THE LIGHTHOUSE
The old yellow lighthouse is one of Omø's most visited places.
We are proud of the beautiful guy and it is no joke that the island's slogan for many years has been:
Omø - The lighthouse in the Great Belt
VISIT THE FIRE
Omø Lighthouse is 22 meters high and has always been an angle lighthouse.
The tower is round, walled and freestanding with 2 residential buildings and outbuildings around a courtyard. Both homes and the outbuildings are today privately owned.
The lighthouse was closed to visitors in 2005 for safety reasons, but the lighthouse can still be viewed from the outside.
Sometimes days are arranged when it is possible to enter the lighthouse.
The House of History is responsible for the arrangements.
FACTS ABOUT THE FIRE
Omø Lighthouse was built in 1893-94.
An angle beacon is typically used for passage. From different angles, the lighthouse lights up with different colors, according to which the ships (today mostly yachtsmen) can navigate.
Omø Lighthouse lights up, depending on the angle from which it is viewed, with white, green and red light respectively.
From the start, the lighthouse had a fixed lens apparatus and a burner with 3 wicks. The burner was replaced in 1923 with an "autoform" glow net burner by the English manufacturer Chance Brothers.
NATIONALLY FAMOUS
In the summer of 2001, Omø Lighthouse became nationally known when Politiken journalist Nils Thorsen lived in the lighthouse keeper's residence for a month and from there delivered a daily article about Omø and the people of Omø seen through the eyes of a 'forcibly displaced' city dweller.
In 2019, the lighthouse was chosen together with four other Danish lighthouses to feature on PostNord's stamps.
The stamp was of course sold at Omø's local grocery store - Let-Køb.
A FUN STORY
In a period between 1928 and 1940, a lighthouse keeper, Jacob Carl Nielsen, lived in the lighthouse keeper's residence on Omø. He was born in 1880, and in 1928 had been moved to Omø from a job as butler and cook at Skagen's Rev Lighthouse. Jacob and his family originally came from Læsø.
Jacob Carl Nielsen was set ashore on the beach off Omø lighthouse and had to find a new life here together with his wife and five children.
In order to do his job as a lighthouse keeper, you were entitled to a white work uniform issued by the lighthouse service. On a daily basis, you wore a uniform that you could move around in and that was suitable for guard and cleaning work. But if you wanted to be nice, and if you wanted to represent the fire force, you wore the black uniform with the beautiful cap.
Now it was that Jacob had a big head - cap size 58. And when one day he felt that now was the time to replace the old exit cap, he grabbed the pen and wrote an application to the fire service.
However, some time had to pass before the answer came from Copenhagen. The reason was that they didn't have such a large cap lying around in the warehouse at the fire brigade. And even if the largest specimen was found, the possibility of sewing a wedge was not possible. There was simply nothing else for the man from Omø to have a brand new cap.
This new cap had to be sewn by the creature's own seamstress, and fabric had to be ordered home, so it took about a year before Jacob got his new cap with the mail boat. It was a big day for Jakob and for the small family on Omø.
A good month after the arrival of the new cap, however, Jacob fell ill and was admitted to Skælskør hospital. A few months later he was transferred to the Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen, and was thus lying in his living room there on 15 July 1940, when the Germans at At 2.20 a.m., Copenhagen was bombed from the air.
It became too much for Jacob's heart, and a few days later you could read in the Sorø Amts Tidende that Jacob Carl Nielsen had passed away. He was scared to death!
If Jacob had a problem, the lighthouse keeper got it in earnest now. Because now you were left with a brand new cap - in a large size on top of that - which no one could use, and certainly not Jacob's replacement, who had quite a small head.
Now what to do with the very large cap? Evil tongues say that it is still lying on a shelf in Copenhagen, gathering dust, because heads as big as those that could be displayed on Omø have not been seen since in the entire fire force.
