ROTTERDAM, the Netherlands  The Dutch are building windmills again. Up and down the coast, out from port cities like this one, you can see them: white and tall and slender as pencils, their three slim blades turning lazily in the North Sea breeze.

These generate electricity, of course, rather than grind grain. The government has already built one enormous farm of mills far off the coast, where they’re inoffensive to tourists, and there are plans for a second farm. Yet it is also building, and rebuilding, mills like the squat, homely ones that have seemingly always dotted the Dutch countryside, and reflect as much the nature of the country as do tulips or Gouda cheese.

“Revival might be a bit strong,” said Leo Endedijk, director of the Dutch Mills, a group that supports mill restoration. Yet last year the government, concerned that one of the foremost symbols of the Netherlands was about to disappear out of neglect, approved an $80 million program to build or restore 120 mills, of roughly 1,040 still standing. That has created a backlog of work for previously strapped mill restorers.

“We have special companies, very specialized mill makers and restorers,” said Mr. Endedijk, in an office in the shadow of De Gooyer, a soaring 18th-century mill now housing a popular brewery. “They would not have the capacity to restore 120 mills.”