Hasle Havn

Hasle Havn lies on the west coast of Bornholm and is a combined fishing, commercial and yacht harbour in a single basin complex. It is municipal, run by Bornholm Regional Municipality, and it has one property that matters greatly on this particular coast: it can be entered around the clock and in any weather. The neighbouring harbours of Helligpeder and Teglkås can only be taken in daylight and fair weather, and carry under two metres. Hasle is the west coast's harbour of refuge.

The entrance is served by a leading line on 93 to 101 degrees. There is no appreciable tide in the Baltic; the water level is governed by the wind. Inside, by the municipality's own account, there is always room for visiting crews and the berths lie well sheltered.

The harbour owes its existence to coal mining. Digging in the 1830s left a hole that became the beginning of the harbour the town has today. Two moles came in 1828, an outer harbour in 1874-77 with a rail spur from the clinker works, and in 1892-94 harbour and entrance were deepened to fourteen feet — roughly the depth there is now.

Then came the herring years. Hasle was a substantial fishing harbour during the heyday of Baltic herring, and ashore the Hasle clinker and firebrick works, with twelve hundred employees, was Bornholm's largest workplace in the 1950s. When the fishery collapsed in the 1980s, the harbour quarter became the back side of the town.

That history is what makes the harbour unusual today. Between 2010 and 2013 the area was transformed under Realdania's Land of Opportunities campaign, following a competition won by White Arkitekter and Thing Brandt Landskab. The historic granite quay edges were kept, and over them was laid what the architects called the flying carpet. Hasle Havnebad opened in August 2013 with a bathing platform, a sauna building, a fifteen-metre pool, a children's pool and a diving tower. In 2015 came a second stage with a canal to the south and an island formation. More than twenty-five million kroner were invested in all.

At the end of the new canal stand the museum smokehouses of 1807, where Bornholm herring is still smoked and where entry is free. Where the canal meets the harbour stands the maritime museum Columbus with its collection of ship engines — the old motors are started every day in season. The harbour has also become a centre for sea kayaking, with hire and instruction, and commercial fishing continues.

Four hundred metres from the harbour is the cultural centre Grønbechs Gård with changing exhibitions of craft. North of the harbour the Bornholm cliff coast begins, backed by large forest; to the south lie sandy beaches and the old clay and coal pits where the story of Hasle clinker is told. Bus connections serve the whole island.