Archipelago

“Opening Champagne with a sword is more fun. You can feel it in your stomach.”

So says Marianne Sass Petersen — a bookkeeper from Amager whose life changed when she attended a Champagne sabering competition at Tivoli.

Dedicating herself to the art of opening Champagne bottles with swords, she went on to win the Danish championship — and launch a successful business teaching sabering.

In the final episode ...

In episode five, we meet the chef trying to put Amager on the culinary map — quite literally.

Yngve Fobian is the head chef at Øens Spisested — a "local" restaurant in more ways than one.

For one thing, most of its ingredients are from Amager — a haul celebrated on a map in the dining room.

Fish come from the icy waters of the Øresund, vegetables from fields near Dragør, game from the island&apo...

The Helgoland sea-bathing club, at the northern tip of Amager's beach, is home to one of the world's oldest winter-bathing associations, Det Kolde Gys ("The Cold Shock").

In episode four of This Amarkaner Life, we brave the heat of the sauna and the icy waters of the Øresund to talk to some of the association's hardiest members.

We meet a woman who's been winter bathing for 30 years a...

There's already a bit of a buzz around this episode — if only because the Amarkaners in question are the island’s hard-working honeybees.

In episode three, we visit Bybi — a bee-powered project based in Amager’s historic Sundholm district — to meet its British founder, Oliver Maxwell.

We learn about Bybi's unusual origin story and location, discover why Oliver prefers to see honey as an "invitation" not ...

Please return your seatbacks and tray tables to their fully upright position because we'll shortly be landing at one of Amager’s best-known restaurants — Flyvergrillen. You'll find it at Copenhagen airport, but don’t go looking for it before your next flight. Because Flyvergrillen isn’t so much at the airport as right alongside it. Indeed, the only thing separating it from the runway is a barbed-wire fence and about 100 m...

"Amager is a great place. Amager is number one.”

So says Kurt Helmann Jensen ("Kurt like Kurt Russell"). And he should know.

For one thing, he's a self-proclaimed "Amarkaner" — a dyed-in-the-wool resident of Amager, the much-maligned, teardrop-shaped island in southern Copenhagen.

He's also the chairman of the association that runs Dyrenes Mindegrave, a cemetery on the i...

Danish "song kindergartens" hit the right notes, while a 19th-century prison provides an unsettling location for an overnight stay.

In this episode, we visit Trekroner Børnehus, a kindergarten outside Roskilde, to hear about Sangglad — a scheme to "increase and improve" singing in Danish pre-schools.

Then we head to Horsens Prison Museum, in Jutland, to discover how a notorious jail has been tr...

Two Danish institutions have discovered eye-catching ways to go green.

From Greta Thunberg’s school strike to the Fridays for the Future movement, there’s no shortage of children taking a stand against climate change.

But while their activism takes place outside the school gates, some say that what kids are taught while they’re at school is just as important — if not more so.

In this episode, we visit the...

In the bleak midwinter, the sun scarcely seems to rise in Denmark at all.

Is it any wonder, then, that the Danes are so obsessed with good lighting? That Denmark has produced many of the world’s most iconic lights? That Danes have the world’s highest consumption of candles? Or that light is fundamental to the country’s best known cultural phenomenon, hygge?

In (hopefully) the most illuminating episode of Archipelago yet, we discuss t...

“Those who wish to relive their lives, never lived them in the first place.”

The words of Karen Blixen — the acclaimed Danish writer whose life story is the basis of a brand-new ballet created exclusively for the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen.

Blixen sketches the writer's life story from her childhood years in Denmark through her unhappy marriage to her half-cousin Bror Blixen, her years running a coffee...

Meik Wiking is one of the world’s leading happiness experts.

The founder of the Happiness Research Institute, he’s also the author of two New York Times bestsellers — The Little Book of Hygge and The Little Book of Lykke — which have been translated into more than 35 languages and sold over a million copies worldwide.

Little wonder, then, that he's been dubbed “probably the world’s happiest man”.

But...

We kick off season two of Archipelago with a very special guest indeed.

Naja Marie Aidt has been described as “one of the most intelligent writers of the contemporary literary world” and as “one of the compassionate voices in fiction”.

Born in Greenland and raised in Copenhagen, she’s the author of ten poetry collections and three short-story collections — including Baboon, which won the Nordic countries’ most prestigious literary aw...

We end season one with a bang — on the little known Danish island of Pornø. 

To mark half a century since Denmark became the first country to legalise visual pornography, we take a deep dive into arty porn and pornographic art.

Up first, we meet Rasmus Steenbakken, the curator of a major new group exhibition at the ARoS art museum in Aarhus which looks at cultural creativity, freedom of expression and art in the age of porn...

Once a foodie wasteland, Copenhagen is today a major gastronomic destination.

It is, of course, the epicentre of New Nordic cuisine — the culinary movement that championed hyper-local, seasonal ingredients and elevated foraging and fermentation to art forms.

But it’s also a global food city — one where savvy diners can find everything from Surinamese peanut soup to Ethiopian injera, Vietnamese banh mi to Cantonese...

We try to solve one of the greatest mysteries of all time.

Why are the Danish so crazy about chairs? Why are there so many Danish chairs? And does the world really need any more of them?

Ahead of 3 Days of Design — Denmark’s biggest annual design event — we meet a trio of design devotees and discuss the past, present and future of Danish design.

Up first is Christian Holmsted Olesen, the head of exhibitio...

CPH:DOX is one of the world’s largest documentary film festivals — and a highlight of Copenhagen’s cultural calendar.

In this episode we talk to the directors of two films that were screened in competition at the 2019 festival. Two very similar — and yet very different — documentaries about children growing up in Copenhagen today.

Phie Ambo’s REDISCOVERY is a beautifully shot film about the 10 weeks that almost 50 children ...

Episode two is about two Danish companies that have developed creative ways to employ people who often struggle to pick up work.

First we meet People Like Us — a brewing company run by people who have been diagnosed with autism and social anxiety, and war veterans with PTSD.

Then we meet Bike & Bloom, a florist that hires and trains people who are among the most invisible members of any society or labour market — refugee women.

Fu...

Two very different takes on what our default response to life's opportunities ought to be. 

Based on a pair of words that we all use every day. A pair of words with the power to change your life, alter the course of history, or simply stop you leaving the house. Those words, of course, are Yes and No.

First we hear from Aalborg University psychology professor and bestselling author Svend Brinkmann about the importance ...