Randers

Randers, a town of Denmark, capital of the amt (county) of its name in Jutland, on the Gudenaa at the point where it begins to widen into Randers Fjord, an inlet of the Cattegat. Pop. (1901) 20,057. The town is 15 m. from the open Cattegat and the harbour has 15 ft. depth on the bar. The chief exports are butter and eggs; the chief imports sugar, petroleum, coal and iron. Two railways run north to Aalborg, continuing the main East Jutland line from the south, and an eastward branch serves Grenaa and Aebeltoft on the coast. Though a place of considerable antiquity - being mentioned in 1086 as the meeting-place of insurgents against Knud, the saint - Randers has few remains of old buildings and bears the stamp of a compact, modern manufacturing town that owes its importance to its distilleries, manufactories of gloves, railway carriages, &c. St Marten's church dates from the 14th century, but was frequently altered and enlarged down to 1870. It has good woodwork of the 17th century. The high school is housed in a medieval monastery, which was restored in 1894-97. There is a statue to Steen S. Blicher (1782-1848), the national poet and novelist of Jutland.

Randers is best known in history as the scene of the assassination of Count Gerhard by Niels Ebbesdn in 1340. In the middle ages it had six churches and four monastic establishments, the oldest a Benedictine nunnery (1170). The Grey Friars' building was turned into a castle (Dronningborg) after the Reformation; its church was burned down in 1698.