Hanstholm Fortress (Bunker Museum Hanstholm)

A coastal fortress built to command the Skagerrak

Hanstholm Fortress was constructed by German forces in 1941 as part of the Atlantic Wall, a vast chain of defences stretching from Norway to France. Here at Denmark’s northwestern edge, the task was clear: to seal off the 120 km-wide entrance to the Skagerrak and keep the British fleet at bay. The battery at Hanstholm was paired with a sister battery in Kristiansand, Norway, creating a deadly crossfire zone over the sea lane. At its wartime peak the fortress covered roughly 9 square kilometres and housed more than 3,000 men. Four colossal 38 cm naval guns formed its core, each weighing around 110 tonnes and capable of firing shells up to 55 km out to sea, almost halfway to Norway. The sheer scale of the engineering leaves little doubt how strategically important this wind-battered headland once was.

Life inside the 2,500 m² museum bunker

Today the heart of the site is a 2,500 m² bunker that once sheltered one of those massive guns along with around 90 soldiers. Several rooms have been meticulously restored to their original wartime appearance, from sleeping quarters and mess rooms to communications spaces. Walking the narrow corridors, you get a tangible sense of the routines, boredom and tension that filled long shifts on watch. Other chambers host detailed exhibitions on topics such as the 38 cm guns themselves, the battleship Bismarck and even the Olsen Gang in Jutland film, which used the fortress as a backdrop. Together they turn bare concrete into a layered narrative about technology, propaganda, everyday habits and the human cost of occupation.

Stories of occupier and occupied

Above the bunker, a modern documentation centre adds an important civilian perspective. Under the title “Enemy and Neighbour – Hanstholm occupied!”, the exhibition traces how fortress and fishing town coexisted under German control. Personal testimonies, photographs and artefacts explore rationing, requisitioned land, collaboration and resistance, viewed from both German and Danish angles. Rather than focusing purely on hardware, these galleries emphasise relationships and dilemmas. You see how local families navigated life in the shadow of heavy guns, how soldiers coped with isolation on a distant coast, and how the landscape itself was reshaped by concrete, barbed wire and searchlights.

Riding the ammunition train through the battery

Out in the museum terrain, part of the original narrow-gauge ammunition railway has been restored. A small museum train now follows a one-kilometre loop through the battery, passing an ammunition bunker and one of the gun bunkers. The ride lasts around ten minutes, but it vividly shows how shells and supplies once moved around this military city. The track winds through dunes and low vegetation, with bunkers half-sunk into the sand on either side. It is an unusual way to grasp the extent of the site: instead of looking at a map, you feel distance and layout in real time as the carriages rattle from position to position across the old firing sector.

Bunkers, dunes and the edge of Thy National Park

Beyond the core museum area, Hanstholm’s surroundings form an open-air extension of the story. To the south lies the Hanstholm 1 open-air museum, one of Denmark’s best-preserved coastal batteries, where 19 bunkers dot a hilly dune landscape. Many are still accessible, inviting careful exploration with a torch and a bit of imagination. What was once a bare, windswept military zone has partly rewilded into mixed forest and heath that now sits on the fringe of Thy National Park. Walking these paths, you move between skylarks and concrete cupolas, heather and gun emplacements. It is a striking combination of nature and history, where Atlantic surf, North Sea winds and silent casemates all shape the atmosphere of this remote corner of Jutland.