice fell on Esbjerg as the place where a new West Coast Harbor was to be built. Here it was quickly deep out from the shore, so there had to be minimal digging, which played a role at a time when the construction tools were shovel and shovel, wheelbarrow and horse-drawn carriage. In favor of the place also spoke that both Fanø and the peninsula Skallingen provided shelter for the violent North Sea, so the large sailing ships without motor power had calmer waters to maneuver in when they had to enter through the narrow lock gate to get into port.

On 24 April 1868, the Riksdag passed the law on the construction of a port in Esbjerg, and on 17 November 1868, the Swiss engineer Carlé was awarded the contract and promised to have the project completed within three years. However, he was later put off the order, and by then the port was far from finished. On 15 August 1874, it opened for navigation, but was not completely completed until 1878. A total of 250 meters of quay were there from the beginning. 

The port was built for the sake of the Danish agricultural export of live cattle and pigs. No one thought about fishing, nor that there would be a town by the harbor. Any newcomers were expected to settle in Nordby on Fanø and then commute back and forth. However, snusfornuft made the newcomers buy a plot of land close to the harbor area and build small houses for housing. The sparse but still growing settlement provided fertile ground for a beginning trade with merchants, butchers and bakers, just as the first fishermen found their way to Dokhavnen's calm basin. An urban community began to grow up in the place where there should have been nothing but more than a harbor.

The further development of the Port of Esbjerg became the story of constant adaptation and adjustment. Not much turned out as intended. Exports of live cattle and pigs were affected by export duties in England and Germany in the late 1870s, which led Danish agriculture to shift production to processed animal products such as butter and bacon, which had been in great demand in the English market. Fortunately, these products from especially cooperative dairies and slaughterhouses could also be shipped from the Port of Esbjerg.

The new agriculture needed a lot of raw materials and auxiliaries, which could be imported via the Port of Esbjerg, just as the beginning industry required the import of raw materials from abroad. Fortunately, the port was also suitable for these tasks, and not least it had the advantage of being almost ice-free. More and more people moved to Esbjerg, which in 1899 got the blue stamp as a city by being elevated to a market town - the population had grown from 23 to 12.967 in 1899.

In the 1890s, fishing grew rapidly, and until approx. In 1970, the locomotive was acquired in the continued development and growth of the port and the city. In the late 1960s, the search for oil in the North Sea yielded results, and with the energy crisis in 1973, extraction became profitable. It swirled Esbjerg into an offshore adventure, which made the city Denmark's first and only offshore city, and within the last 20 years, the oil has been supplemented with wind energy, so today we talk about Esbjerg as an energy metropolis. Shipment of wind turbines affects not only the port area, but also the country roads around the city and port. And the place where the adventure began in 1868 with two farms, three houses and 23 inhabitants, today gives its name to a municipality that after the structural reform in 2007 has over 115.000 inhabitants. 

Niels Christensen Esbjerg was one of the two farmers who made good money selling land to port and town from 1868. If it were otherwise possible, it could be fun to invite him back and see what it had all developed into. Presumably, like Holberg's Jeppe in the baron's bed, he would pinch his arm and ask: "Am I dreaming or am I awake?".

Updated by: Wadden Sea Coast | info@vadehavskysten.dk