A Baltic island bucks a Danish anti-immigrant trend

WHEN DANESTV think about Lolland, which is not very often, they tend to feel sorry for it. The island in the Baltic sea, a flat expanse of fields and beaches, enjoyed brief notoriety in 2015 thanks to a documentary series, “On the Ass in Nakskov”, about privation in its largest town. Nakskov fell on hard times after its shipyard closed in 1986. People have been leaving the island for decades. Since 2007 its population has dropped from 49,000 to 41,000. Those outsiders Lolland still attracts are largely low-income households seeking cheaper lodgings than they can find in Copenhagen.But now work has begun on a tunnel linking Lolland to the German island of Fehmarn, 18km (11 miles) away. When it opens in 2029 Lolland will no longer be “just a small rural community as far from Copenhagen as you can get,” says Thomas Knudsen, its top civil servant. It will cut in half, to 90 minutes, the time it takes to drive to Hamburg. More German tourists will flock to Lolland’s beaches, he hopes. Green industries will set up shop, taking advantage of the windy island’s surplus of renewable energy.