Despite being known as the sunniest place in Denmark, which is why Bornholm is called the “Sunshine Island”, we left the ship under cloudy skies as we boarded our shuttle bus into town. Rønne has a mild climate and laid-back atmosphere on this island that is closer to Sweden than Denmark. There’s history here of both Swedish and German rule, as well as some WW2 occupations, but Bornholm has been a Danish possession since 1522. Fishing, farming and tourism run the economy here, most of the tourists coming from countries that border the Baltic.
The shuttle dropped us off at the foot of the hill that the St. Nicolas Church stands. on.
There has been a church on this site for over 700 years and this current version is a part of the Lutheran Evangelical Church.
The little info sheet that the church's parish council has available at the church says: "For the inhabitants of Rønne it has been a place of refuge in times of joy and sorrow. It has witnessed war, plague and bombardment. It has witnessed merchant vessels from the Hansa League, Swedish and Russian warships, freight ships, fishing boats, cruise ships and ferries. It has been a landmark for Rønne city through the ages....
The church is not a place like other houses. It is a building built for the glory of God. It remains a frame for the congregation's praise and prayer. That is why we take care of it and why we have services every Sunday." I loved these thoughtful sentiments.
I liked the clean lines and the simplicity of the interior. Each of the benches had this painted design on the end. The interior was all repainted in 2017.
The stained glass mosaics as they call them, were created in 1954 to retell the Parable of the Sower. Three of the five panels are pictured here.
I loved this stunning painting over the altar, it's so different than what you typically see. The scene is Jesus calming the seas, He is pictured in the red robe. It is definitely a more modern painting, having been created in 1990. The look of the sea is said to be more Nordic than Galilean but to be able to look towards Jesus calming storms in your life seems an excellent thing to think about for those attending church each week.
The image of St. Nicholas adorns this small space on the left. Notice the ship hanging from the ceiling on the right. It's a chandelier that was created in nearby Lübeck in 1620. The Island of Bornholm was under Lübeck's control for about 50 years.
Rønne is the largest city on the island and one that was bombed so badly by the Russians in May of 1945 as they worked on ousting the Germans here that what was left was pretty much a shambles. Many of the “older” buildings that you see in Rønne may not be as old as they actually look. This one sure was pretty though.
There were so many ways to feel like you were taking a peek into people's lives, without feeling like a Peeping Tom. Windowsills held decorative items and many windows had lovely lace curtains. With this gate open on the right I got a look into this lovely tiled courtyard.
Holly, Sally and I took a photo in front of the lighthouse. We had to get it quick because someone on the other side of a wall was spraying water our way!
I have loved seeing all the hollyhocks throughout the Baltics. I am determined to grow some in my own yard.
They just seem to grow wild here, without anyone needing to tend to them.
The colors in this photo caught my eye so I had to detour to take the photo.
An old home that triples as a church, the Salvation Army center, and a wedding venue.
Another thing I loved seeing in Rønne were the flowers on doorsteps. It's such a simple touch that adds a welcome.
Some of the lace curtains in the windows.
A ceramic cat was standing on this windowsill.
One of the places i had wanted to see was the Hjorth Ceramics Museum. It's actually a “living museum” at Hjorth’s Fabrik, where they have a 150 year old ceramics factory.
The workshops are still run and ceramics still made the same way as they were in 1862, all by hand, although they no longer fire the pieces in wood burning kilns. These people make some beautiful ceramics as you will see.!
Karl and I opted for the self-guided tour here while the others wandered other parts of town. The first room we saw was where they prepare the clay. They will even recycle pieces they make there that don't turn out properly, crushing them in the machine on the right so that a portion of the recycled clay can be added to their new mix.
On the left are some chunks ready to be crushed and recycled. One the right are some of the casting molds.
As they prepare the clay, which is local to the island of Bornholm, they mix it with water in the large container on the left, then use pressure from the machine on the right to separate the water from the clay to get it ready for the artists who create their dishes and other pieces. of ceramic and porcelain.
We were able to talk to some of the apprentices working on their craft. The young woman on the left was there from England for the summer. She said one of the hardest things to learn was the rhythm of the foot wheel that turns the pottery wheel. Her foot had to just keep going automatically as she focused on making bowls with her hands. The apprentice on the right is from Denmark and she is six months into a two and half year apprenticeship at Hjorth’s Fabrik. She was attaching handles to small pitchers. Once she gets good at making that size she will go on to making larger pitchers.
Here was another summer apprentice from Chile. She has a ceramics studio at home that she is hoping to make her full time job. We asked her if her hands get dry from working with clay all day and she assured us that she goes through a lot of hand cream. Her fingernails also get pretty brittle.. She was creating beautiful work though.
Some pieces drying and some waiting for another firing.
Different types and colors of clay come from all over Bornholm. They also crush some of their local granite to create a unique scolor and hine to one of their signature glazes. I likeed that color so much I bought a small pitcher.
Some of the colors used to make glazes, although none of the pieces we saw were bright like these colors.
Another room full of casting holds and Karl. as we exited the potter's workshops down the narrow, winding stairs.
Some decorative finished pieces on the left. On the right you can see how much a piece will shrink once it's fired.
They had these old heating stoves throughout the buildings with buckets of coal beside them. One of the men told us they still use them in the winter.
Buckets and buckets of glazing colors.
Pictured here are the old wood burning kilns. They would have been packed with ceramics, then the doors closed with stones and mortar. The wood would then go in beneath the floor level. When the kilns reached their top temperature then the wood log holes were also closed. These were actual furnaces used between 1910 and 1964.
Any piece of ceramic made here has some kind of stamp on it.
