DENMARK: Little Belt Spanned

Smiling hugely, gigantic, handsome King Christian boarded his yacht, set sail through the channels and islands of his kingdom for the port of Fredericia in Jutland last week. Bitterly cold for May, it was snowing hard, but that could not chill His Majesty’s verve. He was about to inaugurate Denmark’s most important post-War project, the longest bridge in continental Europe, which will revolutionize the country’s transport system. Traveling more comfortably, Madam Minister Ruth Bryan Owen, the rest of Copenhagen’s diplomatic corps and some 700 other officials came down for the ceremony on two special trains.

Continental Europe’s longest bridge cannot compare in size or expense with the great bridges of the U. S. Half the length of the Queensboro Bridge in Manhattan, it cost tiny Denmark $8,000,000, or slightly more than has been set aside to build the approaches to the great San Francisco-Oakland bridge.

In importance, it can hold its own with the best of them. Because the peninsula of Jutland turns a sandy, treacherous, sparse backbone to the North Sea (see map), Danes from the earliest times have concentrated in the Baltic islands. Copenhagen, the capital, and Hamlet’s Elsinore (now an important rail and ferry junction for Sweden and Norway) are on the largest island, Zealand. A large proportion of the fish, butter, eggs and bacon that are Denmark’s chief products come from the island of Fünen. Danish motor roads are excellent, railroads (50% government-owned, the rest with the State as majority stockholder) are highly efficient, but to get from almost anywhere to anywhere else in Denmark needs a great deal of ferrying. Chief customer for Danish dairy products is Great Britain. The new bridge, crossing the Little Belt between Fünen and Jutland, is on the direct line between Copenhagen and London. At the same time that the Little Belt was spanned, a new service of high speed streamlined trains was inaugurated. Bridge and trains between them will cut the time between Copenhagen and Esbjerg almost 50%. As the service is extended it should also materially lower train schedules between Denmark and Hamburg, Berlin, and the rest of Eastern Europe.

Lank King Christian had a personal as well as a patriotic interest in all this. Frequently he has taken the southern expresses from his capital to France. Returning once his private train nearly rolled off the ferry between Warnemünde and Gedser. On the same ferry some years later His Majesty was icebound all night. Last week in the bitter cold, he snipped the ribbon to open the bridge, while 30,000 of the 150,000 Danes who were expected roared approval, and a special radio car broadcast the ceremonies in four languages, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, German.

Proudly then, King Christian crossed over his bridge from Fredericia to Denmark’s bucolic Middelfart.