Bornholm is an island of two halves. Ancient granites dominate the northern part of the island, but the southernmost area of Bornholm has softer, gentler landscapes that tell of a sedimentary substructure. Gudhjem is the only place of any size in the central section of Bornholm’s north coast and there’s no mistaking that this is granite country. Gudhjem tumbles down a rocky hillside, its old houses arranged in tiers, with most dwellings having some sort of sea view.
To the west of the port, the landscape rises through folds and clefts to a bold headland. Boats leave the little harbour at Gudhjem, ferrying tourists up the coast to the dramatic fractured cliffs at Helligdomsklipperne. This stretch of coast captured the imagination of romantic-idiom Danish painters such as Anders Christian Lunde who in the mid-19th century famously portrayed the Danish king arriving by ship at Helligdomsklipperne.
But Gudhjem is also the departure point for boats bound for somewhere even wilder and more exotic than Helligdomsklipperne. Throughout the year, even at times with fierce winter storms, either the MS Ertholm or the MS Peter weigh anchor in Gudhjem and set a course for the Ertholm Islands.
Bornholm often styles itself as being the easternmost part of Denmark. It lies in the Baltic well out to sea, south-east of the Swedish province of Skåne and just 85 kilometres from the coast of Polish Pomerania. For Danes, the overnight ferry journey from the port of Køge (close to Copenhagen) to distant Bornholm is laced with a sense of adventure and, for older travellers, a dash of nostalgia. Bornholm has long been associated with holidays and good times.
But there is a fragment of Denmark even further east than Bornholm.
On clear days, the Ertholmene (literally ‘pea islands’ due to their diminutive size) can easily be seen from the cliffs above Gudhjem. But often the islands are lost in Baltic cloud, so it’s no surprise that the people who live on the two populated islands in the archipelago have little sense of being mere appendages of Bornholm.
“No, the islands are not part of Bornholm at all,” explains an Ertholmene resident whom we meet on the boat from Gudhjem. The man is returning home after a week away in Copenhagen. He explains that the Ertholmene are a one-off in Denmark’s complicated system of local governance. “We have regions and municipalities,” says the man. “Then there’s Bornholm, which is a sort of super-municipality. And lastly the Ertholmene which, uniquely, are run directly by the national government. It’s the only place in Denmark which is managed like this.”
The Ertholmene’s two populated islands are called Christiansø and Frederiksø. They are linked by a footbridge. Together they make up a community of about 80 people.
“Frederiksø people are different,” says the man on the boat, who evidently lives on Christiansø. “But we pull together when we have to,” he adds, going on to explain about the revolution of 2016 when the islanders successfully petitioned the Danish government to oust the islands’ administrator, Orla Johannsen. “He just was wasn’t the right person for the job,” says the man on the boat, pointing out that the mist is clearing and it’s now possible to see the islands in the distance.
Ertholmene impressions
It takes a special kind of person to settle in the remotest community in Denmark. “Yes, we really are the eastern frontier,” says the home-bound traveller. “But, if you don’t mind isolation and the long, dark winters, it’s a good place to make a home.”
Alighting from the MS Ertholm, first impressions of the two islands suggest that life might be very good here. On Christiansø, much the larger of the two inhabited islands, there’s a quaint church, a school and a cosy inn, which rather oddly closes in the winter months when one imagines it might be most valued by the islanders. “We really rely on the summer tourist trade,” explains the woman at the bar. “We just don’t get winter visitors to the islands.”
Traditional housing on the island of Frederiksø which, like neighbouring Christiansø, has no roads (photo © hidden europe).
It’s a ten-minute walk from the pub to the end of the world. Or to Verdens Ende (the Danish for World’s End). This is the very end of Denmark, the north-east extremity of the easternmost populated island in the Kingdom of Denmark.
Christiansø is hardly bustling, but Frederiksø is even quieter. There is a scatter of cottages, linked by rough, cobbled pathways. At one end of Frederiksø is a graceful, two-storey building which, were it not for its unusually small windows, one might assume it to be a manse or rectory. It turns out to be the former prison. Islands make good prisons. For fifteen years, the prison on Frederiksø was home to the Danish political activist and theologian Jacob Dampe (often known as JJ Dampe). He was a prominent victim of the laws restricting the freedom of the press introduced in Denmark during the Napoleonic Wars. Even after the cessation of hostilities, press censorship still continued and Dampe was convicted of having violated those laws in 1821.
A death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and after five years at the Kastellet — Copenhagen’s great star-shaped fortress — Dampe was transferred to Frederiksø where he remained until 1841. He was then given a measure of freedom and allowed to live in Bornholm on the condition that he did not leave that island. In 1848, he was freed and returned to Copenhagen.
Dampe’s views of life on Frederiksø are best captured in his correspondence with the Danish authorities in which he frequently expressed the wish that he might be executed. Exile in the Ertholmene was a fate worse than death. “There is,” he complained, “nothing to do here.”
In the hectic rush of a digital age, it has to be said, this to some would be a blessing.
Our map shows the location of the Ertholm Islands in the Baltic.
