Skjern is a station town and former market town in West Jutland
with 7,843 inhabitants (2020), located 5 km north of Tarm, 43 km
southwest of Herning and 26 km southeast of Ringkøbing. Skjern
belongs to Ringkøbing-Skjern Municipality and is located in the
Central Jutland Region. Skjern is the second largest city in the
municipality, surpassed only by Ringkøbing.
Skjern belongs to
Skjern Parish, and Skjern Church is located in the city. For a short
period around 1940, Skern was the common spelling.
The city is located north of Skjern Å, Denmark's
richest river. It forms Denmark's only river delta at its outlet in
Ringkøbing Fjord 7 km west of Skjern. In Skjern Enge there are over
20 km of hiking trails and several bird towers. The river's two
courses can be crossed with self-service tow ferries.
Two
sculptures by Piet Hein are set up in Skjern. At the roundabout
Holstebrovej / Ringkøbingvej / Ringvejen is "Kysset" worth DKK
500,000. It was erected on 16 December 2005. And at the roundabout
Arnborgvej / Østergade / Ringvejen you can see the over 4 m high
superellipse "The Egg", which is erected December 3, 1999. It is
made of silver-bronzed fiberglass and cost approx. 400,000 kr.
A sculpture by Holger Danske, which has previously stood in
front of Hotel Marienlyst in Elsinore, came to Skjern on 2 May 2013.
At the initiative of real estate agent Jørgen Axelsen, a number of
Skjern citizens had bought it at auction for DKK 3.2 million. It was
placed on Mølletorvet, which is now called Holger Danskes Plads.
13 km northwest of Skjern is Stauning Airport, which houses the
Danish Aviation Museum.
The church school has grades 0-9. grade levels in 2-3 tracks.
Amagerskolen has 412 students, also in grades 0-9. grade. Skjern Kristne
Friskole, which started in the closed Lyager school in 1974 and moved to
the current address 2 years later, has 397 students, also in grades 0-9.
grade. The Solsikken kindergarten is directly opposite. Skjernåskolen is
a special school with 101 students and a class quotient of 4-8 as well
as a special kindergarten with 16 children.
At the Skolebyen
street there is a technical school, HTX, VUC and the Danish Design and
Handcraft Afterschool.
Skjern Bank is based in Skjern and has
given its name to Skjern Bank Arena in Skjern Kulturcenter.
The Middle Ages
According to legend, it was in the ford above
Skjern Å that King Hans' horse crashed at the beginning of 1513. The
king died on 20 February, most likely from pneumonia, which he got from
the cold water.
The station town
In 1875, Skjern got a station
on the West Jutland long line between Esbjerg and Struer. And Skjern
Station became a railway hub in 1881 with the opening of the
Herning-Skjern Railway, which connected Silkeborg, Skanderborg and
Aarhus.
The station town grew rapidly. In 1879 it is described as
follows: "Skjern Church, Skjern Prestegaard and School; some farms and
houses, which are called Skjernby, with Thinghuus, railway station and
inn by Landeveien, election site for the county's 5th Folketingskreds, 3
merchants run Landhandel".
In 1904, the town was described as
follows: "Skjern (1340: Skyerne), by the Landevejen, a rapidly growing
station town — 1/2 1901 with Engsig, Gde. and houses, 159 houses and
1122 Inhab. —, with Church, Præstegd., 2 Schools, Mission House (built
in 1888) and two Bornholm Mission Houses, Court and Arrest House — built
in 1884 of red brick in two storeys (Archit.: Weber), with detention
center housing and space for 14 detainees; it is owned by the county
municipality —, Sparekasse (established 1875...Number of Accounts 1549),
Doctor and Veterinarian, Electricity Works (opened 1903), Cooperative
Dairy, Steam Bakery, Tannery, Tannery, Bone Mill, Woolen Spinnery,
Sawmill, Iron Foundry and Machine Factory, several Merchants' Halls and
other Trade Establishments, Craftsmen, etc. ., Højskoleforeningbygn., 2
Hotels and Mission home, Railway station (Station on the West Jutland
Längdebanen and Terminal for the Skanderborg-Skjern Line, see p. 93),
Telegraph and Telephone exchange, Post office (The post house was built
in 1886), Market place (Market in Feb., March and Aug.), Polling place
for the county's 6th Folketingskr. and Session place for the 5th
Udskrivningskr.' Lays 1-4 and 6-21".
According to the census in
1930, of Skjern's 2,985 inhabitants, 94 lived from agriculture, 1,146
from industry, 424 from trade, 496 from transport, 164 from intangible
business, 298 from housework, 334 were out of business and 29 had not
given information.
