The windmill

In 1835, miller Jørgen Jacobsen built a windmill as an extension of Vibæk Mill. It was built in the Dutch style and was thatched. It had a common gallery, meaning it was turned into the correct wind direction by the mill-hand using ropes connected to the mill's tail via a winding drum with the option to fasten the rope to the stone base surrounding the mill's foundation, and it had cloth sails. Now, it wasn't just the amount of water that determined whether flour could be ground at Vibæk Mill.

Møller Jørgen cost 5,400 rigsdalers to build the mill, and it ran for just over 100 years, until 1938 when electricity overtook wind power. In the last ten years of the mill's active life, several expensive repairs and modernisations were carried out; a wing broke in 1928 during a storm and was replaced, the oak wing shaft was replaced with an iron one, the granite main bearing was also replaced, and the thatched roof was replaced with sheet metal. Unfortunately, it was to prove that the reliability of electricity was the death knell for the milling trade and its dependence on nature. 1938 was the year that the last miller, Christian Madsen, closed Vibæk Mill for good, the battle against electricity was lost. A curious paradox, as we now, almost 100 years later, again see windmills adorning our landscape, now precisely to generate the valuable electricity that we all consume in large quantities.

In the following decades, the mill complex slowly fell into disrepair. However, the mill family remained on the farm until 1987, when it was sold to the Vibæk Mølle Foundation by Nikolaj and Peter Dall Madsen. The two were the sons of the last miller and had the right to live in the farmhouse. They visited the mills regularly, and after Peter's death in 1992, Nikolaj continued his involvement with Vibæk Møllerne until his death at the age of 96 in 2024.

In 1956 and 1957, the National Museum got involved and surveyed and renovated the watermill. At that time, Vibæk Watermill was the last remaining watermill on Als.