Fisherman’s cottage

In their spare time since more than a hundred years ago the fishermen and soldiers would build tiny granite cottages and small granite walled gardens to grow vegetables on Ertholmene. These unique tiny stone huts stands close together, making a very special place

The Ertholmene granite huts

Watercolor and text by Frits Ahlefeldt

The huts are build carefully, many of them into wind protected places where the locals could tend to their small and very important gardens. Growing a variety of vegetables to supplement what they could catch in the sea. These huts are still standing, tiny and build of local granite stones with wooden roofs and red clay tiles. All the huts are build of the same type of materials, but each one in its own way

I walk around the small cabins, I know most of the people who now inhabit them at summer time. Most are children, grand children or even further from the locals that build the huts.

The huts are the most common way and chance for the children of the Erthomene island to keep a connection and come back to visit. All houses and buildings are owned by the military, so they only rent them, year by year… as they have now done for centuries.

Most keeping the huts in proud and good shape. Reminding them and their families off all the times and stories from back in the old days on the Ertholmene islands, when their ancestors were living here all their lives

See all watercolors from my Christiansoe collection here

keywords: cottage, hut, buildings, garden, Ertholmene, Christiansoe, Christiansø, Baltic sea, architecture, buildings, art, akvarel, Denmark