Vestermarie is a village midway between

Rønne Rønne ( sv, Rönne) is the largest town on the Danish island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea. It has a population of 13,807 (1 January 2022). It was a municipality in its own right from 1970 until 2002, when Bornholm was a county ( Danish: ''Born ...

and

Aakirkeby Aakirkeby or Åkirkeby is a town in Denmark with a population of 2,119 (1 January 2022). It is the third largest town on the island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea. It was the main town of the now abolished Aakirkeby Municipality. The town is sit ...

on the

Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...

island of

Bornholm Bornholm () is a Danish island in the Baltic Sea, to the east of the rest of Denmark, south of Sweden, northeast of Germany and north of Poland. Strategically located, Bornholm has been fought over for centuries. It has usually been ruled by ...

. As of 2022, it has a population of 240.

History

The village takes its name from the original

Vestermarie Church Vestermarie Church is located in the little village of Vestermarie some 8 km east of Rønne on the Danish island of Bornholm. The present Neo-Romanesque church replaces a now demolished 14th-century building.Virgin Mary Mary; arc, ܡܪܝܡ, translit=Mariam; ar, مريم, translit=Maryam; grc, Μαρία, translit=María; la, Maria; cop, Ⲙⲁⲣⲓⲁ, translit=Maria was a first-century Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Joseph and the mother o ...

in 1335. The prefix "vester" (west) distinguishes it from

Østermarie Østermarie is a village on the Danish island of Bornholm, west of Svaneke. Founded ca. 1880, its old church ('' Østermarie Church''), now a ruin, dates back to the 12th century.

, "øster" meaning "east". Today's church was completed in 1835 in the

Neo-Romanesque Romanesque Revival (or Neo-Romanesque) is a style of building employed beginning in the mid-19th century inspired by the 11th- and 12th-century Romanesque architecture. Unlike the historic Romanesque style, Romanesque Revival buildings tended to ...

style. The churchyard contains a number of

runestone A runestone is typically a raised stone with a runic inscription, but the term can also be applied to inscriptions on boulders and on bedrock. The tradition began in the 4th century and lasted into the 12th century, but most of the runestones da ...

The village today

The village is essentially a residential area for those working in Rønne, only away. Since the 1950s, it has grown gradually to the west and northwest of the church. There is a school (1964) and a food store but no other businesses. The community hall (''forsamlingshuset'') is of interest to the local heritage.

Prehistoric sites

An impressive group of

menhir A menhir (from Brittonic languages: ''maen'' or ''men'', "stone" and ''hir'' or ''hîr'', "long"), standing stone, orthostat, or lith is a large human-made upright stone, typically dating from the European middle Bronze Age. They can be foun ...

s stands on Bjergebakken (102 m) some 2 km north of the village. The grave site on Store Bjergegårdsbakken was investigated in the 1890s and listed in 1894. In addition to burnt bones, there were

fibula The fibula or calf bone is a leg bone on the lateral side of the tibia, to which it is connected above and below. It is the smaller of the two bones and, in proportion to its length, the most slender of all the long bones. Its upper extremity is ...

e, a sword, beads, iron keys and small pots indicating that the graves date from the end of the

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age (Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly appl ...

, i.e. 500–400 BC."Kongstubbe - Hakkeled - Bjergebakke"
''På 367 ture i Bornholms natur''. Retrieved 9 November 2012.

References

{{coord, 55, 06, 28, N, 14, 49, 24, E, display=title Bornholm Cities and towns in the Capital Region of Denmark