Tonder

Tonder received its charter in 1243 and grew on cattle trade and on lace: from the seventeenth century the town and the surrounding marsh villages produced bobbin lace in large quantity, worked by thousands of women in their homes and sold across northern Europe, a trade that collapsed with machine production in the nineteenth century and which the town museum documents in detail. The old streets keep gabled merchant houses with elaborate doorways, some with the projecting bay windows of the marsh style. The museum occupies the gatehouse of the vanished castle and includes a substantial collection of Danish modern art and furniture in a water tower alongside, with sixteen Hans Wegner chairs displayed on its floors. A large folk and blues festival fills the town in August.

History

Tønder may first be mentioned in the mid-12th century by the Arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi, whose Tu(r)ndira could refer to it or to nearby Møgeltønder, and it received port privileges in 1243, which makes it Denmark's oldest privileged market town. Severe floods in 1532 left water 1.8 m deep in St Laurent's church, and in the 1550s dykes built west of the town by Duke Hans the Elder cut its port off from the sea. The town centre is dominated by houses of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, when Tønder grew fast on its lace industry, and its teacher training college, founded in 1788 and the oldest in Scandinavia, closed in 1989 (Wikipedia, Tønder).

The main sights

• Gabled merchant houses - carved doorways and marsh-style bay windows.
• The lace collection - the trade thousands of women worked at.
• The Wegner chairs in the water tower - a floor-by-floor design display.
• The castle gatehouse - all that remains of the fortress, now the museum.

When to go

May to September for the town; the festival in late August fills it completely and accommodation is impossible then. Half a day. Museums close on Mondays outside high season.

Things to know

The town is quiet to the point of sleepy outside the festival. Museum labelling is largely in Danish and German. Much of the old fabric has been altered at ground floor level for shops. The festival weekend is not the time for a normal visit.

Nearby

Mogeltonder is west; the Wadden Sea coast and the Sort Sol marshes lie north-west.

Key facts