Archipelago

For the season finale, we sit down with Sherilyn Nicolette Hellberg , an up-and-coming American translator of Scandinavian fiction and non-fiction. After falling in love with Danish literature at school, she swapped Long Island for Copenhagen — and hasn’t looked back. From deciphering Danish idioms to navigating Copenhagen's literary "hothouse," Sherilyn shares her translation journ...

Henrik Knudsen is the Elvis Presley superfan who built Memphis Mansion — a brick-for-brick replica of Graceland in the Danish city of Randers. From his 148 pilgrimages to America to the legal showdown with Elvis Presley Enterprises, Henrik's story is a rollercoaster of obsession, risk, and rock history.  This episode is a love letter to fandom, a testament to following your wildest ideas, and...

The Human Library is a groundbreaking initiative founded in Copenhagen in 2000, where instead of borrowing books, visitors "borrow" people — volunteers who share their personal stories and experiences to challenge prejudice and foster understanding. In this episode, founder Ronni Abergel shares the origins of the project, its global expansion to over 80 countries, and the careful process...

What if your school week involved colonizing planets, fleeing Nazis, or negotiating with fantasy kingdoms—all while studying history and science? In this episode, we meet Mathias Granum, the founder of EPOS, a groundbreaking Danish boarding school where students learn through live-action role-play (LARP). Granum explains how EPOS transforms traditional subjects into immersive experiences that teac...

Copenhagen Suborbitals is the world’s only volunteer-run, crowdfunded space program. Based in Copenhagen, the group's 70 volunteers are building a DIY spacecraft to send a person to suborbital space. In this episode, we meet the group's parachute systems lead, Mads Stenfatt, who shares the project’s origins, its shoestring budget (“10% of NASA’s coffee budget”), and the challenges of lau...

We're back after almost three years with a brand-new season about people living a life less ordinary — beginning with Danish adventurer Thor Pedersen , who shares his incredible story of visiting every country in the world without flying. Thor recounts his experiences crossing oceans on cargo ships, navigating through war zones, and enduring the mental and physical challenges that came with t...

From the producer and host of Archipelago, Dad Mode Activated explores the reality of becoming a father after the age of 40. With episodes released every fortnight, the podcast features conversations with late-blooming dads who are rewriting the playbook of modern parenthood. Expect real-life stories, honest advice and the occasional laugh about the unexpected perks of being dads who remember the...

“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...

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 is...

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 bathi...

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...

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...

"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...

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 notorio...

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 v...

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 epi...

“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...

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 m...

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 c...

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...

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 ban...

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 e...

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 wee...

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 societ...

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 Brin...