The Seaside Painters

Tuesday, August 18, 2026

Skagen, Denmark, is another small resort town that is just as scenic and interesting as Visby, Sweden. (The “g” is silent, so it is pronounced halfway between “Skay-en” and “Skayn.”

Skagen is the northernmost town in Denmark, on the tip of the Jutland Peninsula. The population is about 7,250, though the population was twice that in 1980. Skagen is the setting for the PBS series, “The Seaside Hotel,” yet the name of the town doesn’t come up in the series (or if it did, I missed it because I didn’t know how to pronounce it when I saw the series). The building portrayed as the hotel in the series does not actually exist, according to our guide. The series, set in the period from 1928 to1947, is about some upper middle class families who come to Skagen from Copenhagen every summer, and some of the Skagen locals who are associated with the hotel. 

Our tour today was called “Skagen on Foot” and our guide, Ann, was wonderful. But Skagen was the star of the show. I hesitate to say “charming” once again but Skagen really shines when it comes to “charming” and “interesting.” This small town, first settled in the 12th century, has many noteworthy features. It is an important commercial fishing port (herring). The surrounding waters, where the North and Baltic Seas meet, have become the site of an extraordinary number of shipwrecks. Skagen is home to a migrating sand dune. It is also a temporary home to large numbers of migrating birds, and birders are drawn to the lovely coastline here for excellent birdwatching. The king and queen of Denmark loved Skagen so much in the 1910’s that they built a summer residence there. (Today the royal villa is a retreat for scholars.) And Skagen has such extraordinary light that it became the home of a group of impressionist artists known as the Skagen Painters. 

These buildings by the water are used by fisherman to store their gear

Dozens of huge tankers and other vessels anchor offshore here while they await their next job

The Royal Villa

Wild roses are invasive here, but they help to anchor the sand dunes so they are welcome along certain parts of the beach

Black Houses

The oldest houses in Skagen are black. That is because they were made from driftwood and salvaged wood and then covered with tar so they wouldn't deteriorate. Nowadays, I think they just paint them black, but the tradition of the black exterior is maintained.

Sones with holes in them, nown as hag stones or witch stones, can be found on the beach around Skagen. Some people coolect them.

This thatched-roof house is part of the Kystmuseet, or Museum of Local History. It would have been the house of a prosperous fisherman.

This is an example of the house of a poor fisherman

Black houses in a neighborhood

Yellow Houses

The yellow houses signify a more prosperous period in Skagen’s history, when people could afford paint. Our guide said the only store in town only sold yellow paint, because that is what the shopkeeper ordered. (I don’t know if that’s true.) Today, that color is known as “Skagen yellow.” Most of these houses have white trim and red tile roofs, which go very nicely with the yellow.

The crossed flags indicate a lifeboatman lives here (or stores things here)

Red Houses

The newest houses are red and made of brick. The townspeople started using bricks when ships started using bricks (which they could sell) as ballast. There are also some buildings with red paint, but I don’t know if there is a story that goes with them.

Not brick, and not a house, but a warehouse. I thought I would put it with the red houses.

Did you notice how small these red houses are, and how similar they look?

Village Life in the Old Days

In the Museum of Local History we saw what everyday life was like for the families of the fishermen and lifeboatmen.

The wives of the fishermen used to come to this windmill to gossip

Inside the house of a prosperous fisherman

The Lifeboatmen

This is one of the lifeboats they used to use to rescue people from shipwrecks. It took eight men to row it.

A portion of map showing shipwrecks off the coast near Skagen between 1858 and 1882. The black circles represent wrecks; the white circles represent ships which ran aground.

In 1852, the North Jutland Rescue Service was established to rescue people from stranded or sinking ships close to shore. There were 19 rescue stations along the coast. Each station had a permanent team, usually local fishermen. The work was dangerous and difficult, but was considered an honor. The men received extensive training. Some rescue missions lasted for days. When conditions did not permit a boat to row out to a ship in trouble, the lifeboatmen would use rockets to shoot a rope or cable out to the ship, and after the line was secured, a bosun’s chair would be used to carry people off the ship, one at a time. To find out more about the rescue service, click here.

Some times an old boat would be turned upside down and used as a roof for a storage hut.

The Skagen Painters

We saw the houses where some of the Skagen Painters lived, and one of the hotels where they used to eat, drink, and display some of their paintings. I have included a few of their paintings below. The paintings are all in the public domain and can be found on the internet.

The Lifeboat Is Taken through the Dunes, by Michael Ancher, 1883

Launching the Boat, by Oscar Björck, 1885

Sunlight in the Blue Room, by Anna Ancher, 1891

Summer Evening on Skagen’s Southern Beach, by Peder Severin Krøyer, 1893

The narrow streets are lined with enchanting yellow cottages with red tiled roofs. Everything is neat and tidy. The beaches are clean and empty. A delightful place, indeed!

Today’s fabric is a sampler. A sampler is a piece of fabric used to practice embroidery or to show off different stitches. This antique sampler is from the Kystmuseet in Skagen. If you look closely, you can spot two of the three extra letters (æ, ø, and å) in the Danish alphabet as they must have looked in 1849.