Visiting the neighborhood fortress.

My friend Thomas Pluck seem to have a lot of fun with his blog, so I decided to put one up too. Hardly anything special, I know - but this will be my truck. My vehicle for late night roadside dumping of things into internet ditches. It's been about six years since last time I had something resembling a proper website up and running, but that don't mean I haven't been accumulating content all the while. I'll be posting old and new stuff randomly while (my) interest persists.

Today, the twenty-third of march has been designated Easter Sunday in accordance with ecclesiastical mystery mathematics of dimly recognized relevance — although I suppose a couple days off is nice, as was the weather — dire snow storm prognostications from the weather service turned out hyperbole.

I actually had a few projects I needed to work on this sunday, but the sunny weather proved a strong procrastination lure. Took my camera and went for a short drive a couple kilometers out in the Copenhagen outskirts to Bagsværd Fort, an old cannon fortress built in the 1890s as part of the Northern city defense line, supplementing Vestenceinten, a moat and embankment slash artillery line to the West and South. This large and expensively constructed project never saw real battle, and became mostly obsolete when the first warplanes flew just a couple of decades later. The defense system was kept manned and on high alert for the duration of World War I, but the anticipated Prussian invasion failed to materialize.


By the time the germans actually did invade a few decades later, the city defense system was largely irrelevant and disused, but the german troops nevertheless manned it. Presumably the structure had some use in protection against land invasion from Allied forces or civil uprising. In any case the Nazis spent more effort on constructing and staffing the Danish segment of the Atlantic Wall along the Jutland coast.


Bagsværd Fort was a triangular construction surrounded by a dry moat. It was armed with 8 120mm guns, four of which at a gun emplacement at the outer point of the triangle.

It's still there. It was easy to find. Parked right outside the main gate. The "dry" moat surrounding the fort is of course muddy as is par for the season, but given that ground temperature was close to freezing it was pretty easy to get around. There was very little wind or traffic, all I heard was birds songs of spring imminent.


Considering the fort is in the middle of an urban area, the graffitti and vandalism was less than I expected. It seems to be in pretty good shape overall, has probably received recent maintenance. I like the architecture of the place.


The reinforced concrete guts of the fortress is now apparently used as a film depot. The fort grounds are part of some kindergarten or communal youth program, it seems - the kids' bunny cages stands right in the firing line, how cruel.


Nobody was there on this sunday, except this red skirrel kept a beady eye on me the whole time.
So there you have it, Pretty much a pointless excursion but that's okay, could be worse.