The Fennoscandian Zone

Try to straddle 1.2 billion years at NaturBornholm

If you want to straddle 1.2 billion years, then experience the Fennoscandian Edge Zone on the outskirts of Aakirkeby.

At Klintebakken outside the NaturBornholm experience center in Aakirkeby, you can straddle 1.2 billion years - here you can see the fault line that divides the island into the ancient North Bornholm granite rock and the South Bornholm sandstone layer, which is 1,200 million years younger. And in fact, this is not just a Bornholm fault line, but a European fault line!

The Fennoscandian Edge Zone starts in the Skagerrak and runs through the middle of Bornholm and disappears into the Black Sea. On Bornholm, the fault line is visible - just below the ground surface - so outside the NaturBornholm experience center you can literally straddle 1,200 million years.

Bornholm's subsoil is divided into two

There is a division through Bornholm's subsoil. In the northern part, you can see the ancient bedrock, and in the southern part of the island, the geology is characterized by younger deposits (primarily sandstone). This transition in the subsoil is due to large crustal movements approximately 2-300 million years before our era. At that time, Bornholm's subsoil was not divided yet, but only part of the entire large European continental plate.

The European continental plate gives way to African pressure

At some point, the African continental plate begins to press on Europe from the south. However, the northern part of Europe with the Scandinavian bedrock is so unshakably fixed that something must break. Eventually, Europe gives way to African pressure and collapses across. This is seen to this day in displacements and faults in the soil layers over a 50-150 km wide zone across Europe. This "collapse zone" is called the Tornquist zone or the Fennoscandian Marginal Zone.