In late October 2018, I embarked on a short tour through Denmark together with my good friend Tonne from Lost Places in Schleswig-Holstein und Umland. It was our first visit to Denmark after a tour in February, so we were excited to see what we were going to discover.
The first spot we visited was an abandoned mink farm. Denmark is the largest producer of mink fur in the world and produces about one third of all internationally sold mink furs - the mink "population" in Denmark surpasses the number of Danish citizens by far. In this context, it is no surprise that there are also quite a few abandoned mink farms in Denmark that have been closed mostly due to bad hygienic conditions or illegal farming.
Since we didn't want to look suspicious to the neighbors (they might think that we are animal rights activists or journalists looking for a spectacular story of tortured animals), we parked on a public parking spot rather far away and walked the rest of the way. Entering the premises was easy; it only involved climbing over a small fence, so we got in without being seen.
The farm was made up of eight or ten large houses for farming the animals and one larger house that we think was used for storing tools and refurbishing cages. It was depressing to see the conditions that the animals had to live in. There even was something that I'd call a "feeding wagon" that looked like it was used to pour food into the small "food chute" in front of the cages.
The best part about this place was the fact that it was abandoned and that nature has been reclaiming it for a few years now.
As we got out at the end of our exploration, we did have an encounter with a lady who seemed to have an interest in what we were doing on the premises. She didn't say if she was the owner or just a neighbor, but she insisted that the place was not abandoned and told us that we had to leave (which we were doing anyway). She did calm down a bit after we talked a couple more minutes and found out that her daughter was going to school pretty close to our hometown, so even though she probably won't be friends with us, in the end she was a bit nicer after all.
To check out all the photos from this place, click the button below.