These are today's gas kilns. Where the old kilns would have have to have been tended to continuously for 48 hours, these require much less manual labor and looking after with interior monitors keeping track of temperatures. They do have to keep track what gets loaded here because pieces that need a higher heat to melt the glaze have to be put on the left, closer to the gas flames.
This was a random photo but one of the things the city is famous for is grandfather clocks. Bornholm is a small, rocky island in the Baltic where the story goes that a Dutch ship wrecked here in 1744 carrying English grandfather clocks in its hold. In order to salvage the clocks the local craftsmen had to learn how to clean and repair them which then motivated them to make similar timepieces of their own and the rest, so they say, is history. It doesn't show up well but the round medal at the top of the clock face says "Markus Larsen, Rønne 1924."
Ceramics made of local clay have been a part of the island's history since 4000 BC. From top left clockwise you'll see pieces over 3000 years old, Viking and Medieval pieces from 1020-1500, pottery dating from 1600-1850, and a yellow ceramic that Bornholm has been famous for since 1850.
These types of ceramics were especially loved by wealthy English to use for English puddings (cakes) and the fish shaped ones for fish pudding or fish in jelly.
More modern pieces have the designs where the glaze seems to run down the sides of the piece, or other unique designs.
The chicken and eggs in the postcard is a piece of modern art. I loved the look of the different eggs with their unique glazes.
A pretty ceramic plate dedicated to the island and the enormous old castle that once stood at its northern end. You can probably tell by now that I found this visit to the ceramic museum fascinating, and especially wonderful that generations later they are still making pieces by hand.
After leaving the museum we just happened to run into Chris, Sally and Holly once again. Chris headed back to the ship but the other two hung out with Karl and I as we found something to eat at the Market Square where there were all kinds of booths selling all kinds of foods. After buying some handmade Bornholm chocolates for "Chocolate Around the World" we opted for lunch. I had the above bratwurst with sauerkraut and potatoes. I can honestly say that is the best sauerkraut I have ever had. The combination of it with the mustard and the brat were perfection!
We walked Holly and Sally to the shuttle stop then Karl and I wandered around some more, trying to find the small Defense Museum in Rønne. More of the yellow and orange houses, plus more hollyhocks were part of our views.
There were some really great door knockers in Rønne as well.
We saw the Methodist church here in Rønne but it wasn't open for going inside.
Another doorstep decoration to love.
Many of the homes we saw were built in the 19th century, but many were re-creations.
A view of the harbor as we walking along the road above it.
Looking back towards Old Town and St. Nicholas Church.
A house with a unique roofline.
And one more interesting structure.
After just one wrong turn we finally arrived at the Frosvarsmuseum, or Defense Museum.
This small, private museum sits at the end of a lane. We were eagerly welcomed onto the property and given an explanation by
the gentleman in this photo. This part of the ground is a hodgepodge of older vehicles, many dating back to WW2 and after when they were given to Denmark as part of the Marshall Plan.
The tank Karl is checking out was actually used at one of the Normandy D-Day beaches. They know this because they can track it by the serial number. It still even runs.
This small guardhouse is one of only two in existence that date back to King Christian VIII of Denmark who ruled from 1839-1848. The other one is in the Virgin Islands.
Not sure where this bell came from but it has a nice tone. The cannon is one that belonged to the 18th century Danish army.
Some of the flags and banners they had on display.
What we really came here to see was this Enigma machine, one that was actually used by the German army on their Eastern front. It ended up in coming to Bornholm with German troops in 1945. By this time the Germans here were in a hopeless position with no heavy weapons and no proper command structure. The soldier who had brought the enigma from the eastern front ended up throwing it into a ditch . It was found after the liberation and hidden in an attic because it turned out to not be a typewriter like the finder had hoped for. Until 1985 it was forgotten. It was a this point that the machine was donated to the Defense Museum.
An enigma was a famous type of encryption machine that allowed the Germans to create seemingly unbreakable coded messages since it allowed for billions of ways to encode the message. Thanks to the fact that each message began with the day and date and ended with "Heil Hitler", code breakers were eventually able to overcome the seemingly unbreakable enigma codes.
Some of the Danish army uniforms over the years. They had quite a collection of them here. These were what were the beginnings of the museum.
The Citadel Tower sits behind the museum. At one point it was THE defensive position in Rønne, not far from the port with cannon views out to the water.
Inside the tower today they have the remains of two V2 test rockets, which are the rockets that were used to bombard London during the Blitz. At one time they stored some munitions in this building, probably in this lower chamber on the right.
On the second floor there were originally 10 guns of different calibers here for defense. All ten were fired at once as a test in 1899 which caused the roof over the gun deck to lift up from the pressure of the firing. Luckily for them it dropped down into place again ,but after that it was determined that the tower wasn't suitable for a gun battery. The cannons here are to just show what it would have looked like. A group of four cannons were relocated to a position below the tower, closer to the waterfront.
The interior of the roof that flew up and then landed back in place.
They had some newer weapons here like the Stinger Missile,
as well as this old jeep from post WW2 that was turned into a tractor. It was a pretty eclectic collection at the Defense Museum but nicely done with exhibits in both Dutch and English. And we definitely left all the crowds behind here as there were only seven other people wandering around at the same time we were.
We unknowingly took the long way around and then ended up in the woods behind the museum to get back to Serenade. It was a pretty walk, much nicer than along the highway. When we finally did drop back down to the road the shuttle driver saw us and stopped to pick us up, total serendipity which our feet appreciated. Rønne turned out to be a most enjoyable place to spend a day with lots of friendly faces and beautiful places.
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