Mountainbiking
You can sign up at the bottom of this page.
Welcome to Bornholm Folk High School
Bornholm is a Danish Island in the Baltic Sea known for arts, crafts, ecology, climate sustainability and nature. Bornholm is the only Danish Island with cliffs and it is perfect for lovers of arts and nature. Bornholm Folk High School holds it all. At Bornholm Folk High School, you will experience a totally different way of learning based on the pioneer N. F. S. Grundtvig’s thoughts and teachings back in the 19th Century. The teaching is based on an exam-free environment where the medium is yours and the others’ thoughts, dreams and visions. Grundtvig called this “learning for life” and Grundtvig spoke of an important balance between individual freedom and responsibility to the community – to each other.
At Bornholm Folk High School there are four subject areas:
Arts and Crafts
Outdoor & Adventure
Sustainable Agriculture
Body & Mind
Click here for a full list of subjects
For international students there will be 2 hours pr. week with Danish Culture & Language.
The glass workshop
About the school
In the middle of Almindingen, Bornholm High School is located in a wonderful mix of forest, fields and cliffs. But with its flat red and white buildings, the school casts light and warmth into nature, and on the school’s shelter site with a fire cabin, you can let yourself be surrounded by the lush nature in the more distant parts of the college’s natural areas.
With only 10-15 km to beaches, rocky coasts and Bornholm’s beautiful harbor towns, the college is centrally located for pleasant and spectacular trips. With the organized tours, your own bike tours or community tours in the school’s two minibuses, you can easily visit the different parts of the island.
A very special place – and the subjects stem from the Bornholm reality
Bornholm High School has deep roots in nature, art, history, entrepreneurship and cultural life of Bornholm. This adds a particular character to all our courses. In all our subjects we explore and use the island’s unique nature.
Subjects such as Ceramics, Glass, Outdoor Life and Adventure as well as Cooking and Collecting are closely connected to the beautiful raw landscape right outside the door. For many, a stay at the college helps to clarify whether they want to apply to the Royal Academy of Glass and Ceramics School in Nexø. For others, the creative play and exploration of clay, glass, jewelry, textiles, masks and paintings is a way to find inner peace, fun and strength in a time when you could use a break from the demands and pace of everyday life.
Our Outdoor line is guided by nature enthusiasts and professional outdoor and adventure teachers. With them you will climb the cliffs, jump in the kayak and cycle on mountain bikes. Those cliffs are only found in this one place in Denmark!
On the Sustainable Agriculture team, you help build the shelter site, look after the greenhouse, plant fruit trees and collect food for the kitchen. At the college, we dig the clay out of the underground ourselves. We source our gastronomic raw materials from nature. And then we climb real rocks every day.
The ceramics workshop
Photography class
Part of the conversation
Bornholms Højskole is oriented towards the surrounding community, is part of the debate and cultural life on Bornholm and is an active participant in the Folkemødet. We keep the exchange of ideas going all year round, and as part of the stay, our students organize public events or create projects that involve the surrounding local community.
Sustainable and local – also in teaching.
Local college with an international touch
In true glocal fashion, the college wants to take global co-responsibility and strives to create a sustainable physical environment that puts as little strain on the environment as possible. Our kitchen primarily chooses organic ingredients and local products, and we often eat vegetarian. We teach sustainability in several of our subjects.
The college is also constantly under the students’ microscope – you help develop environmentally sound solutions for the school.
The vast majority of students at the school are Danish citizens. However, there is also a touch of international atmosphere at the school with a smaller number of international students admitted to the school each year. In this way, we ensure attention to the world we are a part of – and to how important Grundtvig’s actual teaching is for population groups that have not grown up in a Danish everyday life and with a Danish understanding of society.
The international students have morning meetings and other shared experiences simultaneously translated into English by the teachers. This international touch is an opportunity for strengthening your language skills, creating friendships out in the world for your next travels, and to help make a difference for the community across languages and cultures experiences.
Social Policy
At Bornholms Højskole, we are very concerned about ensuring a safe environment for everyone. We are not the same, we are different and we have to find a way to be here all together. That’s why we start each stay with conversation salons about what it means to be happy and safe for you, who have to express yourself and create your stay at the school. What kind of environment do you want to create in collaboration with us who live here permanently? Together, we must formulate and ensure an understanding and inclusive environment, where no one experiences being discriminated against or having their boundaries exceeded. The school’s staff is ready to help if a violation does occur.
Learn more about the world and yourself
Bornholms Højskole is a place where opinions and experiences meet, are challenged and discussed. We believe that the good stories of art both spring from history and arise from current political challenges, philosophy and social debates. Our conversation course provides new insights and perspectives and gives you a good starting point to find your own voice and challenge habitual notions. With our outdoor subjects, we include the needs of the body, agriculture and nature in the education.
We create the school together
You get an everyday where you work with your interests, create with your hands, get food for thought, challenge your physical limits on the outdoor line, on the yoga mat or in a professional respite climbing on the school’s own climbing wall. With Sustainable agriculture you are helping to create sustainable measures for students and course participants for many years to come!
You will influence the teaching and the everyday life of the college by contributing with commitment, experience and your own ideas. Along the way, you will reflect, discuss and deal with your own work together with your colleagues in a community that is characterized by Grundtvig’s insight that we live best together in combined freedom and responsibility: “Freedom under responsibility”.
The school exudes coziness with its low buildings, so there is plenty of that too. Table tennis and poetry evenings in the High School hall, conversations in hammocks in the garden, volleyball in the front garden and bow combat, bonfire and climbing wall in the back garden. Board games and cozy fireplaces, singing evenings, knitting and open workshops around the clock.
Community
You will live in a room with a friend, or you can request a single room. On weekdays, the day starts with breakfast at 7:40 am with subsequent morning cleaning, morning assembly and group singing. Then there is teaching, where you follow the schedule you have put together yourself. During the day, there is time for joint meetings and joint duties, and the evenings offer community, which you yourself put your own stamp on.
Your mandatory, scheduled hours will be 21-23 hours per week, and you put together your schedule yourself based on the choice of A subject, B subject and C subject, read more here [click for the subjects].
The school’s premises and equipment
The school has room for around 100 overnighters, and we have workshop capacity and teaching rooms for around 80. We therefore normally have no more than a maximum of 80 course participants in the summer and can entertain approximately 65-70 students on the long courses.
We have both single and double rooms. A few double rooms with a private bathroom, while others have access to a toilet and shower that is shared with 1-3 other rooms. The double rooms with private bathrooms cost a little more than the other room types.
Ovens
Turntables
Outdoor equipment
Sewing machines
Contacts to entrepreneurs of Bornholm
Jewelry workshop with individual spaces
We enjoy a c´school with buildings from 1893 to 2012. Beautiful nature all aorund us and lovely rooms for every subject and workshop.
Sign up for a stay at Bornholms Højskole
Fill out the form below and we will contact you for more information and availability.