Nevertheless, something began to take shape. Slowly, the number of guesthouses and small hotels grew between the low houses and the sandy roads. What had previously been private homes with an extra room became proper places of accommodation. The guests came for the light, for the fresh air and for the silence – and for the feeling of having reached the very edge of the country.
As the years went by, the stays grew longer. People didn't just travel to Skagen for a few days but for weeks at a time. The days developed their own rhythms: morning walks to the beach, baths in the cold sea, strolls in the dunes, and long evenings in the company of other summer guests. Small communities emerged, recognitions from year to year, regular places at the tables, and the same faces each season. Holiday life almost became a tradition in itself.
Between the wars, Skagen truly began to gain a reputation as a fashionable holiday resort. It was a place to go to see and be seen. Ladies in light summer dresses and gentlemen with walking sticks strolled through the town, while the fishermen's boats were still hauled up onto the beach as always. Two worlds lived side-by-side – the simple and the sophisticated – and it was precisely the meeting between them that gave the place its special character.
After the Second World War, life in Denmark changed, and so did holidays. More people became entitled to holidays, more could afford to travel, and Skagen was no longer just a summer retreat for the few. Families, couples, and groups of children found their way north with suitcases and picnic baskets. Stays became shorter, but the visitors became more numerous. The atmosphere became more lively and less solemn.
In the 1960s and 70s, cars really took off. The road to Skagen no longer felt long and arduous, but open and possible. Holiday homes sprang up in the landscape, and holidays moved out among the marram grass and pine trees. Tourism spread from the hotels out into the dunes, and the town buzzed with life in a new way.
Anyway, something remained recognisable.
The light over the sea. The wind from the north. And the special calm that descends when you stand at the water's edge and look out towards the horizon, as so many before you have done.
