BORNHOLM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25856, 29 May 1945, Page 3

BORNHOLM

THE ISLAND PARADISE KEY TO THE BALTIC Written for the Otago Daily Times by S. K. Now here is a secret: When one writes on far-away places one starts off with something topical to catch the dear reader’s eye, and to interest one’s beloved editor. Bornholm is " news ” because the Russians have temporarily occupied this dream-island of the Baltic, but the Russians in due course have promised to leave there again. So far, then, the interest is passing, yet even the most biased will not deny that our housing shortage is very passing, nor will it lose in interest. Well, then, here is secret No 2: Go to Bornholm and your troubles are over. That you have reached paradise when you get there is, of course, understood, the topical point though is my friend Harald Hansen, of Randklovt, Bornholm. , , , , Harald was a fisherman, and he had some queer ideas. One night after wo had been poaching salmon in the fiords and I slept in his house, he scared the wits out of me when he told me that the yellow stick of putty he was sniffing at was dynamite. He held there was nothing like a whiff of dynamite to take away a headache, so he always kept some lying around the place. Harald was, however, no longer a sailor; he had had an accident which crippled one leg, and Harald took to building houses. The house was freehold, standing high on the cliffs above the Baltic; it had a foundation of granite boulders, a cellar, and above rose a storey and ahalf of timber and bricks, with a roof of the finest wheat-thatch guaranteed to last for 50 years. There was a very large room on the ground floor with a kitchen and a storeroom, one bedroom and bathroom. Up above were more bedrooms. Harald dynamited a well on the property, and blasted steps down to the sea, where he would arrange a little boat harbour in the fiord. The price for all this was 5000 Danish kroner, and that was exactly £250 New Zealand currency. Harald is surely still on Bornholm, you may write to him directly; I am not asking for a commission. Garden of Eden Bornholm is rather like the Garden of Eden before the Fall. There are a few more people about, some 40,000, but they are the kindest and most lovable and most charming people you can wish to meet. The big town is Ronne, a metropolis of 10,000 islanders living in houses of white and pmk and pale-blue timber-work, the cobbiestoned streets all leading to the harbour, where the boat from Copenhagen arrives every day, a trip of eight hours. Aakirkebye lies plumb in the middle of the island, near the famed beech forest of Almindingen. This city of a thousand people is rather sprawling and lacks the sea to set off its beauty. Nexo and Hasle are about as “vast” as the inland town, but best of all I love Svaneke. I went to midnight service there once when staying with friends on Christmas Eve. Snow blanketed the tiny town, the sea roared on the breakwater of the fishing harbour, lights shone from mullioned windows, the low houses huddled together for warmth, the cobblestones on the steep streets made the walk to church quite dangerous and rather merry. I longed for the glowing hot porcelain-stove in my host’s house, and for another bur-gundy-toddy. (My host insisted that I was too young for a rum-toddy, and that nearly ruined my vacation.) Then, slowly, the church bell pealed in the frosty air, we filed in for the service; the church had been emptied of pews, a cradle stood on the stone-flagged floor with the Christmas-baby squalling loudly in it. A young ox, a foal, a goat, other animals were moving on straw around it; the dark walls of the church rose high, lit only by candles; the ancient runic signs on granite slabs from the viking-halls of which the church was built belonged to that night of Christ’s birth. A few more sleigh-bells jingled outside, and then there was peace. Old hymns sang the world to rest, lulled the child in the crib to sleep. “This Precious Isle”

In summer and autumn there are other delights. The farms stand surrounded by their acres, each house by itself, no villages break up the landscape. Black beams criss-crossing whitewashed walls, thatched roofs, dark-red outbuildings, and in the fields low hills surrounded by standing corn, the graves of the vikings which must never be disturbed. Cairns by the wayside, cairns by the sea to remind the Bornholmers of their wild ancestors, to tell the story of ancient battles! Every cairn has its well-remembered story; there is one near Nexo where Koefoed and his followers fought the Swedes 300 years ago and freed the island for Denmark. But that only happened yesterday; what about the cairn of Half jar Blaatand, who . ruled independently over his vikings a thousands year ago? And those other battles against the Swedes and the Hansards in the fourteenth and fifteenth and sixteenth centuries? And the cairns to the many Hansens by the fiords and the cliffs? They were always searobbers, every Bornholmer will tell you that, so to-day’s Hansens may still be somewhat eccentric, and the really good poachinggrounds are always left to them. Walk across to my friend Harald one evening, the honeysuckle’s scent heavy in the air, the whole island is overgrown with it. No motor cars will disturb you; only a few are driven by the doctors; the rest use gigs in summer and sleighs in winter. Harald, with his particular madness for dynamite, has blasted a platform for his own house right out of the cliffs. Two sides of the house are solid cliff-face, when a rip-tide comes in Harald takes to the roof or climbs up a ladder from it to the headland of his fiord A good night for salmon-poaching tonight, warm and a light inshore breeze; the fish will come in to feed. “What about it. Harald? ” “ Right; let’s go! ” Poaching

We shall take the small row-boal, load up with a net, stores, muffle the osr-lodes with some rags, and out to sea. Straight out, for half an hour or more, no talking, no smoking, the fish may take fright! And then we creep in, not the. slightest noise; the oars creak a little, a splash; caught a crab, blast it; let’s hope for the best. Now we have reached the jutting foreland of a lonely fiord; quietly the net is let overboard; on we go in a wide, half-circle, laying the net across the opening of the fiord; hurrah, we have reached the other side without too much trouble. Take it easy now, light a pipe, row inside, to the shore, and then the fun starts. Stamping on the bottom of the boat, splashing the oars, throwing stones in the water, singing Norse searobber songs, and yet keeping a weather-eye open for a possible patrol-boat. All goes well, the old viking gods protect us, back to the net where the fish got caught when they fled out to sea. Glittering and phospherescent they flip into our boat from the net. heavy and wet work pulling it in; only the salmon are kept, the others, strange monsters and slim pirates, go back into the sea. And now for home, a roaring fire, change into dry things, salmon for early morning supper, and later for breakfast. And then we yarn for hours.—Harald, of life in Bornholm, of the trip we are going to take across (he Baltic next long vacation, from this island which guards its entrance.