Struer is a station town and market town in northern West Jutland
with 10,303 inhabitants (2020), located in Struer Parish and at the
same time the capital of Struer Municipality, located in the Central
Jutland Region. Struer was previously in the county of Ringkøbing
County.
Struer is primarily known for housing the electronics
company Bang & Olufsen, which is world famous and employs approx.
one-fifth of all city dwellers. The fjord town is also known for the
Struer Museum (the house of the poet Johannes Buchholtz). It is
located on the southwest side of Venø Bay in the Limfjord and has a
marina near the city center, which is especially well visited by
tourists in the summer.
The Renaissance
Struer Huse emerged as a charging
station for Holstebro. As early as the 17th century, building timber
was brought via Aalborg from Norway and resold to the inhabitants of
Hardsyssel.
Under the dictatorship
According to
Holstebro's town bailiff's report from 1743, grain and fatty goods
were exported from Struer, most often to Aalborg, whose merchants
usually owned the small ships, this freight took place by means of.
The boats brought "Norwegian pine, tar, steel, flax, hemp, salt,
etc." home and sold it in the area. Several inhabitants of Struer
ran their own trade as commissioners for merchants in Aalborg and,
according to a county council judgment from 1735, had traded in this
way "longer than any man's memorial period". Other residents kept
inns and ran liquor stores.
Struer Huse was not a large urban
community: in 1801 there were 53 inhabitants, in 1840 there were 114
inhabitants. Until the storm surge in 1825, the Limfjord was closed
to the west, and Aalborg controlled trade. With the storm surge, a
passage was opened to the North Sea, which in the following years
grew, and in 1831 the first ship could sail through the "Agger
Canal". In 1839, sailing gained momentum after another storm had
improved sailing conditions. Thus, there was a sharp increase in the
boat trade between the Limfjord (including Struer) and Norway,
Sweden, England, Schleswig, Holstein, northern Germany and the
Netherlands. As early as 1840, 400 ships sailed through the canal,
and in 1855 the voyage peaked with 1800 ships.
In Struer's
case, it was the merchant and consul in Holstebro H.P. Rygaard, who
started the sailing. He had 12 ships sailing, owned farms, two
brickworks and timber berth. Grain was sent to Norway with wood in
return cargo and to England with coal in return cargo; from Hamburg
the ships had wine and groceries in return cargo. In 1851, 14
vessels with a total of 260 kmcl (commercial load, approx. 520 net
registered tonnes) were resident in Struer. In the same year, 152
ships from foreign ports called at Struer, of which 95 from Norway,
36 from England, 13 from Altona and 34 from Copenhagen. Shortly
afterwards, around 1860, the Agger Canal began to become true. At
the same time, "Frederik the VII's canal" was dug through Løgstør
Grunde, thus improving Aalborg's access to the western part of the
Limfjord. As a result, local shipping once again languished. In
1860, Struer had 159 inhabitants.