Fort Dansborg, Danish colonial fort in Tharangambadi, India
Fort Dansborg is a Danish colonial fort in Tharangambadi on the Bay of Bengal with a trapezoidal layout roughly 60 meters in length. The walls enclose high rooms with guard quarters and camel hump shaped domes rising above the water.
Danish admiral Ove Gjedde signed an agreement in 1620 with the king of Thanjavur Ragunatha Nayak and founded a trading post here. The compound grew into the largest Danish fortress outside Europe and also hosted the first Protestant mission on Indian soil.
The exhibition rooms display European ship models alongside stone carvings of Hindu deities and Danish manuscripts from the colonial period. Glass cases hold weapons and natural history specimens such as dolphin skeletons that trace the daily life of Danish traders and their encounters with the Indian coastal world.
The State Department of Archaeology of Tamil Nadu runs the museum with artifacts and documents on the Danish colonial era. Visitors find signboards in the rooms and can walk along the fortress walls and bastions facing the coast.
This fortress ranks as the second largest Danish stronghold worldwide after Kronborg. The walls once enclosed the first Protestant mission station in India and today house relics of that early religious encounter between Europe and South Asia.
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