Ertholmene Naval Fortress – Christiansø
A small unique island community far out in the Baltic Sea
I never really got to know a lot about her, the old lady living up there under the roof in the small hut. Just saw her talking to herself, or maybe it was to the island, as she crawled out of the small door, and down the stairs. Every morning she would go swimming and often collect things along the way
Most of the small granite huts are on the west side of the island Christiansø, but one is far away from all the others. Only a few hundred meters from the most Eastern point in Denmark, where the Grey seals gather to sing under the moon
On the Ertholmene islands every modern thing like power is hidden or integrated into existing structures. This is the look of the building housing both the power station, toilet and bathing facilities for both campside and sailors - even the people in the small huts use the facilities here
On Ertholmene the tiny granite huts and shacks are in some places build together with the rocks, in ways where the rocks often continues somehow inside the architecture
In the attic, on top of the school lived the most famous artists on the Ertholmene islands... Mogens and Dominique
Sitting in the wind on Ertholmene and painting I never quite made it that day, didn't finish this painting... maybe I'd come back here, I thought, closing my watercolors
This is one of the smallest stone huts on the Ertholmene islands, situated all by itself, there is just a door and a single window, but close by a great bathing place between the rocks, when the wind is right
Life on the small, poor isolated islands was tough in the old days and being self-sustaining as much as possible was important - growing vegetables became a tradition the locals still master
Back in the days before democracy in Denmark about the worst punishment people could receive for stirring the mind of the people was to be sent to the prison on tiny islands Ertholmene far out in the Baltic sea
Inside the boathouse is the last marinated herring factory on Ertholmene. Just a tiny place where a handful of locals listen to the radio, while preparing the fish as it has been done in generations
Ertholmene Naval Fortress - Christiansø 