Forgotten city of Nakskov

At the western end of Lolland you find the small town of Nakskov – it used to be a fairly important industrial city a century ago with one of the biggest shipyards in Denmark own by what used to be the most important company in Denmark the East Asian Company. They were a trading company doing business in the Far East mainly Thailand and they needed big ships to transport the goods to and from Europe.

Unfortunately the trading company went downhill as time went by so did the Danish ship building industry and most of the ship yards were quickly closed down in the 1980s. In 1987 the shipyard was finally shot down and the city had a rapid rise in unemployment. For a while there was a new business in town in the form of production of windmills on the lands of the old shipyard. Unfortunately the production shot down in 2011.

The decline in the local industry has led the city into decline as well. The city is one of the places which are at the furthest distance from one of the bigger cities. It is two hours’ drive to Copenhagen from here. Hence the possibility of employment here is diminishing and people have been leaving the city and the island of Lolland for decades. Therefore the city is a bit of a dead town even as the main town of the island of Lolland.

There is one industry still taking place in the area. Production of sugar based on sugar beets which is grown locally and too heavy to transport over large distances so the production has never left Lolland area. To commemorate the large importance of sugar production on Lolland there is actually a sugar museum in the city – which unfortunately was temporarily closed during our visit so we could go and see what it was about.

We had to limit ourselves to have a quick look at the center of the city which was a nice little center with some old buildings from the heyday of the city.