Hjørring is a market town (‘købing’ in Danish) – and has a market town spirit. It is a type of market town which in Danish is called an ‘axelkøbing’, i.e. a town approachable by land only, as opposed to a ’strandkøbing’, a town which you can approach by sea – even from foreign and exotic places. Hjørring is a landlocked town which has always been closely connected with and dependent on its surrounding area. For centuries Hjørring has been a commercial, service and administrative centre, and it still is to this day.

Emergence of the town
Hjørring was founded on a hilly deposit of rocks, gravel, sand and clay compressed by the movement of the ice sheet during the last Ice Age. Archaeological finds have determined that this hill was inhabited as early as 10,000 years ago. The earliest preludes to a settlement occurred at the intersection of three roads, and the place name suffix ‘-ing’ indicates that the settlement existed already in ancient times. The Latin name for Hjørring, Heringa, has been found on a coin minted in Hjørring around 1150.

By the early Middle Ages Hjørring had grown into a proper town with stalls, workshops and farms surrounding a market place. The churches of Sct Olai, Sct Hans and Sct Catharina were built in the 12th and 13th centuries; these three churches are all that remains of Medieval Hjørring. From very early on the town was a venue for legal judgments. Property and inheritance cases were decided at Sysseltinget, and the Catholic Church held ‘landemode’, a court where ecclesiastical cases were decided. In 1243, the citizens of Hjørring were granted a number of legal and commercials privileges in order to aid the development of what was then a poor and small town.

The writer Knuth Becker (1891-1974) was born and raised in Hjørring. On the occasion of Hjørring’s 700th anniversary as a market town in 1943 he wrote the following: “Reading about the history of Hjørring with its tales of great fires and other disasters, poverty and frugality is like reading a North Jutland version of the Book of Job”.

Hjørring’s development only gained real momentum during the last century of the town’s 700-year history as a market town.

Development of the town
In 1855, Hjørring was a market town where livestock and dunghills were still part of the picture. At that time farming was still one of the town’s most important occupations. The merchants of Hjørring sold the agricultural produce on to traders in other towns, and the town’s distillers used home-grown rye, barley and potatoes. It was quite common that traders and shopkeepers were also part-time farmers.

However, Hjørring was also characterised by its development into a commercial and administrative town in the years before 1855. The town now boasted a telegraph, bank, hospital, a new town hall and later a new prison. Hjørring was also provided with cobbled streets, petroleum lamps and a park.

In 1794, Hjørring had become the county town of the newly formed County of Hjørring, which meant that in 1855 the county and court staff, including their households, accounted for 10 per cent of the town’s population. At the same time, 25 per cent of the population lived in poverty. This group was made up of day labourers, seamstresses, servants and petty builders. There were many different types of builders in Hjørring, but there were too many of them, and also the town’s builders faced competition from rural craftsmen.
The fastest-growing trade in Hjørring in 1855 was its three distilleries. The town’s many pubs, inns and small grocers provided a huge market. The production of spirits was mechanised using steam power, which enabled the distilleries to produce large quantities. At this time Hjørring also had a number of industrious enterprises, such as iron foundries, ropeworks, tanners, furriers, a goldsmith and a clockmaker.

The town’s drapers and a few large merchants were, along with the distillers, among the most prosperous citizens of Hjørring. The merchants traded in groceries from outside the area. Although chausse roads had been built from Hjørring to Løkken, Aalborg and Frederikshavn, the merchants were, however, restricted to cumbersome and slow transport by horse-drawn wagon. In terms of transport the merchants of Hjørring faced competition from the sea traders of Løkken with their barges and the merchants of Frederikshavn, who had the benefit of a port already from 1835. Hjørring’s transport problems were not solved until a railway line was constructed from Nørresundby to Frederikshavn in 1871.

Hjørring today
In 1970, the Municipality of Hjørring was amalgamated with a number of other small municipalities. As a result the population in the municipality increased by almost 40 per cent. In 2007, Municipality of Hjørring was merged with the municipalities of Hirtshals, Sindal and Løkken-Vrå, doubling the population of the municipality. With about 68,000 citizens Hjørring is now the largest municipality in the area. Today, Hjørring is the largest town in the municipality with a population of about 25,000 and a central location right in the middle of the municipality. The town remains a commercial, service and administrative hub, and due to its central location and its size, Hjørring is also a centre for education and culture.

The 2002 extension of the motorway through Vendsyssel has made it even faster and easier to reach Hjørring and the surrounding area. Aalborg Airport is also within reasonable driving distance.

Commerce, service and administration
As the administrative centre of the former County of Hjørring the town has traditionally been host to several national institutions. One of the large workplaces in Hjørring is the Danish Armed Forces. As part of a regional development scheme the Army Material Command (HMAK) was relocated from Copenhagen to Hjørring in 1971. This event provided a major boost to construction and job opportunities in Hjørring.

HMAK had numerous employees of many different backgrounds – from people with higher education to unskilled labourers.

The large number of newcomers also boosted Hjørring’s commercial, cultural and organisational life. Today the Armed Forces still have many employees in the town as the Personnel Service, the Auditing Service and the Defence Construction Service are all located in Hjørring.

Tax Centre Hjørring is another national employer to be set up in the town. In addition to the Municipality of Hjørring, the Tax Centre also services the neighbouring municipalities of Brønderslev-Dronninglund and Frederikshavn.

