7 minute read
The enchanted island of Bornholm
Bornholm, less than an hour’s flight from Copenhagen, fascinates the Danes. But the rest of the world is also eager to discover its landscapes, craftsmanship and creativity. Paradise at your fingertips.
From afar, it could be a piece of confetti floating on the Baltic Sea. In reality, it is a lush, fertile landmass just 150 kilometres from Copenhagen. Only 40 kilometres long, dotted with the tall chimneys of traditional fish smokehouses, the island is a tapestry of plains, groves, rivers, waterfalls, lakes, white sand beaches, charming ports, winding roads and isolated farms. Its meadows – spread between villages an hour’s walk from one another – are verdant meccas for horses, sheep, thick-coated cows and, in recent years, even semifree bison. Bornholm is a picture postcard, but also so much more.
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This island, with a population of 40,000, is an ecological trailblazer: it produces three quarters of its energy with renewable sources (wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, small dams, a biogas plant) and is determined to become fully autonomous in electricity and heating.
“We host hundreds of green classes each year,” explains Mie Mølgaard, a ceramist in Rønne, the island’s main town. “Many schoolchildren have magical memories of having been here that stay with them their entire lives.” She herself discovered the island in 2004, aged 27: “it was love at first sight.” At the time, she was teaching at a ceramics school in Kerteminde, a mid-sized city in Denmark, but she was quickly charmed by the creative energy that sets this place apart. She moved to the island and joined an existing workshop before opening her own in 2010. Ever since, her pretty pastel cups, plates, bowls, jewellery and clocks have seen growing success. “I’ve never regretted my decision,” she says.
Herring, salmon, cod…
Bornholm’s smokehouses are the bedrock of its fame. The fish caught in the Baltic Sea are smoked hot or cold, the old-fashioned way, using alder or beech wood from the island’s forests.
Bornholm’s central location in the Baltic means it has long been coveted by the Scandinavian states. In the 17th century, its residents made the decision to remain Danish, from which time the strategic micro-territory would be viewed as a site of exchange and trade. In the 19th century, it turned to fish smoking as its primary activity: in every village, tall smokestacks rose from the ground, used to prepare the catches brought in by the region’s fishermen. Fish – herring and salmon, cod and mackerel – were smoked and salted so they could be kept longer, and were then delivered to Copenhagen, laying the foundation for the strong relationship now forged between the island and the Danish capital. The bond was strengthened further still by the export of grains from its fertile plains, and of stones taken from its cliffs.
The island’s north coast is rockier and more rugged than its southern counterpart.
“Back in the 1950s, the smell of smoked herring was everywhere,” says Søren Heide Jensen, owner of the Hasle smokehouse on the west coast, one of the last still in operation. “At one point, the island had as many as 135 smoking ovens.”
Today, only 11 are still active. Fishing has been in steady decline since the mid-20th century, but the void has been filled by craft activities so successfully that the World Crafts Council awarded Bornholm the title of World Crafts Region in 2017. “There was a well-developed tradition of ceramists,” explains Mie Mølgaard, “as the island has clay and sandstone reserves, which were used to produce the local crockery.”
Engravers, jewellers, painters, cabinetmakers and stonemasons established the groundwork for what is now the island’s specialty: superior expertise in crafts. When a ceramics and glass-blowing school opened in 1998 on the east coast in the port of Nexø, it had such spectacular results that the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts incorporated it into its own programmes just a few years later.
The lively, friendly village of Gudhjem to the north is a popular destination for visitors.
“Glass and ceramics are two closely related trades,” says third-year student Anna Reimers Overbeck. “We work with the same material and use furnaces and kilns that reach extreme temperatures.” As the young woman shows us around the grounds of the institution that educates 60 enthusiastic students from around the world, she adds, “and Bornholm is known as a particularly exciting environment for artists and craftspeople. There’s a peaceful atmosphere here, we have time to really focus on our trade. We can take long walks for inspiration, life isn’t very expensive in winter and, in the summer season, there are tons of tourists that provide a lot of turnover for us.”
