We changed our minds at the last moment and set off to Bornholm which is Denmark’s easternmost island in the middle of the Baltic and only 80 minutes speed sail from Ystad in Sweden. It was very special…rocky shorelines, fishing harbours, round medieval churches, windmills, clarity of light and somehow the horizon seems unusually high.
We camped for four days on the coast outside Gudjhem. (The view above is from our campsite).There was a magical walk into the fishing harbour through an extraordinary range of landscape…rocks, a kind of Giant’s Causeway, golden sands, pine forest, oak wood, village, harbours, and 46 different kinds of flower including honeysuckle, wild rose, heather, and blue chicory.
We caught the ferry to Christiansø, a tiny island where they try to grow figs. We had a great fish lunch and walked across the bridge to the even smaller Frediksø with its tower and swans.
We saw medieval round churches and windmills.
My drawing of windmills below.
And we went to the house of the artist Oluf Høst who painted hundreds of paintings of the same view in different seasons (more than a bit obsessively with a life story which would be worthy of an Ibsen play). His paintings are wonderful.
Bornholm is big on art and also on ceramics thanks to the kaolin in the soil and we visited a great museum based on a 19th century factory in Rønne where potters still work.
But perhaps most impressive were the rock carvings from the Bronze age which show twelve images of the sun ship which they believed caused the sun to rise and set, and the burial stones which stood by the sea gazing North.
We sailed back to Ystad in Sweden and went straight to Ales Stenar, 59 standing stones on the cliffs in the shape of a viking ship erected 1400 years ago using stones from the mesolithic era 5000 years’ old. It’s a powerful and beautiful place where paragliders jump off the edge of the cliff and catch the thermal lifts along with seabirds who soar by in a rather superior way however good the paraglider. We sat and watched the setting sun and reckoned that these stones were looking out across the water in a pretty much straight line to the burial chamber on Bornholm and the carvings of the sun ships where we’d been earlier that day. With Alex’s drawing below.
A last stop in Ystad was to buy hats in the hatshop from the 1800s where Alex’s godson’s fiancée’s granny and cousins own the shop. They were lovely. A great encounter…and good hats!
Last of all an amazing day driving from Ystad to Malmo and across The Bridge (another TV murder mystery series sighting, this time Sága the Swedish detective). What a bridge! Second longest in Europe, eight kilometres long before it sinks under the waters with a four kilometre tunnel across to Copenhagen. On the way we passed hundreds of swans which tolerate the relatively saline free waters of the Baltic. They’ve been a feature of the last 5 weeks. We won’t see them again as we approach the North Sea .
We stopped at the Louisiana contemporary art museum which was really striking. The original house belonged to a man who had three wives called Louise (hence the gallery’s name…). It was then left to be made into a museum which would show serious modern art and would appeal so it’s built round a glorious garden of fine trees which go down to the sea, the architecture a triumph of calm and interesting spaces, and you can see how much people enjoy it. And the donor believed that people needed good food and drink to enjoy art and, without being fussy at all, our lunch really was delicious!
Last stop was Helsingør (the site of Hamlet’s Elsinor) to catch ferry number 26 (yes, we are counting) to get to Helsingborg back in Sweden. The two castles on either side stand guard to the narrow strait which marks the end of the Baltic and the start of the Kattegat which becomes the North Sea.. We’re now stopped in the strangely named Skummerslövstrand watching the sun go down and heading North tomorrow.
Here’s the map!
