Ølene

Ølene is the rural site of a former hippie commune on Bornholm, remembered in local accounts as a house bearing the sign The Celestial Sphere. The group stayed for about half a year before disappearing as abruptly as it had arrived. Years later, the place mattered not only as a surviving trace of that countercultural episode but as a lead in the investigation into Alberte Goldschmid’s death: it had been home to Frank Brennan and to people within the loose spiritual network he was building.

Setting and Route to the Commune

When Carl Mørck and Assad set out to find Ølene, they changed their plan to visit June Habersaat’s sister in a nursing home in Rønne. Carl reasoned that someone who had lived at the site might remember the hippies and help clarify the identity of the man in the enlarged photograph at Christian Habersaat’s house. The choice reflected a gap in the earlier inquiry: Habersaat had investigated the area, but Carl doubted whether he had pursued every lead thoroughly enough.

Their route led along Ølenevej to a sign opposite the path to Øle brook. The path ended at what appeared to be an abandoned house, with a barn and lawn. A sign marked with a bird and the German warning Zutritt Verboten stood by the way in. The details gave the destination a slightly forbidding entrance, but the site itself proved to have a history more ordinary and specific than the investigators could infer from appearances alone.

The Commune and Local Recollections

A local man recalled that young people had lived at the house for about six months. The former owner, he said, had not scrutinized how they earned their money. The residents stood out to him through their brightly colored clothing, long hair, and unfamiliar activities. He remembered hearing what sounded like gibberish, almost like an Indian language, and seeing a large sign above the main door bearing the name The Celestial Sphere.

Despite their difference from the surrounding community, the residents were not remembered as aggressive or disruptive. The man described them as peaceful in their own way, if eccentric. His account gives the commune a double character: conspicuous enough to provoke lasting local memories, yet not associated in his recollection with trouble. The group was reported to number about nine or ten young people, four or five of each sex. Then one day they were simply gone.

Local memory also retained a vehicle detail: its number plates were black, and a curved line ran along the top of each side. The witness recalled no other distinctive markings, dents, or scratches. This description offered the investigators a concrete feature to compare with the vehicle evidence, but it did not establish when the residents left. Asked whether their departure coincided with the search for Alberte, the man could not say. He was often away and had been in Groningen on a research trip at the time, working as a biochemist specializing in enzymes; the trip concerned the manufacture of potato flour. His absence limits the precision of his recollection even as his account supplies particulars that could be tested against other evidence.

Frank Brennan’s Spiritual Circle

Inge Dalby’s memories placed Frank Brennan at Ølene before her later involvement with him. She had visited the hippie house with a friend because there was little to do on the island, and remembered seeing Frank there, shirtless. After meeting him again in Rønne, she began an affair with him while remaining with Kristoffer Dalby as a fallback. Her testimony makes Ølene part of the personal history surrounding Frank, rather than merely a place associated with his acquaintances.

The commune also served as a gathering point for people drawn into Frank’s spiritual project. Inge described those living at the camp as members of his spiritual family and, in effect, disciples. That circle included an Aura-Soma therapist whom Frank visited to strengthen his aura; another disciple was present on one such occasion. Inge understood Frank’s repeated contacts with alternative therapists as a search for their knowledge and techniques, which he hoped to combine across healing, religion, and older systems of knowledge, including alchemy, astrology, channeling, electromagnetic therapy, and clairvoyance.

A man who had lived at the Ølene camp for an entire summer recalled his conversations with Frank as fantastic, despite their differences of opinion. They discussed sun cults and religion, among other subjects. Both took part in excavations at Rispebjerg, where Frank was especially drawn to evidence of sun offerings and cultures from thousands of years earlier. The former resident disclosed that Frank had stolen one of the excavated sunstones, a secret the participants discussed only in low voices. This account links Ølene’s spiritual community to Frank’s archaeological interests without suggesting that the commune itself conducted the excavations.

From Abandoned House to Investigative Lead

By the time Carl and Assad reached the site, the former commune was no longer an active community. Its value to the case lay in the human connections and memories attached to it: the group’s brief residence, the description of its vehicle, Frank’s presence, and the testimony of people who had spent time there. Those fragments helped investigators approach the identity and social world of the man they were trying to understand, while leaving important uncertainties unresolved, including the exact date the residents departed.

Ølene’s significance therefore rests on the contrast between its modest physical description and the reach of the network once based there. The house, barn, lawn, sign, and brook path anchor the place in a recognizable rural landscape; the recollections turn it into a meeting point for a temporary community, Frank’s disciples, and people who later supplied testimony. In the investigation, the site is neither a complete answer nor an incidental curiosity. It is a location where scattered biographies and clues briefly converge.