Hasle

Hasle is the one the smokehouse pilgrims know. It sits on the west coast of Bornholm, facing Sweden across a stretch of Baltic that turns pewter-grey in the mornings when the wind comes from the northwest, and it has a different quality from the prettier towns on the northeast coast — more working, less curated, with a harbor that still smells of engine oil and nets as well as smoke. I cycled there from Rønne on a morning threatening rain, arrived damp, locked my bike to a lamppost, and followed the smell.

The røgerier — the smokeries — line the harbor at Hasle in a way that nowhere else on Bornholm quite matches. There are three or four of them within two hundred meters of each other, low wooden buildings with chimneys running from eight in the morning until the stock is sold, and the smoke from the alder wood is not subtle. It fills the streets. It settles on your jacket. By the time you leave Hasle you carry it with you for an hour. This is not a complaint. Standing at the hatch of Røgeriet Hasle, accepting a parcel of warm smoked herring wrapped in newspaper — the paper itself already browning at the edges from the heat — I understood something about the relationship between a place and its food that has nothing to do with presentation or technique and everything to do with repetition across generations.

You eat at the harbor. There are wooden benches bolted to the quay, and tables with wind-worn tablecloths held down by stones, and the arrangement is entirely practical rather than designed. Dark rye bread comes with the fish. Cold butter in small foil packets. Coffee from a thermos on the counter if you ask. The other people eating are not tourists in any meaningful sense — they are Danes on summer holidays who have made this specific drive to this specific smokehouse for reasons passed down from parents who made the same drive, and they eat with a proprietary satisfaction that is the most honest form of recommendation.

The town itself holds a charm that is quieter and less obvious than Gudhjem or Svaneke. The main street has a bakery, a supermarket, a hardware store, a couple of seasonal restaurants. The church of Saint Nicolas sits on a small rise above the harbor and its interior is painted in the luminous blues and oranges of the Bornholmer artists who came through in the early twentieth century. The old fishing quarter behind the harbor has houses from the eighteenth century, low and thick-walled against the western weather. Walking there in the rain, which I did, the cobblestones wet and darkened, the houses shuttered and quiet, I had the sensation of having arrived somewhere that would have looked essentially identical a hundred and fifty years earlier.

The coastline north of Hasle toward Hammershus offers the most dramatic cliff walking on the island. The path follows the edge of sandstone and granite formations that drop directly into the sea, with no beach between rock and water, and on days when the Baltic is running there is a continuous low percussion that you feel in your chest as much as hear. From certain points you can see the silhouette of Hammershus castle on the headland to the north, and the scale of the ruin — visible from kilometers away — prepares you for the thing itself better than any photograph.

When to go: The smokeries in Hasle operate daily from May through September, with the most active period from June through August when the morning catch is largest. The west coast sunsets from the Hasle harbor are among the best on the island — the sun sets over open water here, not over land — and in July you can watch it go down at ten-thirty while still warm from the day. The town is never crowded the way Gudhjem can be, which is perhaps its most appealing quality.