The nearly five-mile (8km) bridge linking Denmark and Sweden will get a new lick of paint for the first time since it opened to traffic in 2000, but it will take an estimated 13 years to complete the project.

The Oresund (Öresund if you are Swedish, or Øresund if you’re a Dane) Bridge, made famous by the Nordic noir TV crime series The Bridge, needs the fresh coat of paint to maintain its steel structure. The project will involve painting 300,000 sq m of bridge.

“The top layer of the five-layer painting system will wear out within the next 10 years, so we have to apply a new top layer to be able to maintain the lower levels, which protect the steel from corrosion,” said the project manager, Johan Nord.

The bridge was last painted in sections on land before being assembled over the waterway. This time, a special platform has had to be mounted beside the bridge, with the workmen hanging from gantry cranes over the Oresund strait.

The German industrial service provider Muehlhan has been chosen for the first two years of the project, in which an area equivalent to 42 football fields will be painted black.

“It’s a very special job because you are working 20 to 30 metres above sea level hanging in gantry cranes to get access to the bridge,” said the chief executive of Muehlhan Denmark, Jens Mørk.

Mørk said he expected the entire project would use between 300,000 and 400,000 litres of paint.