Between roughly 1660 and 1810, Klitmøller was the most important trading place on this stretch of coast, and it managed that without a harbour. The route ran to Norway, then part of the Danish realm. Flour and grain went out; timber came back, because Thy had almost no trees of its own and wood was worth crossing the Skagerrak for. The ships were purpose-built for a coast with no quay — sandskuder, sand boats, flat-bottomed and shallow enough to be run straight up the beach and hauled clear of the surf. What gave Klitmøller its edge over neighbouring landing places was the machinery. Grain could be loaded as flour, which was worth more, and the water to grind it came out of the dunes at the door.

On 3 February 1825 a storm surge broke through Agger Tange to the south and opened the Limfjord to the North Sea. It was a good day for Danish shipping and a ruinous one for Klitmøller. Cargo that had been dragged over dunes and launched off an exposed beach could now sail into sheltered fjord water instead, and the village's whole competitive advantage evaporated in a night. Klitmøller contracted back into what it had been before the mills: a fishing settlement where boats were winched up the sand, on a coast where the wind hardly ever stops. That condition, which for the better part of two centuries counted as a hardship, turned out to be the asset in waiting.

Persistent westerlies and the way the swell curves in here produce something specific: conditions for wave performance, the windsurfing discipline judged on what a rider does inside breaking surf rather than how fast they cross flat water. Danish championships have been held at Klitmøller since the 1990s. The European Championship came in 1996, the World Cup in 1998, and since 2010 the PWA World Cup has returned annually as the Cold Hawaii PWA World Cup — the nickname has become the brand. Kitesurfers followed the windsurfers for the same reason: strong wind, big waves, reliably both. A webcam on the beach streams the North Sea live, so anyone in Denmark can check the water before committing to the drive north.

The population on 1 January 2026 was 1,298. In July it is a different town entirely. Rental agencies work much of the housing stock, there are two official campsites, and most of the cafés, restaurants and takeaways that make the place feel busy are shuttered by October. The summer festival lands on the first weekend of June. What the influx has done to a former fishing village is the genuinely interesting part: an economy now built on weather that residents once simply endured, and a working harbourless beach that draws people from across Europe for exactly the reason it once made life difficult.

Klitmøller is bordered south and east by Nationalpark Thy, Denmark's first national park — 24,370 hectares of dune heath, dune plantation and clear-water lakes, running as a belt up to twelve kilometres wide from Agger Tange in the south to Hanstholm in the north. The dunes at the town's edge carry lyme grass, heather, crowberry, sea holly and marsh gentian. Wood sandpipers and cranes are regulars. Inland, two large freshwater lakes, Vandet Sø and Nors Sø, sit only a few kilometres from salt water. Walk east from the beach and you cross the whole sequence in an afternoon: surf, sand, heath, plantation, and then a lake clear enough to see the bottom of.