Sortehusene in the winter from Patrick Bay Damsted on Vimeo.

Relatively close to the city I live in, there is a small area, with some old black houses. Its called Sortehusene, The Black Houses, for that exact reason. In this little community, without electricity and water, a small group of people hunt birds and fish – it´s nothing you can make a living from, but they sustain their ow needs and enjoy this closed community. In the cold, cold winter, when the water is frozen they move out and come back when the spring comes. I do not know where they move to – but they are gone during the winter. In this little video I made the other day, you get some idea of Sortehusene and their surroundings. And catch a glimpse of the lovely Scandinavian winter!

70 million year of seabed from Patrick Bay Damsted on Vimeo.

It is extremely rare that a Danish site comes with a warning – but the white cliff of Møn does. In fall and winter the cliff repels big parts of chalk that falls into the sea – making it quite hazardous to be on and below the cliff. But in the summer, this is a must-see in Denmark.

The ruined ruin from Patrick Bay Damsted on Vimeo.

Since almost a fifth of all Danes live in or very near to our capital, Copenhagen, it certainly get it´s share of mention in the media. Through my day to day work I spend a lot of time driving around Denmark – and the whole country is stuffed with history – from our more than thousand years as a nation – and history in the making. This videopost is coming from the Castle in Vordingborg – which used to be a city of extreme importance in Denmark. Now the ruin is almost ruined.

Hello from Odense,
This week I have the pleasure of doing reports from the 25th Odense International Film Festival, which is an international festival for shorts, documentary and animation. Since we are doing all the reporting, behalf of Stupid Studio and OFF10, in English, I thought I would share the opening report with you. It is great to spend a whole week together with a lot of people from all around the world sharing the same joy of films. Both watching them and making them.

Some of the projects he works with is municipial – and he always enables the local community to take part in the process. It is extremely inspiring to see how he works. (You might like to check him out – this is his site. Actually, the very nice lady I had the pleasure of entertaining at the table, told me how Jonathan even chipped in when the dishes had to be done after a day of communal photography. (Please don´t let this scare you from actually checking his site – he is a cool photographer – and then he does the dishes!)).

So this Saturday, their wedding took place. Jonathan from UK and Britta from DK, who met on some exotic beach on some exotic country, on the other side of the world, was being married in a small and dying Danish agricultural village. In a very special ceremony which was conducted and shared by an english priest, namely Jonathans father, and the local Danish priest from the parish that Britta´s parents live in. Britta, in herself, is so wellread, knowing, empathetic and probably the funniest person, you could spend time with, so she is a natural gift to any man. Basically this is a not a good couple – they are a great couple. And the ceremony was a gift as well. Is was a cross between Church of England and the Danish Church – where we sang several hymns in two languages, at the same time. In some way it was a new revelation for me that we had reference points in the same hymns. (Sorry, im not to religious in my day to day life).

But the point of this blogpost, on this crosscultural and multinational blog, is not to tell you about Britta and Jonathans wedding – even though I have to constrain myself not to keep going. The point is to describe the differences that makes us the same. During the dinner, I had the joy of sitting at a table with a lot of good people from Britain. We had hours of good conversations (and you have to enjoy the Brits, they know how to have a conversation, they are well educated – and they do have a great humor – and the strange thing is this goes beyond almost all class differencies).

So we talked about Britta´s and my strange little country with 18 million pigs, and only 6 million human inhabitants (Denmark). We discussed the strange fact of having a mentally built in class-system, which is turned on by accents, the use of special words and geography (Britain). The strange craving for being the same (DK). The strange attraction of being posh (Britain). We talked about a tax-system which ensures that up to 67 percent of your income is redistributed (Denmark). And we talked a lot on the subject of politics, politicians and how the come over as trustworthy or not (UK+DK).

But basically we had great fun, in a big tent – during a sunny day and a rainy and thunder filled night – on a field on the very outskirts of Denmark. We laughed, drank and danced all night. We felt like twins for a night. We were two people, but all the same.

Sundown in Bagenkop, Denmark from Patrick Bay Damsted on Vimeo.

Late evening in Bagenkop – timelapse from Patrick Bay Damsted on Vimeo.

This week we are spending in Bagenkop, an old fishing community at the southern end of Langeland, Funen, Denmark. The harbour is filled with small ships, typically spending one day and night here – and then sailing on again, the next morning. It´s rather cool to see all the German, Dutch and Swedish flags on the ships, telling where they come from, but not where they are going. Every night at nine, a trompeteer and a tromboneplayer go up in the lookout tower and play the sun down.

It is also great to see how alike we are – gathering on the harbour in the evening, kids from different countries playing the same games together and adults relaxing in the days last rays of sun. This holidays project for me is to play with some different videosoftware – so far concentrating on timelapse video – which have the great advantage to be something you start and then leave the machine to do

The quality isn´t that great – I´m not using an external camera, since this is just a small holiday project to have fun with – but it gives a sense of the view of summer here. I hope you enjoy your summer as well.

Paris: Spot the odd Dane out from Patrick Bay Damsted on Vimeo.

It´s the little things that give you away as a visitor in a city. It´s not the clothes or your preferences for certain food or even your distinct way of speaking a language that is not your mother tongue. It´s how you don´t know the beat of the city – how to get around and which streams to follow. Here we spot the odd Dane out.

Denmark: The Queens Birthday from Patrick Bay Damsted on Vimeo.

It never fails. When we talk about groups of people in a distanced way, we usually haven´t got warm feelings for them. When we get to know the individual – well, that´s a different ballgame. Today, our Danish Queen, Margrethe II of Denmark, celebrated her 70th birthday. As a funny fact I always know how long she has reigned (give and take a couple of days), since her reign started on my birthday, January the 14th in 1972. During the night her father had died, and she took over – after the very popular King Frederik IX of Denmark.

From her birth, in 1940, she was not supposed to take over the throne, from her dad. Since he had daugthers, and women could not be a Danish monarch, it was supposed to be her uncle Knud, who was next in line. But Frederik IX was a popular king and had three popular daughters, of which Margrethe was the oldest. So after quite a lot of back and forth, two successive parliaments and a referendum decided that if a Danish king had no sons and only daugthers, the oldest daughter could succeed the king. So she did. And most of us love her. Which is kind of strange if you think about it. If I was to present you with the thought of royalty, which basically is a person who have congenital rights to a superior and elevated life – born into a life of ruling the rest of us – you would probably make a funny face. And I would too, when I think about it.

But that´s only when I think about royalty as a faceless class of people, not when I think of our Queen Margrethe II or her son, the King to be: HRH the Crownprince. Cause they are both good people, close to the danes and the peoples way of life. So a big happy birthday, from most of Denmark, (actually, even some of the republicans in Denmark say they would vote for Queen Margrethe II if they were able to).

Every single soul on this planet knows the feeling of spring. When we put the winter behind us and open the window to let the sun and breeze in. When we feel re-energized on top of a long and slushy winter. When we suddenly see the coming days as something we are looking forward to and not something we need to live through. When there is more hope than hopelessness.

Spring is exactly the same everywhere, because spring is not a temperature. In that sense, spring is very much like any other feeling in our lifes – exactly the same from person to person, from country to country, from religion to religion. As long as we focus on the feeling instead of the external and cultural circumstances, we have overwhelmingly good opportunities for  understanding and respecting each other.

That is why it feels like springtime today.