Other large public employers include the hospital Sygehus Vendsyssel, Hjørring. Sygehus Vendsyssel is the result of a merger between the former Frederikshavn-Skagen Sygehus and Hjørring-Brønderslev Sygehus. The first buildings in the hospital area in Hjørring were opened in 1891. In the late 1920s, it was decided that – as the first hospital in Denmark – Hjørring Sygehus was to be extended to become a central hospital for the former County of Hjørring. Since then the hospital has been continually extended to include various specialised medical fields.

Hjørring has been the centre of the municipal administration since the municipal reform in 1970, and the town continues to be so after the mergers in 2007. Citizen service centres have been established at the town halls of each of the four former municipalities, and some departments have been relocated to town halls whereas management and administration are located centrally at Codanhus in Hjørring, which is also one of the town’s major workplaces.

The Danish Regional Development Act was of great importance to Hjørring. The act was passed in 1958 as an attempt to correct the regional imbalance in Denmark which meant that companies and institutions were concentrated in the Copenhagen area while development of provincial regions stagnated. The act provided state and municipal subsidies for companies which established themselves or were already established in the provinces. Before the act was passed, Hjørring was characterised by a stagnating population, low income, high unemployment and high local tax rates. This stagnation made it difficult for the town to maintain its position as a regional centre. However, from the mid-1960s Hjørring became a “champion of regional development”, and during the following decade 20 companies were established with regional development subsidies. Although almost half of them later closed, the empty premises were taken over by new companies. And thus began the industrialisation of Hjørring.

Hjørring has a flourishing and varied business structure – from a solid base of many small and medium-sized businesses to large companies with many employees. The businesses are spread out on many different trades: industrial manufacturing, food production, building/construction, information and communication technology, business services, trade, printing etc. In recent years and as a result of globalization, Hjørring has undergone a marked change in its business structure from being a town characterised by a few very large manufacturing companies with a large number of employees to being a town with many small, medium-sized and large businesses experiencing strong growth. As a result of its geographical location, Hjørring has a large customer and manpower base in its surrounding areas. In addition, there is a flourishing culture of independent businesses in Hjørring. Entrepreneurs continue to set up brand new businesses within all trades.

Hjørring’s commercial life underwent a change during the 1970s and 1980s. Over a period of about 25 years the number of grocery shops was reduced by three quarters as supermarkets gained ground. Nevertheless, Hjørring is still the largest commercial town in the region with many supermarkets, a discount hypermarket and almost 200 specialist shops. The town centre is a reflection of Hjørring’s development: Commerce and culture are now flourishing where there used to be a large factory, and with the opening of the town’s new shopping centre, Metropolen, at the beginning of 2008 Hjørring will take another great step towards retaining and attracting citizens and visitors from all over Vendsyssel.

Education
In addition to its many primary and lower secondary schools, three private schools and a continuation school, Hjørring offers a number of study programmes beyond basic education, which contribute to making the town the educational centre of Vendsyssel. These include Hjørring Gymnasium og Hf-kursus, the oldest upper secondary school in the region, EUC Nord, an amalgamation of Hjørring Technical School, Frederikshavn Technical School, Hjørring Business School and the business and technical upper secondary school courses HHX and HTX. EUC Nord’s course centre also offers a wide range of business-related courses for managers and staff. EUC Nord has departments in both Hjørring and Frederikshavn. Hjørring Music School offers a study programme which prepares students for entry to the music conservatories (MGK). Finally there are the adult education centre (VUC Vendsyssel Vest), which provides instruction at all levels from preparatory adult education to higher preparatory courses, the college for social and health workers (SOSU Nord), Nursing College Vendsyssel (CVU Nordjylland), and the teacher training college Hjørring Seminarium, which offers programmes for teachers as well as social educators.

Culture
Hjørring has a number of cultural institutions such as museums, theatre and music venues. Vendsyssel Museum of History, the old regional museum for Vendsyssel, focuses both on archaeological work and modern history and has departments and exhibitions in various locations in the municipality.

Hjørring has a new and attractive art museum located in the refurbished buildings of a former textile factory, which also provides the venue for concerts – primarily featuring small local orchestras from the Music School.

Hjørring has its own regional theatre, Vendsyssel Theatre, which is one of the most successful in Denmark. Also, Hjørring Theatre, a theatre society located in Vendelbohus, draws in the crowds with its performance tours of the town. Hjørring has two revues: The Hjørring Revue, which is well-known all around the country, and the Lundergård Revue, a local revue which is so popular that tickets are usually sold out well in advance. In addition, the beautiful park at Sct. Knuds Kilde provides the setting for Hjørring’s annual summer plays. If you are not keen on live performances, there is always the cinema centre – so all in all there is every opportunity of an evening or afternoon of entertainment. Hjørring also has several music societies which arrange both indoor and outdoor concerts of various kinds around town.

Finally in the area of sports an event that provides a refreshing international input is the Dana Cup football tournament, which brings together about 20,000 young football players from around the world every summer and has made Hjørring one of the towns in Denmark with the highest ratio of football pitches per capita. Among Hjørring’s many other sports facilities are a 27-hole (+9) golf course, one of Denmark’s best tennis stadiums, an ice rink in winter and – from early 2008 – an attractive new swimming complex with fun activity pools for children and the young at heart.