4.2 kmBallum Lock
A close viewpoint with a dike, stream, and the Wadden Sea landscape right next to it.
Sikringsstilling Nord is not a single monument, but a series of traces through Southern Jutland: bunkers, batteries, trench remains and places where the terrain itself became part of the defence. The line ran from the area around Hoptrup and Diernæs in the east to the Skærbæk/Rømø area in the west, and the experience lies precisely in following these fragments across fields, plantations and hills.
In some places you encounter concrete rooms; elsewhere, the traces in the landscape are more discreet. The defensive line included barbed wire, trenches, batteries, flood-control installations and military railways. At Andholm Battery, for example, you can see three almost intact bunkers and the opening where a railway-mounted gun was to be installed.
The fact that a German defensive line is located in Denmark is connected to Southern Jutland’s particular history: the area was German during the First World War and became Danish again after 1920. Sikringsstilling Nord never saw combat, but it was built in response to fears of a British attack from the north. Today, several installations are accessible via marked paths; many are on or close to private land, so the blue signs on red posts are more than just signposts.
Bunker 498 at Kalby was a troop room with a machine gun embrasure in the Northern Defence Line. The rectangular concrete bunker is built into the terrain, so especially the front part is visible, and it was measured at 8.75 metres in length.
Inside, the living area was only 4 x 2 metres with 1.8 metres to the ceiling. The structure had two narrow entrances, a periscope opening in the ceiling and a niche for a machine gun with mounting. Six soldiers were assigned to the bunker; a compact room for a demanding task.
At Kalby lies an underground concrete bunker from the Northern Defensive Line, designed for a half platoon of 36 men. The front section has been exposed, while the rest is still embedded in the plantation soil.
Inside the low room, small wall niches for the soldiers' belongings and iron hooks for hammocks can be seen. The two periscope openings in the ceiling and the external openings for an infantry parapet show that the bunker served both as shelter, living quarters, and part of the combat position in the trench line.
In the cemetery by Arrild Church stand 16 identical, grey cement crosses over military prisoner-of-war graves from the First World War. The inscriptions are difficult to read, and the grave site is protected.
Three of the prisoners came from a camp about 200 metres south of the church, the rest from Øberg 2.5 kilometres to the southwest. The prisoners were soldiers from the German army’s own ranks and were put to the heavy construction work on the Northern Defensive Position.
The section bunker in Arrild is called “Elfriede” – an unusual personal trace in the North Defense Line. The name is carved into the middle of the bunker, and the year 1917 is marked above both entrances.
The building has two entrances, four window niches with bars, and eyelets by the doors so they could be barred from the outside. Its function is not known for certain; during peaceful periods it may have served as a storage bunker and, in times of combat, as a troop bunker. Footprints from hobnailed soldiers’ boots are still preserved in the floor.
Near Arrild Holiday Village lies bunker no. 364 from the Northern Defence Line. It was a flanking bunker, designed to fire at an attacker from the side, and could be fitted with a machine gun.
What is special is still visible in the concrete: the heavy iron door into the weapon room, the firing slit facing the terrain, and a separate troop room with its own entrance. A compact installation built for a defensive line that never saw combat.
Gammelskov Battery was located in Gammelskov Krat northeast of Agerskov and was the largest of the Northern Fortification Line’s heavy batteries. Here stood two 24 cm naval guns in an almost 250-meter-long battery trench – a set-back installation with unusually heavy firepower.
The battery was cast in the winter of 1917 and demolished after the Reunification; the Grænseforeningen gives the year as 1923. The ruins were not removed, and traces of troop bunkers and an ammunition magazine may still be visible in the terrain. The site has been protected since 1980.
South of Løgumkloster lies the prisoner-of-war cemetery from the German camp during the First World War. Here, 71 French, Belgian, and Russian prisoners died during a typhoid epidemic in 1915.
The graves are marked with identical grey concrete crosses, and the monument bears inscriptions in Danish, French, and Russian. The surviving prisoners erected the first memorial; the present granite monument dates from 1923, the same year the cemetery was enclosed by a fence.
Toftlund flanking bunker is one of two intact bunkers in the area from the Northern Defence Line. It was built for combat from inside the bunker itself: the machine gun fired through the firing slit, unlike the more common machine-gun bunkers, where the crew fought from positions outside.
The bunker is described as exceptionally well preserved. Here, details such as the periscopes and the cast-in railway tracks in the ceiling give a concrete impression of how enclosed, practical, and heavily built the structure was.
