Ferring, Denmark

A church at the edge of the sea

Ferring Kirke stands only a few hundred meters from the North Sea. Its choir and nave were finished around 1200, the choir built of cut granite blocks and the nave of rough fieldstone, with a lead roof. A tower was added in the late Middle Ages, and because of its exposed position it has needed repair again and again. Like other churches along this coast, its tower gables face north and south, a local custom said to let the westerly wind slip over the roof.

Inside are old wall paintings from about 1200 showing scenes from the life of Christ, which have been compared to English book illustration of the time, a reminder of how close this coast was to England by sea. The church also has a Romanesque granite font, a Madonna from around 1400, an altarpiece from 1638 and a pulpit from 1640. No trees will grow in the windswept churchyard, so many graves are fenced with low white pickets to shelter them from the west wind. This is the church where a child born in the parish in 1859, as Karen Marie Pedersen was, would have been baptized.

Bovbjerg and its lighthouse

Just south of the village rises Bovbjerg, a hill up to 41 meters high that runs for about 5 kilometers along the shore. On the sea side the waves, helped by groundwater seeping out of the hill, have carved it into a steep cliff. On its highest point stands Bovbjerg Fyr, a 26-meter tower first lit on December 30, 1877. It was the first lighthouse on the west coast south of Hanstholm, and it was painted deep red so sailors would not mistake it for the white church towers of Ferring and nearby Trans.

The light was electrified in 1904 and automated in 1965, and it still works today. The old keepers' houses now serve as a cultural center with a café and exhibitions, and visitors can climb the tower.

Holding back the North Sea

This stretch of coast has been losing ground to the sea for as long as anyone remembers. Without protection, engineers estimate parts of the west coast would retreat by one to several meters a year. The fight began at Ferring. In 1875 the first groyne, a stone barrier running out into the surf, was built just south of Ferring Sø, the lake behind the village, under the engineer C. F. Grove. By 1883 eleven groynes protected the shore there, and from 1909 new ones were added southward toward Fjaltring. Since the 1980s large amounts of sand have also been pumped onto the beaches each year. Some old red wooden buildings of the state's coastal works still stand in Ferring, and one now holds the small Bovbjerg museum.

For the families who farmed and fished here in the 1800s, the sea was both a living and a threat. Storms took land, boats and lives, and the soil behind the dunes was thin and sandy. It is easy to see why some young people from parishes like this one looked across the ocean for a better chance.

A painter's coast

The rough beauty of Bovbjerg has drawn artists for a century. The best known is Jens Søndergaard (1895-1957), one of the leading Danish painters of his time, who grew up in Thy just to the north. In 1930 he bought a small wooden house on the slope above the sea at Ferring and used it as a summer home and studio, painting the cliffs, dunes and North Sea in strong colors and bold, rounded shapes. The house opened as a museum in 1958, the year after his death, and since 1997 it has been part of Lemvig Museum. The painter Kristen Bjerre, who died in 1943, is buried in Ferring churchyard.