The man who comes to our rescue confides that his first love is concrete. It is decent of him to give us a ride. The west coast of Jutland can be famously wild and windy in winter and the road that threads its way up the narrow sand spits that define the coast is not a place to be stuck in a gale. Cue for the concrete fan, who takes pity on the wet and bedraggled by the roadside and offers us a ride to Hvide Sande. “Concrete,” he announces, “has been the basis for social progress. And, by the way, my name is Gunnar.”
The west coast of Jutland can be famously wild and windy in winter and the road that threads its way up the narrow sand spits that define the coast is not a place to be stuck in a gale.
A blast of hail temporarily obscures the road ahead, the dunes to our right and the lagoon to our left both drown to nought, while we ponder memorable concrete moments in less tempestuous times. Images of apartment blocks in gritty Parisian suburbs slip seamlessly to blurred shots of nuclear power stations and Russian sanatoria.
The half-hour drive to Hvide Sande reveals that Gunnar, social progress and concrete make a natural team. “If we don’t actively manage our coastline, we shall eventually succumb to the sea,” explains Gunnar. We have encountered similar evangelical spirit before around the eastern margins of the North Sea — in the delta Islands. But Gunnar’s words cast new light on the western coast of Denmark, where at first sight sand spits and sturdy coastal dunes seem to provide ample protection against even the fiercest onslaughts from the sea.
“Don’t be deceived,” says Gunnar, who tells of how one great storm in 1825 cut through the sand spit between Agger and Thyborøn, allowing seawater to flood into the great lagoons to the east and creating a new water route from the North Sea to the Baltic. “Well, not entirely new,” qualifies Gunnar as we aquaplane gracefully past a sign announcing our imminent arrival in Hvide Sande. “Navigable waterways separated the northernmost part of Jutland from the mainland in the mediaeval period.”
For students of the history of industrial concrete, Hvide Sande is evidently something of a Mecca.
