Søby is a port town at the northernmost tip of the southern Danish island of

Ærø Ærø () is one of the Danish Baltic Sea islands, and part of the Southern Denmark Region. Since 1 January 2006 the whole of Ærø has constituted a single municipality, known as Ærø Kommune. Before that date, there were two municipalities ...

, 15 km from

Ærøskøbing Ærøskøbing () is a town in central Denmark, located in Ærø Municipality on the island of Ærø. The suffix - købing means a trade town in the languages that derive from Old Norse. Ærøskøbing's houses and streets are delicately restore ...

, 23 km from

Marstal Marstal () is a town in southern Denmark, located in Ærø Municipality on the island of Ærø. Marstal has a population of 2,120 (1 January 2022)Schleswig-Holstein-Sønderborg for whom the great manor-farm of Søbygård was built from 1580, even though it was rarely used as a residence by the dukes. Søby

The manor had only a few scattered farmsteads up until the 1720s but once Søbygård Estate was subdivided, and the farm enlarged into a manor house (1729), regional settlement grew with sailors and fishermen. Søby Church was consecrated in 1745. During the

Gunboat War The Gunboat War (, ; 1807–1814) was a naval conflict between Denmark–Norway and the British during the Napoleonic Wars. The war's name is derived from the Danish tactic of employing small gunboats against the materially superior Royal Na ...

of 1807 to 1814, fortifications were built in at Næbbet, southeast of Skjoldnæs Fyr, but in Søby itself the port remained little more than a primitive pile bridge where the ferry to Als could dock. This changed in 1865 when the area's skippers jointly built a stone pier with a bulwark. Søbygård_Ærø

The steamship connection to

Faaborg Faaborg or Fåborg () is an old port town located on Faaborg Fjord in Faaborg-Midtfyn municipality on the island of Funen in Denmark. By road, Faaborg is located southwest of Odense, west-northwest of Svendborg, and roughly southeast of Midd ...

started in 1903, the port was further deepened in 1924, and in 1933 a fully improved ferry berth was built. Two years earlier, Arthur Christian Jørgensen had established a workshop specializing in the repair and improvement of small ship engines, developing into a full shipyard in 1950 with around 30 men employed to build fishing boats. The first dry dock opened in 1967 with a much bigger version inaugurated in 2006. This is big enough to build ferries and naval ships of up to 7000 tons.

The Port

Today Søby Port can receive ships with a maximum length of 135m and a draft of 6.5m and its shipyard, Søby Værft, is the island of Ærø's biggest single employer (around 140). A big redevelopment involving some 290,000 m² of the port area is scheduled to start in 2022 for completion in the summer of 2024.

Attractions

*Søbygård Manor is now a history museum and concert space with access to the earthworks of the older fortified farm area. *Skjoldnæs Fyr is a 22m-high lighthouse built of granite in 1881 by Swedish stonemasons. It's 5 km from the port. En route is a golf course. * Vitsø Mill is a Dutch-style windmill 2 km southwest of the port. Installed in 1958, it is the only one of its kind in Denmark.

Transport

There are ferry connections to Fynshav on Als and to

Funen Funen ( da, Fyn, ), with an area of , is the third-largest island of Denmark, after Zealand and Vendsyssel-Thy. It is the 165th-largest island in the world. It is located in the central part of the country and has a population of 469,947 as of ...

. The Fynshav route is operated since 15 August 2019 by the world's biggest electrically powered ferry, the environmentally friendly e-ferry Ellen which was itself built in the shipyard here by Søby Værft.Søby Værft website
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External links

Visitor InformationÆrø MuseumSøby Værft

References

{{Reflist Cities and towns in the Region of Southern Denmark Ærø Port cities and towns in Denmark