1920-81 Skjern also had a rail connection with
Videbæk, but from 1955 only with freight traffic. The rails of the
Skjern-Videbæk line still lie on a large part of the section and can,
among other things, can be seen on the station grounds in Skjern. The
route of the track has been preserved as a gravel path in the western
part of the city from the Aldis parking lot at Bredgade to Ringvejen. At
the far end of the industrial quarter north of the city, the tracks
reappear north of the lake west of Støberivej. From Herborg you can ride
12½ km on a rail bike here.
Reunion Stone
Behind the
playground where St. Nørgårdsvej opens into Fredensgade, there is a
stone that was unveiled on 9 July 1921 to commemorate the Reunification
in 1920. In addition, Skjern has been given a reunion stone, which was
erected in 1921 at Slumstrupvej 5 on Faster Mark in Faster Parish. In
2019, it was moved to Birkallé 16 in Skjern.
The municipal
reforms
Skjern became Denmark's youngest market town in 1958, but the
concept of market town was abolished in the municipal reform in 1970.
Here Skjern became the capital of Skjern Municipality, which included
the parishes of Bølling, Dejbjerg, Faster, Hanning, Skjern, Stauning,
Sædding and Sønder Borris.
The neighboring municipalities were
Aaskov Municipality to the east, Videbæk Municipality and Ringkøbing
Municipality to the north and Egvad Municipality (Tarm) to the south.
There was a small municipal merger with Tarm in 2006, but in the
structural reform in 2007 all 5 municipalities were included in the new
Ringkøbing-Skjern Municipality.
The municipal reform also brought
about a merger of Ringkøbing Museum, which was established in 1908, and
Skjern-Egvad Museum, which started as Skjern Museum in 1929 and merged
with Egvad Museum in the 1970s. Ringkøbing-Skjern Museum now has 14
visitor locations.
Christian Christensen Grene's father ran a business on Jernbanegade
in Skjern, where he sold wooden goods for agriculture, from around 1900
also mowing machines. The young man was educated at the Merchant School
in Copenhagen and returned home to help in his father's business. He
immediately saw that the spare parts for the imported mowers were very
expensive, and in 1915 founded his own company to manufacture or import
spare parts, eventually also for all other types of agricultural
machinery.
When Christian Grene died in 1959, the company was
taken on by his nephew Poul Grene, who in 1950 had returned home from a
4-year educational stay abroad and had added many new activities to the
company, including spare parts for tractors. In the 1960s, hydraulics
gained traction in agriculture, and here the activities took on such an
extent that it was decided to place the hydraulic parts in the
independent company Hydra-Grene, which was established in 1974.
In 1988, when Poul Grene was 63 years old and none of his 3 children
wanted to take over the companies, he sold them to the industrial
conglomerate Schouw & Co. in Aarhus. The two companies are still located
side by side in Skjern. In 2013, Grene was merged with the larger Dutch
company Kramp, which Schouw & Co. came to own 20% of. At the end of
2016, Schouw & Co. sold the shares in Kramp with a good profit.
Hydra-Grene, which now also makes hydraulics for industry, wind and
offshore, bought the Swedish competitor Specma in 2015 and in 2016
received the Danish Export Association's "Danish Exporter of the Year"
award.
Other companies in Skjern include the iron foundry
Ferrodan and Skjern Papirfabrik (close to the river). Velux and Vestas
also have branches in the city's industrial districts.
Skjern Handball's men's team plays in the country's best division,
the handball league. Skjern won the league in 1998-99, the season after
the team was promoted. It is the only Danish team that has achieved
this.
From this club, i.a. the players Lars Møller Madsen and
Jesper Jensen (WC 2007) as well as Kasper Søndergaard (EC 2012 and
Olympics 2016) have been on a medal-winning national team.
Since
2006, the Skjern Å Running Challenge has been held with a full and half
marathon and two shorter distances, which all start in Tarm, pass Kong
Hans Bro and end in Skjern.
Piet Hein (1905-96), had a design studio in Skjern, where many of his
well-known designs saw the light of day
Peter A. G. Nielsen (1952-),
lead singer in Gnags
Elisabeth Gjerluff Nielsen (1957-2022), singer
and sister of Peter A.G. Nielsen
Thomas Svaneborg (1966-), journalist
Kristian Gjessing (1978-), handball player
Trine Troelsen (1985-),
handball player
Anders Agger (1964-), journalist
Mathias Gidsel
(1999-), handball player