Updated Oct. 23, 2019 9:51 PM
After watching over the coastline of the North Sea in Denmark for the past 120 years, the oft-visited Rubjerg Knude Lighthouse was put on skates and wheeled away.
After originally being built more than 650 feet (200 meters) away from the shore, coastal erosion threatened to topple the historic structure into the sea. By 2019, the 1,000-ton structure was just 20 feet (7 meters) from the shore. The lighthouse needed to be moved 260 feet (80 meters) inland.
Moving the 76-foot-tall (23-meter) landmark represented a risk, but local Mayor Arne Boelt said relocating it was a decision that had to be made.
“But it’s worth the risk,” he said. “The alternative would be to dismantle the lighthouse.”
(Twitter/@denmarkdotdk Demark.dk)
The move, which was executed on Tuesday, was not only risky but costly. Environment Minister Lea Wermelin explained that the “national treasure” was well worth the $747,000 bill. Despite ceasing operations in 1968, the lighthouse still receives more than 250,000 visitors per year. Visitors popularly climb to the top of the structure to get a unique view of the landscape. For Tuesday’s move, over 25,000 witnesses came out to watch and many others watched on television as the move was broadcast live.
In the past, the site around the lighthouse has been used as a coffee shop and a museum although those ventures were abandoned in 2002 because of the shifting sands.
“The lighthouse is one of the North Jutland’s most visited tourist attractions,” the Mette Ring, press officer for the Hjørring municipality, which is in charge of the project, told CNN.
Workers in Denmark slowly move the famed Rubjerg Knude Lighthouse farther away from the edge . of the North Sea.(Twitter / @denmarkdotdk Demark.dk)
The coastal erosion and shifting sands have nudged the coastline toward the lighthouse at a rate of approximately 2 feet per year. When engineers began the relocation, they dug beneath the structure to reinforce the foundation with iron before setting iron plates and wheels underneath. The wheels were connected with a set of rails that essentially allowed the lighthouse to be ‘skated’ away.
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Moving at about 40 feet (12 meters) per hour, the entire relocation was expected to last about 10 hours. Accounting for continued erosion at a consistent rate, the new location is expected to be the lighthouse's home for at least the next 40 years.
"We could not go faster than 12m an hour because they needed to calibrate the hydraulics. It's in sand and you need to ensure it runs well on the two rails," Ring said.
Artist John Kristensen has painted the Rubjerg Knude every year and said in 2016 that he wasn't aware of the lighthouse's bleak future. At the time, the landmark was expected to crash into the sea by 2020.
"The lighthouse is a reference point, but the most fascinating things are the landscape and the light. They are constantly changing," he told CNN at the time. "Maybe it will be a reef down there... Perhaps I'll sit on it and try fishing instead."
Correction: The Rubjerg Knude Lighthouse is about 76 feet tall, not 656 feet tall as an earlier version of this story stated. It was also moving at 40 feet per hour, not per minute.
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