Mariager is a small town and market town with 2,537 inhabitants
(2020), located on the southern side of Mariager Fjord in
Kronjylland. The name means "Mary's Fields" (after the Virgin Mary
who named a Bridgettine monastery on the site). The town grew up
around this Mariager Monastery in the early 15th century and gained
market town rights in 1592. Today, Mariager is characterized by an
old urban environment with cobbled streets and many half-timbered
houses, which attract tourists from near and far. Mariager is
located in Mariagerfjord Municipality and belongs to the North
Jutland Region.
The market town is located in hilly terrain
sloping down towards the fjord, and is surrounded by many wooded
hills, among others. the 110 meter high Hohøj southeast of Mariager
itself. The town has a small harbor with pleasure boats and for
tourists the scheduled boat Svanen, which in the summer sails from
Hobro via Mariager, Hadsund to the mouth of Mariager Fjord. At the
harbor there is also a protected swing crane and Denmark's Salt
Center, which is a museum for salt extraction, in which you can
visit a salt mine and a bathing salt lake with the nickname The Dead
Sea.
From the harbor, a veteran railway goes to the small
town of Handest 17 kilometers to the west, whose train operation is
strongly inspired by the railway traffic between the two towns from
1927 to 1950. Mariager's landmark is the monastery church, Mariager
Kirke (from the 15th century), which with its high whitewashed
building rises on a hillside high above the city roofs. Mariager
also has two Christian continuation schools, Frydensberg and
Mariager Continuation School, and a folk high school.
The town may have originally been a village and ferry point at
Mariager Fjord, which may have belonged to Glenstrup Monastery and
later, after this was abolished, passed to Mariager Monastery, but
nothing is known about the town before the establishment of this
monastery, indeed it is even mentioned first in 1434, when Hans
Valtersen deeded his farm there to the monastery. If not its origin, it
owes its growth to the monastery, in any case, especially after it had
received a charter on a free port by the fjord, when traders and
craftsmen settled in the vicinity of the monastery and shipping
eventually became the small town's main business, even if it was only
small ships that could navigate the fjord.
In 1446, the monks
received the Pope's final approval for monastery operations on the site.
Gradually, merchants, innkeepers and craftsmen flocked in, just as
wealthy nobles began to buy small burial chapels from the monastery in
memory of themselves when they died. The city's boom continued until the
Reformation in 1536, when the monastery's administration was suddenly
placed under the authority of the king, who gradually reduced its
influence.
In 1457 the town had a town council, and in 1486 both
a town clerk and a town clerk are mentioned.
In the Middle Ages,
the town had a hospital for the poor (first mentioned in a royal letter
from 1490), later called "Kærlingegaarden" or "Hr. Erik Ottesen's poor
people's farm" (Erik Ottesen Rosenkrantz gave property to the hospital
in 1496 and 1503). In Catholic times it was probably attached to the
monastery, after the Reformation it was under the sheriffs. It was last
mentioned in 1650. It is not known where it has been.
In 1536, the city was listed among the country's market towns that
sent emissaries to Copenhagen, and in the following years there are
several examples of something similar. Moreover, it continued to be
dependent on the monastery for a long time, to which, in addition to
land debt and grain tax, it had to pay tribute until 1631 or 1634.
Moreover, the town had from ancient times its own church, Skt. Peder's
Church, which was probably the parish church for the original village
and was located roughly on the corner of Teglgades Bakke and Kirkegade.
It may have been demolished after the monastery church had become a
parish church; still in Resen's time (1677) the tower in which the
town's storm bell hung was still standing, but in 1729 it had
disappeared.
Of particular importance to the city was the export
from the surrounding brickworks and lime kilns, which was quite
significant at the beginning of modern times. Christian III had large
shiploads of lime brought to Kolding and other places, Frederik II and
Christian IV to Kronborg, Frederiksborg and Copenhagen, yes there was
even export to Germany. People who sought the monastery were also drawn
to the city; thus certain nobles are known to have had farms in the
city. However, it probably only got market town privileges by letter of
23 May 1592, which gave the inhabitants the right to use such trade and
bourgeois food and market town freedom as other market towns in the
kingdom enjoyed, especially the same privileges as Hobro. Until 1592,
the town probably assumed a position roughly like a patch, although it
has often been treated as a market town.
However, it did not
become a major city, and its decline began early on, probably even
before it became a market town, which was partly due to the closure of
the monastery as a welfare institution for noble women, as the noble
families soon moved away from the town, partly a a couple of big fires,
on 22 June 1573 and in 1583, partly because the lime burning gradually
subsided, as the surrounding forests were destroyed by the ruthless
consumption of fuel. After the fire in 1583, hardly half of the burnt
houses must have been rebuilt, and the grounds were laid out for
gardens, fields and meadows. It has also been damaged by the fact that
the road between Randers and Aalborg, which from ancient times passed
over Mariager and made the town the most important ferry point across
the fjord, was diverted across Hadsund, probably in the first half of
the 17th century. In the 17th century, new misfortunes befell the small
town. During the wars it was occupied by enemies, thus 1627-29 by the
imperials. On 28 October 1629, the king gave a number of fire victims
freedom from taxes and encumbrances, and this was repeated in 1636 for
new fire victims.
After the War of 1657-60, in which Mariager undoubtedly suffered a
lot, many moved away from the town.
The city's authority was a
mayor and 5 councillors. By regulation of 28 January 1682, the latter's
number was reduced to 2, by rescript of 13 October 1682 even to only one
town clerk. It wasn't until 1868 that Mariager got a mayor and council
again.
