St. Clement's Church, Bornholm

St. Clement's Church (Danish: Klemens Kirke) is a parish church located in the village of Klemensker on the Danish island of Bornholm. Completed in 1882 in the Historicist style, it replaces an earlier Romanesque church from the 14th century or earlier. Today the church is noteworthy for works contributed by the Bornholm artist Paul Høm. A number of runestones have been found in the neighbourhood, two of which are now in the churchyard.

Today's church stands on a hilltop 114 meters above sea level which was also the site of an earlier, now demolished, Medieval church built in the Romanesque style. The old church was almost as long as the new building but only about half as wide. It appears to have been the only church on the island with star-shaped roof vaulting which probably replaced the original wooden ceiling around 1450. Many items of inventory from the old church can now be seen in the Bornholm Museum.

The church is named after St. Clement of Rome, Latin: Clemens Romanus, as documented in early references from 1335. While the name of St. Nicolas (Danish: Sankt Nicolai) was often chosen for churches associated with seafarers, the choice of St. Clement (also associated with the sea) indicates that the church was probably one of the earliest on Bornholm.

Like a number of Bornholm localities, the name of the village, Klemensker, is derived from that of its church, the suffix -ker denoting church in the local dialect.

Today's church is built of roughly hewn granite blocks while the windows and doors are framed in smoothly hewn elements. The building is 32 m long and 12 m wide. It was completed in December 1882 to a design by the Historicist architect Ludvig Knudsen based on the plans he used for St. Stephen's Church in Copenhagen which had been completed in 1874. Indeed all the workmen were from Copenhagen despite the fact that the church should have been designed in the Romanesque style with features from the older churches on the island. With seating for congregations of around 1,000, it was initially said to have been one of the largest village churches in Denmark. It consists of an apsis, chancel and a long nave, terminating in a tower at the western end. Flanking the nave, there are large wooden galleries, supported by wooden pillars. The roof and the tower's four-sided spire are of slate.

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