Artisanal excellence
A small community on the northeast corner of the island, Svaneke was voted Denmark’s most beautiful village in 2013. It is a haven for artists. If you leave the port and walk up the maze of cobbled alleyways lined with pastel-coloured, half-timbered houses, you arrive at the studio of Pernille Bülow. Like so many others, the glassblower developed a fondness for the island and chose to move here in 1982.
“I had my four children here, have spent my entire career here, have strolled for thousands of hours along the coastal paths that nourish my work to this day – I couldn’t live anywhere else,” she says as she approaches the 1200°C furnace that yields the molten glass with which she makes her artistic lighting, carafes and jewellery. “Svaneke has been attracting artisans for about ten years. Each year, new crafts specialists settle here – we just opened a school, it’s a bustling village all year long,” confirms Susanne Kristiansen from behind the counter of her grocery store a few steps away, where she sells tea, coffee and fig jams (from fruit picked in Svaneke) amid a hodgepodge of items produced on the island. “I’ve discovered paradise, a land of freedom and beauty. My husband and I sold our tiny, overpriced apartment in Copenhagen and were able to buy ourselves a big and beautiful house here.”
It’s nearly always the same story. The island instantly enchants visitors and they settle for good in this sanctuary at the end of the earth.
In 1971, Jørgen Toft Christensen was a 19-year-old hippy and came here for a six-week vacation. “And I still live here today,” smiles the tattooed, moustached sexagenarian as he shows us around the farm he has renovated. Since moving here in 1973, he’s been raising free-range pigs.
Jørgen Toft Christensen’s pork farm sells high-quality meats in its shop and even in certain charcuterie outlets on the mainland.
Today, he supplies the best deli meats in Denmark and, at the inn he opened with his wife, serves traditional recipes of yesteryear picked up from nearby farms, as the island has been inhabited since ancient times. His daughter, who teaches literature in Copenhagen, has her principal residence here, Along with her physician husband, she commutes weekly by ferry (3½ hours) or by plane (45 minutes), a lifestyle common to an increasing number of young Copenhageners.
Today, fishing boats share the waters with tourist vessels.
Microclimate
And what about the families that have lived on Bornholm for generations? Nicolai Nørregaard, 40, the chef at Kadeau (one Michelin star), is certainly the island’s best-known and most recognised inhabitant. He was born here, grew up here and his family have worked in fish smokehouses since the late 19th century.
Nicolai Nørregaard, the chef at Kadeau, was born and grew up on Bornholm.
In 2007, without any culinary training to speak of, he decided to open a restaurant with childhood friend Rasmus Kofoed, a Danish chef and restaurateur who won the Bocuse d’Or in 2011 and is co-owner of the Geranium, a three-Michelin-star establishment in Copenhagen. Their ambition was to run the island’s best restaurant: “it wasn’t hard to do, there was nothing here of gastronomic interest”, chuckles the chef.
The Michelin-starred restaurant is known for incorporating the wild shoots and herbs found on the island in its dishes.
After a single season, Kadeau began receiving glowing write-ups in the press and was generating markedly positive word of mouth reviews. “Back when we opened, Noma was the be-all and end-all of Nordic cuisine. Without going against the dogmas established by Noma’s founder, René Redzepi, I still wanted to tailor them to the Bornholm terroir. We have a specific microclimate, enjoy more sun than elsewhere in Denmark, and the soil is more fertile.” The dazzling success of his restaurant led him to open another establishment of the same name in Copenhagen in 2016, which now boasts two Michelin stars.
Overlooking a long stretch of fine sandy beach, the patio doors of the restaurant open out onto the Baltic Sea.
It is 6 p.m.: the sun is caressing the restaurant’s magnificent windows that overlook the Baltic from atop a pristine dune. Dinner will soon begin, fourteen dishes will arrive in an epicurean parade, lovingly exploiting the island’s full culinary potential – woodland herbs, raw and smoked fish, pork cheeks, dried tomatoes, cabbage, garden asparagus, wild onions, flowers, honey. The gourmet meal becomes a gastronomic rendering of the range of sensations this enchanting land can inspire, from the most refined to the most unexpected. And that is perhaps Bornholm’s secret – a subtle blend of tradition and experimentation in a truly heavenly setting.
