Billund, Denmark

Billund is a historic town. The town was first mentioned in written documents from 1454, but it was known as being part of the local parish since 1291. The word Billund means a grove with bees.

In the mid-19th century, Billund was comprised of eight farms. The town began to develop with the establishment of a cooperative dairy in 1888. In 1880, the towns first windmill was built, and it was replaced in 1897 with a windmill in the Dutch style.

In 1916 Ole Kirk Christiansen, who later founded Lego, bought the Billund Machine Joinery & Carpentry Business from master carpenter Steffen Pederson. The business constructed houses in the summer and produced furniture in the winter. In 1924, after Christiansen’s house burned down, he built a house in Billund. During the Great Depression people couldn’t afford the houses, so Christiansen began producing utility items such as ironing boards, stepladders, and miniature toys. The toys became the main product of the business, and in 1934 he named the toy factory “lego” (a play on leg godt, the Danish phrase for “play well”).

During World War II, the old Lego factory was destroyed by fire but a new one was immediately built. In 1946, the Lego factory purchased a plastic molding machine from an English company, and the first plastic lego bricks were released in 1949.

The 1950s saw a continued growth in the town’s population, which had doubled since the beginning of Lego and was now 418. Legoland Opened on the 7th of June 1968 and had 625,000 visitors in the first year. A hotel was built and from the 1970s to 2006 the population of Billund rose to 6,020, largely driven by the production of Lego as well as the services needed for Legoland.