In 1672 there were 370 inhabitants. In 1680, the citizens
stated in an application to the king that 16 farms and 43 houses had
burned in the last year, and that a total of 123 properties were
destroyed or uninhabited. In the following years, almost all business
had ceased, partly because the customs office had been moved to Hadsund
in 1680, and poverty was exceedingly great. After another fire in 1687,
the king gave the city freedom from taxes for 10 years. The city
suffered again in the Great Nordic War. In 1732, 1764 and 1 December
1775 there were new fires; in addition, there were devastating cattle
diseases (148 cattle died in 1746-47). In 1769 the town had 402
inhabitants, in 1787 393 inhabitants. In 1775 it had only one ship.
A Latin school founded by Christian III was abolished in 1739.
In the 1720s, large parts of the monastery were demolished and
Mariager gradually stagnated, so that in 1801 it had only 414
inhabitants. However, it still served as a kind of harbor for the
cathedral city of Viborg. Agriculture and fishing were very vital
occupations for the small fjord town.
In 1808, a detachment of
Spanish troops was quartered in Mariager.
It was not until the
19th century that the city began to gain some strength and has taken
part in the country's general rise, although it continued to occupy a
modest place among the country's market towns, not least because Hobro
and Hadsund were its competitors.
In 1864, the city was for a
time occupied by the Prussians.
Mariager's population only slightly increased in the late 1800s and
early 1900s: 546 in 1850, 578 in 1855, 680 in 1860, 727 in 1870, 746 in
1880, 761 in 1890, 914 in 1901, 943 in 1906 and 968 in 1911.
The
economic composition of the population was in 1890: 122 lived from
non-material activities, 90 from agriculture, 11 from horticulture, 26
from fishing, 3 from shipping, 249 from crafts and industry, 147 from
trade and turnover, 37 from various day laborers, 29 from their funds,
35 enjoyed alms, and 12 were in prison. According to a census in 1906,
the number of inhabitants was 943, of which 96 supported themselves by
non-material activities, 111 by agriculture, forestry and dairying, 85
by fishing, 319 by crafts and industry, 128 by trade and more, 99 by
transport, 39 were hawkers, 38 lived on public support and 28 on other
or unspecified business.
Of factories and industrial facilities,
the town had around the turn of the century 1 cooperative dairy, 1 white
beer brewery and 1 soda factory; in the vicinity were several brick
kilns in addition to the cement factories "Cimbria" and "Dania".
In Mariager, 4 markets were held annually: 1 in February and 1 in July
with cattle, 1 in October and 1 in November with cattle and sheep.
Torvedag was every 1st and 3rd Thursday of every month with cattle.
In 1904, the bridge over the fjord at Hadsund was put into use, and
development in Mariager was now very slow due to Hadsund's flourishing
as a trading town. Mariager now had approx. 900 inhabitants. It was not
until 1927 that the railway came to the old market town, and in the
nearby town of Assens, a cement factory, Dania, was built, specializing
in the extraction of lime from the underground. In addition, Mariager
did not notice much about the industrialization that was sweeping over
most of Denmark at this time like a wave. Instead came i.a.
Pinseväkkelsens Højskole and Mariager Efterskolen - PVE
(Pintseväkkelsens Efterskole) to the city, and in 1940 they founded
Sødisbakke, an institution for the physically and mentally disabled. The
cement factory Dania ceased production in 1975, and the largest
workplaces in the Mariager area are therefore Akzo Nobel Salt A/S, DISA
Danmark and Urtekram A/S, the latter of which is Denmark's oldest
organic company. Today, however, tourism is considered to be Mariager's
most central source of income. In 2013, Mariagerfjord Municipality with
Mariager town was certified as a Cittaslow town.
The interwar
period
During the interwar period, Mariager's population was slightly
increasing: in 1916 1,025, in 1921 1,034, in 1925 1,132, in 1930 1,134,
in 1935 1,097, in 1940 1,283 inhabitants. No suburban development
occurred.
At the census in 1930, Mariager had 1,134 inhabitants,
of which 70 supported themselves by non-material activities, 416 by
craft and industry, 165 by trade etc., 136 by transport, 135 by
agriculture, forestry and fishing, 88 by housework, 119 were out of
business and 5 had not stated the source of income.
The post-war
period
After World War II, Mariager continued its population
development. In 1945 there were 1,383 inhabitants in the market town, in
1950 1,398 inhabitants, in 1955 1,403 inhabitants, in 1960 1,483
inhabitants and in 1965 9,057 inhabitants. Gradually, the suburb
Mariagerkloster Jorder in Mariager Landsogn emerged.
In 2014-15,
Mariager received a lot of publicity because a lesbian couple and their
children were harassed for several months. One person was arrested and
charged with three counts of vandalism, but this did not stop the
harassment. The couple decided to vacate the city. A group of the city's
citizens distanced themselves from the harassment, and organized, among
other things, a demonstration against the harassment of the couple and
supported the family on their Facebook page. It was followed by a
demonstration on 16.11.2014 with support from many different groups and
citizens for diversity and tolerance and against all forms of hate
crimes. In June 2015, the charge was dropped as the police did not find
that the technical evidence in the case was strong enough, and the case
is thus unsolved.
In May 2015, Mariager was named one of the 10
most beautiful cities in Denmark by culturetrip.com. In December 2015,
Skyscanner named Mariager as one of Denmark's 12 unique small towns with
personality.