Holiday homes in North Jutland

The "Summer resident culture" of Denmark started in the 18th century when the townsfolk fled the cities to relax and enjoy a simpler life in the countryside. Many of the huge villas in the northern part of Copenhagen were originally built as so called country houses for the bourgeoisie.

First in the end of the 19th-century, holiday homes as we know them today started to get built. Artists "occupied" the beaches and the significant light near Skagen and Hornbæk in North Sjælland in the first place but soon the bourgeoisie followed them. In the beginning they rented rooms in locals homes but it did not take long before people sought to own their own plot of land and in the 1890s the first real summer house land has been marked out. 

Hornbæk became fast too "civilized" for people who sought wild and raw nature so that the lands of summer houses expanded to Tisvilde and Tisvilde Bakker to the coast of Odsherreds. In Jutland it was the wild nature of the west coast that attracted people. Firstly Skagen, but also Løkken, Blokhus, Lønstrup and many of the other known coast towns along the west coast belong to the oldest area with summer houses in Denmark.

With the railways and the ship traffic in the beginning of the 20th century, it became easier for townsfolk to reach the countryside, which was part of the reason why so many holiday homes were built in this time, for instance along the coast and the islands of Rømø, Fanø, Samsø, Læsø, Anholt or Bornholm.

In the beginning of the 20th century holidays were reserved for only a few persons but this changed slowly between the 1920s and 30s and after the Danish Holiday Act in 1938 everyone had the right to have two weeks of payed holiday. That created extra interest in new and cheap summer houses. Many of these houses were only simple weekend-cabins built of the available material - or they just put an old railway waggon on their plot of land, which was often in a short and cycle convenient distance to the city. Many people from Copenhagen settled down along Køge Bay, people from Odense searched next to Kerteminde and citizens from Århus sought out to Ebeltoft and Grenaa.

With growing prosperity in the end of the 1950s it got serious in constructing summer houses and most of the 200.000 summer houses in Denmark have been built in the 60s and 70s.

Because of the flourishing holiday home industry, it was in 1977 decided to make a "no-built" zone along the coast and rules for how close to the coast it is allowed to erect buildings. This respect for nature has already been considered by the architect Ejnar Dyggve in 1916 as he made a development plan for the area around Lange Travs in Tibirke Bakke, so that the beautiful nature was not destroyed by the intensive construction of summer houses.

The development plan says that only one house can be built for every barrel of land, that the houses should be placed in the valley lows, have a roof made by straw and the building should fit the local building traditions. Nowadays this region is one of Denmarks most beautiful summer house areas.

Some of the well-known architects of Denmark have also left their mark on the construction of the summer houses. Poul Henningsen drew a standard house for the standard house company Myresjö - one well preserved copy can for instance be seen in Gammel Skagen. In Tilsvide it is possible to see a house which was drawn by Arne Jacobsen and also the architects Martin Nyrup and Wilhelm Wohlert designed summer houses.