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 of the season, we visit Marianne's house in Amager to find out why she loves sabering, what it entails, and how it could change your life, too.

For good measure, there's a pair of improbable references to hip-hop, as well (neither of them to Liquid Swords, alas).

Further information

Champagne Sabling

Squares and Triangles

Scenery

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's forests, and fruits and flowers from its commons.

Yngve also gives free meals to locals who share the bounty of their allotment gardens.

Yet at Øens Spisested, locally sourced 'mad' (Danish for 'food') isn't the only thing on the menu.

Amager's rich — and often infamous — history is, too.

Indeed, Øens Spisested is as much a celebration of the island's identity as its food — which may make it the most distinctive restaurant in town.

Further information

Øens Spisested

Squares and Triangles

Scenery

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 and a local physio who swims in the sea every morning and is one of the club's saunagus "masters".

They reveal why they love winter bathing so much, how it makes them feel, how to get started, and why Helgoland, in particular, is so special.

Further information

Helgoland

Gys og Gus, by Charlotte Ringbæk et al.

Squares and Triangles

Scenery

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 a product, and hear about the honey that has some of Copenhagen's best chefs "falling over backwards".

“As soon as you start working with bees, you realise that honey is absolutely magical," Oliver says. "You put these creatures out around the city and over a few days, weeks and months, they accumulate this absolute treasure."

The sound design is by two artists — Squares and Triangles and Scenery.

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 metres of tarmac — giving diners a prime view of planes taking off or landing. Fasten your seatbelts, then, as we visit the 50-year-old grill bar to meet Denmark's most dedicated planespotters — as well as an ageing cat who's "worse than Putin". The episode was written, produced, and hosted by James Clasper. The music is by Scenery and Squares and Triangles.

"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 island where bereaved pet owners — including Kurt — have come to lay their furry friends to rest for the past 75 years.

All of which makes him ideal for the first episode of the new season of Archipelago.

You see, the podcast gets its name because there are more than 400 islands in Denmark.

So, starting with season three, it's going to explore some of them in more detail.

And where better to begin than the island of Amager?

After all, it's home to the city’s airport, its longest beach, its biggest nature reserve, and about 200,000 people — including Archipelago's producer and host, James Clasper.

Amager's also a deeply fascinating but oft-misunderstood place, with a story on every corner.

So season three of Archipelago — This Amarkaner Life — will tell some of those stories.

Starting with Kurt — and his four ferrets.

Say hello to a brand-new food podcast.

It’s called The Recipe — and it's all about the new generation of restaurants and the people behind them.

If you heard the Mad World episode of Archipelago, in which we took a look at the Copenhagen restaurant scene, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what The Recipe will be like.

We’ll be exploring what it takes to run a successful restaurant — and taking a closer look at some of the ingredients.

Along the way, we’ll be meeting the food world’s most forward-thinking individuals — and finding out how they think, how they work, and how they’re shaping the future of the industry.

Brought to you by Superb, The Recipe is a show for anyone who’s ever had a great plate of food put in front of them and wondered how it got there.

Episode 1 drops on Sunday 31 October — but the only thing that’s scary about it is how inspirational it is.

Follow us now wherever you get your podcasts.

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 transformed into a popular tourist attraction.

Further reading:

Sangglad

Horsens Prison Museum

Archipelago is produced for Mothertongue Media.

The sound design is by Squares and Triangles and Scenery.

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 Green Free School, in Amager, and talk to co-founder Phie Ambo about how the school is preparing pupils for an uncertain future and teaching them to build a sustainable society.

Then we head to Bellahøj Kirke, in Copenhagen's northern suburbs, to see how Denmark's burgeoning "green church" movement is helping to spread the climate gospel.

Further reading:

The Green Free School

Bellahøj Kirke

Archipelago is produced for Mothertongue Media.

The sound design is by two local artists: Squares and Triangles and Scenery.

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 the light fantastic with three Danish design devotees: artist Morten Ravn, who turns scrap metal into sculptural lamps; interior designer Hannah Trickett, whose rare health condition means she avoids what she describes as “visual chaos”; and author Malene Lytken, whose new book, Danish Lights: 1920–Now, tells the stories of 100 lamps and the Danish designers who created them.

Further reading:

Strandberg Publishing /Danish Lights: 1920–Now

Lumière Bricoleur

Hannah Trickett

Archipelago is produced for Mothertongue Media.

The sound design is by two local artists: Squares and Triangles and Scenery.