Visual Bornholm
Published by Visual Media ApS
Designed by Miru Studio
TEXT: MADS WESTERMANN
PHOTO: ANDERS BEIER
Every time she arrives on her childhood island of Bornholm, something happens to Jasmin Lind. She feels a deep calm that she doesn’t have much of in her daily life.
– ‘It’s pretty much the same thing we always think when we land. Calm in the head and calm in the nervous system. There’s no highway noise, not that much noise, and not that many cars on the road,’ she says.
Jasmin Lind is 25 years old and grew up in Hasle and Nyker. She is one of Denmark’s best-known influencers and YouTubers. Together with her husband Mika Schultz, she runs social media channels with hundreds of thousands of followers, and in 2025 she won Vild med dans with the whole of Denmark watching at home in their living rooms. Everyday life is hectic with TV recordings, business meetings, interviews, jewelry collections and award shows. In the couple’s former home in Rødovre, fans knocked on the windows every day and looked in through the windows, while the family tried to keep their day off and live a normal family life.
That’s why Bornholm is a paradise that she, Mika and the couple’s daughter, Elina, visit at least 5-6 times a year to visit Jasmin Lind’s mother, who lives in Hasle, and her foster family in Nyker. For Jasmin Lind, visits to Bornholm are about grounding, presence, relationships and letting go of control for a short moment.
To understand why, you have to go back to Jasmin Lind’s early childhood.
When she was only two weeks old, she lost her father, who died of cancer. Together with her mother, she and her older brother Filip moved back to her mother’s childhood town of Hasle. But the pressure put a strain on the family’s life and the mother was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. When Jasmin
was eight, she and her brother were placed with a foster family in Nyker.
The placement gave her a feeling of having lost control of her own life, and it affected her deeply. At the age of twelve, she developed a serious eating disorder. It wasn’t about getting thin or living up to certain beauty ideals. It was a teenager’s desperate attempt to create some order in a life she perceived as chaotic. When her weight on the way down passed 32 kilos, she had to be hospitalized. Only when she realized how much the eating disorder was negatively affecting her life did she gain the insight and energy to break the vicious circle and return to normality.
Her foster parents gave her a safe home, a home she still visits with pleasure. But it was not until she was on the other side of the illness that the relationship became close.
This is the background that gives her current relationship with Bornholm meaning. Visiting the foster family is a return to what felt safe after the illness.
The foster parents love to go for walks. Every time she is on the island, they have found a new route; a hidden spot in the forest or a secret stretch of coast that is deserted. They pack coffee and cake, drive out, walk, talk and let the hours pass. – ‘I grew up with it. Every weekend we went somewhere and went for a walk’, she says.
Today she and Mika have their dog with them, so the walks come naturally. Rytterknægten. Ekkodalen. Or just a random forest without a name and coordinates. Jasmin openly admits that she is bad at geography and sometimes just follows along, without knowing exactly where they are.
That is not a problem. That is actually part of the point. To let yourself be led, to let go of orientation and control.
Bornholm is also the place where Jasmin Lind can be almost anonymous. If she goes to Tivoli or one of the beaches near Copenhagen in the summer, it rarely takes many minutes before she is recognized. And although she is happy to meet her fans, she can wish for a little privacy and anonymity every now and then.
She finds it when she heads to the dunes of Dueodde on the southern tip of Bornholm in the summer or the long, curved sandy beach at Levka, just south of Hasle.
– ‘You could say that Dueodde has a very unique beach, so that in itself is very aesthetic and nice to look at. And super nice sand, of course’, says Jasmin, who notices a clear difference when she compares it to the crowds in the capital. – ‘We have been to Svanemøllestranden near Copenhagen a few times now. You can hardly find a place to sit there. On Bornholm, there is just fresh air, and there are fewer people, and you feel more like you can be private,’ she explains.
Jasmin Lind knows that Bornholm in July is anything but the quiet island community that some might imagine.
– ‘Summer is a bit wild on Bornholm, but it is also a very cozy atmosphere because everyone is on vacation. Even though there are a lot of people, they are on vacation, and it feels different than in Copenhagen.’
She and her small family spend their days on Bornholm mainly in the foster family’s garden in Nyker, playing a game of kings on the lawn and taking long walks with the dog in the Bornholm countryside. She finds the lack of anonymity that is the price of celebrity life here. – ‘There is just fresh air, and there are fewer people, and you feel more like you can be private,’ she explains.
Jasmin’s career began in the teenage room in Nyker. She was 14, filmed herself and started speaking to the world. First in English – ‘not very good English’, she admits – then in Danish. It was fashion and makeup and a friends’ club atmosphere where viewers could feel they knew her. They followed her everyday life: high school on Bornholm, walks in nature, a young woman who shared her life with an openness that was not staged. It was not Bornholm as a theme. It was just her life, and her life took place on Bornholm.
When she met Mika Schultz and moved to Zealand, her career took off. She herself says that it was only when she was no longer at high school and had time to give it full throttle that the number of followers and thus her influencer career really exploded. But the foundation was laid in the Bornholm gymnasiums, in the teenage room in Nyker, in the early videos where she talked about the things that were difficult. The many hours in the gym gave her the body control and discipline that later brought her to the finals of Vild med dans. And the adversity gave her the will to work harder than most.
YOU SHOULD NEVER SAY NEVER
Although Bornholm is the epitome of peace, security and space for family time, Jasmin Lind finds it difficult to imagine moving back. – ‘I don’t think I’ll get my husband to move to Bornholm’, she says.
The couple’s connection to Zealand is strong. Mika has six siblings, all the same age as Jasmin and Mika. Jasmin’s older brother also lives on Zealand, where he and his wife are expecting a child. In addition, the two have built up a healthy business with their own employees, and moving would mean they lost too much of what they have built up.
A permanent return to the island of their childhood is not on the drawing board. But it is not out of the question either. – ‘You should never say never’, she laughs and plays with the idea that it could perhaps become a reality one day, when they retire. She mentions a summer house on the island as a more realistic alternative.
But until then, it’s the same as last time: when the ferry bumps into the bulwark or the plane puts its wheels on the runway, something happens inside Jasmin Lind. A deep calm settles in.
