Hesselø is a small island of Denmark, belonging to Halsnæs Municipality, in Region Hovedstaden

Region Hovedstaden

The Capital Region of Denmark is an administrative region of Denmark established on January 1, 2007 as part of the 2007 Danish Municipal Reform, which replaced the traditional counties with five larger regions. At the same time, smaller municipalities were merged into larger units, cutting the...

. The island is situated in the Kattegat

Kattegat

The Kattegat , or Kattegatt is a sea area bounded by the Jutland peninsula and the Straits islands of Denmark on the west and south, and the provinces of Västergötland, Scania, Halland and Bohuslän in Sweden on the east. The Baltic Sea drains into the Kattegat through the Øresund and the Danish...

, about 25 km north of Sjælland, and has an area of 0.71 km².

The island got its name from the common seal (in Danish

Danish language

Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...

, sæl), which formerly were very common on the island.

Since the lighthouse

Lighthouse

A lighthouse is a tower, building, or other type of structure designed to emit light from a system of lamps and lenses or, in older times, from a fire, and used as an aid to navigation for maritime pilots at sea or on inland waterways....

was automated in 1955, the population of the island has descended from 16 to 2 (as of 2000).