Photo: Far min·CC BY-SA 4.0· Wikimedia Commons
Islands / Bærum / Borøya
A recreation island off Sandvika in the inner Oslofjord, with no permanent residents. There are public barbecue sites on the east and west sides, and camping is allowed for up to two nights.
Just south of Kalvøya, off Sandvika, is a low, elongated island with two ridges running southwest to northeast. The high point is 23 metres. From the water you can see the barbecue sites at the waterline on the east and west sides, and on summer days small boats and kayaks moored in the bays.
passenger boat MS Rigmor (summer season) / private boat or kayak.
Boats do run here, but the quay is not in Entur’s system. It is usually a summer service or a private crossing that never enters the national journey planner. Check with the operator before you build a day around it.
Borøya used to have a farm, and it is the grazing and haymaking from that time that made the island botanically valuable. Meadows and coastal rock kept open by animals and people are still there. Burial cairns from the Iron Age remain, traces of settlement long before the farming.
Borøya measures 28.9 hectares (289 dekar). On 27 June 2008 most of the island was protected as a nature reserve, together with the islets Furuholmen and Saraholmen. The reserve covers a mosaic of dry lime-rich meadows, coastal rock, shore meadows and lime-rich pine forest with high biological diversity. The *lakrismjeltblåvinge*, one of the rarest butterfly species in Scandinavia, lives here.
Nobody lives on Borøya. Two areas on the east and west sides are kept outside the nature reserve, and the municipality has put public barbecue sites there. Tents are allowed for up to two nights at a time. In summer the island draws boat people, kayakers and swimmers from Sandvika.
The passenger boat MS Rigmor runs out here in the summer half of the year. Check the current timetable, since departures vary with the season. Otherwise you get here by private boat or kayak. The barbecue sites are in the two areas kept outside the reserve, and fires and tents belong there. The reserve dates from 27 June 2008 and takes in Furuholmen and Saraholmen as well. Follow the reserve rules: do not damage the vegetation, and take particular care in the meadows where the *lakrismjeltblåvinge* lives. Check Naturbase, the national database of protected areas, for exact boundaries and access rules before landing outside the prepared areas.
The island looks like pure nature, but the meadows are man-made. Centuries of grazing animals and haymaking kept them open and created the habitat the rare species depend on.
The *lakrismjeltblåvinge* that lives here is among the most threatened butterflies in Scandinavia. It depends entirely on liquorice milkvetch (*lakrismjelt*), which grows in the dry lime-rich meadows.
Two nights is the camping limit, set so that the island keeps working for the many people who use it.
Oslo Sea Experience passes Borøya on its private fjord trips from Tjuvholmen.
The Norwegian version notes which facts were taken from each source: Borøya på norsk.