“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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

"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...

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...

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...

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...

Three illuminating stories about the Danish love affair with lighting

Backstage at 'Blixen'—a brand-new ballet about the beloved Danish writer

The art of creating happy memories

Award-winning Danish writer Naja Marie Aidt talks about the tragedy at the heart of her latest book, 'When Death Takes Something From You Give It Back'

The season ends with a bang — on the popular 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 artistic porn and pornographic art — in the company of a museum curator and an "ethical porn" producer.

Is Copenhagen's food scene all it's cracked up to be?

Does the world really need any more chairs?

Two new documentaries about children growing up in Copenhagen today.

Creating meaningful jobs for people on the margins — through beer and flowers.

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

A preview of the brand-new podcast about arts, culture and ideas in Denmark. Produced by Mothertongue Media.