Bornholm

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Bornholms Regionskommune
Bornholms Regionskommune's coat of arms.
Basic Facts
Municipality seat	Rønne
Area	588 km²
Inhabitants	43,040 (2007)
Website	www.brk.dk
Location	55°10′N, 15°00′E

Bornholm (archaic Burgundarholm) is a Danish island in the Baltic Sea. It also refers to Bornholm Regional Municipality, the municipality (Danish, kommune) which covers the entire island. Bornholm was one of the three last Danish municipalities not belonging to a County— the others being Copenhagen and Frederiksberg. On 1 January 2007, the municipality lost its county privileges and became part of Region Hovedstaden (i.e. the Copenhagen Capital Region).

The island is located to the east of Denmark, the south of Sweden, and the north of Poland. The main industries on the island include fishing, arts and crafts like glass making and pottery using locally worked clay, and dairy farming. Tourism is important during the summer.

The small islands Ertholmene are located 18 km to the north-east of Bornholm.

Strategically located in the Baltic, Bornholm has been a bone of contention usually ruled by Denmark, but also by Lübeck and Sweden. The castle ruin Hammershus on the northwestern tip of the island gives testimony to its strategic importance, as the island is home to the largest fortress in northern Europe.

The island is also notable for its dialect. The so-called bornholmsk, whilst usually considered a dialect of Danish, sports some unusual features, in particular it has retained three distinct grammatical genders, like Icelandic, and unlike standard Danish.

1 Municipality
2 History
3 Historical architecture
4 Famous people
5 References in popular culture
6 Other islands in the Baltic Sea
7 See also
8 References
9 External links

[edit] Municipality

Unofficial flag of Bornholm.

Bornholm Regional Municipality is the local authority (Danish, kommune) covering the entire island. It comprises the five former municipalities on the island (Allinge-Gudhjem, Hasle, Nexø, Rønne and Aakirkeby) and the former Bornholm County. The seat of the municipal council is the island's main town, Rønne. The first regional mayor is Bjarne Kristiansen.

Ferry services connect Rønne to Świnoujście (Poland), Sassnitz (Germany), Køge (Denmark) and Ystad (Sweden). Simrishamn (Sweden) has a ferry connection during the summer. There are also regular catamaran services between Nexø and the Polish ports of Kolobrzeg, Leba and Ustka.

Bornholm Regional Municipality was not merged with other municipalities on January 1, 2007 as the result of the nationwide Kommunalreformen ("The Municipal Reform" of 2007).

[edit] History

Landsat satellite photo

In ancient Danish, the island's name was Borghand or Borghund. Other names known for the island include Burgendaland (9th century), Hulmo / Holmus (Adam of Bremen), Burgundehulm (1145), and Borghandæholm (14th century).^[1] Alfred the Great uses the form Burgenda land^[2]. Some scholars^[3] believe that the Burgundians are named after Bornholm; the Burgundians were a Germanic tribe which moved west when the western Roman Empire collapsed, and occupied and named Burgundy in France.

Bornholm formed part of the historical Lands of Denmark when the nation united out of a series of petty chiefdoms. It was originally administratively part of the province of Scania and was administered by the Scanian Law after this was codified in the 13th century. Control over the island evolved into a long-raging dispute between the See of Lund and the Danish crown culminating in several battles. The first fortress on the island was Gamleborg which was replaced by Lilleborg, built by the king in 1150. In 1149, the king accepted the transfer of three of the island's four herreder to the archbishop. In 1250, the archbishop constructed his own fortress, Hammershus. A campaign launched from it in 1259 conquered the remaining part of the island including Lilleborg. The island's status remained a matter of dispute for an additional 200 years.

Bornholm was pawned to Lübeck for 50 years starting 1525. Its first militia, Bornholms Milits was formed in 1624.

Swedish forces conquered the island in 1645, but returned the island to Denmark in the following peace settlement. After the war in 1658, Denmark ceded the island to Sweden along with the rest of the Scanian provinces and Trøndelag and it was occupied by Swedish forces.

A revolt broke out the same year, culminating in Villum Clausen's shooting of the Swedish commander Johan Printzensköld on December 8, 1658.[1] Following the revolt, a deputation of islanders presented the island as a gift to King Frederick III on the condition that the island would never be ceded again. This status was confirmed in the following peace settlement (1660).

A immigration of Swedes, notably from Småland or Skåne, occurred during the 19th century, seeking work and better conditions. Most of these people did not remain on the island.

Map of Denmark (Bornholm is to the far right)

Bornholm, as a part of Denmark, was captured by Germany relatively early in the Second World War, and served as a lookout post and listening station during the war. The island's perfect central position in the Baltic Sea meant that it was an important "natural fortress" between Germany and Sweden, effectively keeping submarines and destroyers away from Nazi occupied waters. Several concrete coastal installations were built during the war, and several coastal batteries had tremendous range. However none of them were ever used and only a single test shot was fired during the occupation. These remnants of Nazi rule have since then fallen into disrepair and are mostly regarded today as historical curiosities. Many tourists visit the ruins each year, however, providing supplemental income to the tourist industry.

On 22 August 1943 a rocket (numbered V83, probably launched from a Heinkel He 111) crashed on Bornholm as part of a test - the warhead was a dummy made of concrete. This was photographed or sketched by the Danish Naval Officer-in-Charge on Bornholm, Lieutenant Commander Hasager Christiansen. This was the first sign British Intelligence saw of Germany's aspirations to develop flying bombs and rockets - which were to become known as V1 and V2.

Bornholm was heavily bombarded by Soviet forces in May 1945. Von Kamft, the German superior officer in charge of the island garrison refused to surrender to Soviet forces, as his orders were to surrender to the Allied Forces. The Germans sent several telegrams to Copenhagen requesting that at least one British soldier should be transferred to Bornholm, so that the Germans could surrender to the western allied forces instead of the Russians. When Von Kamft failed to provide a written capitulation as demanded by the Russian commanders, several Soviet aircraft relentlessly bombed and destroyed more than 800 civilian houses and seriously damaged roughly 3000 more during 7-8 May 1945. Eventually, the German garrison did surrender to the Soviet forces, which occupied the island until April 5, 1946.

More recently NATO radar installations have been placed on the island.

A Russian (Soviet) declaration after World War II stated that the placement of "foreign soldiers" (i.e., NATO forces) on Bornholm would be considered a declaration of war against Russia, and that Denmark should keep troops on it at all times to protect it from foreign aggression. This caused diplomatic problems at least twice: once when an American helicopter landed outside the city of Svaneke due to engine problems in a NATO exercise over the Baltic Sea, and once (sometime between 1999 and 2003) when the Danish government suggested shutting down Almegårdens Kaserne, the local military facility, since "the island could quickly be protected by troops from surrounding areas and has no strategic importance after the fall of the Iron Curtain".

[edit] Historical architecture

Ruins of Hammershus, a Medieval fortress.

The island is home to 15 medieval churches, four of which are round and display unique artwork and architecture.

The island also hosts some notable examples of 19th and early 20th century architecture, amongst others, about 300 wooden houses in Rønne and Nexø, donated by Sweden after the World War II, when the island was repairing war damages.

[edit] Famous people

The Danish painter Oluf Høst was born in Svaneke in 1884.

The Danish writer and painter Gustaf Munch-Petersen moved to Bornholm in 1935 and married Lise Hjort while living on the island.

At the age of 8 socialist writer Martin Andersen Nexø moved to the island, and adopted the last name Nexø from the city Nexø at the east coast of the island.

Famous pipe-organ builder and manufacturer, M.P. Möller was born on the Island of Bornholm and lived in a town a few miles south of Allinge.

[edit] References in popular culture

A considerable part of the Second World War spy thriller Hornet Flight by Ken Follet takes place on Bornholm, depicting the island under German occupation.

In 2000, the book The Templars' Secret Island by theorists Henry Lincoln (famous for co-writing Holy Blood, Holy Grail) and Erling Haagensen described several observations about the island. Some of these involved claims of apparent geometry, such as that Haagensen in Bornholms Mysterium from 1992 had discovered that geometry related to the Island's four round churches could be marked on a map to define a hexagonal geometry. Lincoln and Haagensen's Secret Island book claims that the Bornholm geometry is manmade, was created around the time of the emergence of the Knights Templar during the early Crusades in 1188-1250 AD, required measurement technology that was not known to have been used in Europe before the 17th century (but with accuracy known to Hellenistic Greece 300 BC), and that the churches' true original function may have been as medieval astronomical observatories. The conclusions in Secret Island are controversial, and have not been supported by academic historians. Critics point out that there is no record of medieval astronomical observatories in Europe, no record of the Templars ever being involved in scientific research of that nature, and in fact never any record of Templars even having a presence in Scandinavia, even in the long list of Templar accusations generated by the investigators of the Inquisition.

[edit] Other islands in the Baltic Sea

[edit] See also

[edit] References

In-line:

^ Politikens Nudansk Ordborg (1993), 15th edition, entry "Bornholm" (Danish)
^ King Alfred's Anglo-Saxon version of Orosius, London, 1859, edited by J. Bosworth
^ Essai sur l'histoire du peuple burgonde, de Bornholm (Burgundarholm) vers la Bourgogne et les Bourguignons, 1965, by Rene Guichard, published by A. et J. Picard et Cie.

General:

The Island of Bornholm, a chapter in Selected Prose by Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin, 1969, Northwestern University Press.
The Battle of Bornholm in The hidden folk : stories of fairies, dwarves, selkies, and other secret beings, by Lise Lunge-Larsen, 2004, Houghton Mifflin.
The Templars' Secret Island: The Knights, the Priest, and the Treasure, 1992, by Erling Haagensen and Henry Lincoln
Behind the Da Vinci Code, 2006 documentary by The History Channel