Living Lightly

By David Chernushenko

Sometimes you arrive in a new place and instantly get a positive feeling, a sense that there is something “right” there. Occasionally you know exactly what or why; other times it’s just a feeling and it takes a while to put a finger on the cause.

In the course of a week in Denmark, I got that feeling four times. Each time it was very different, but each time I knew that something was going on that felt right to me, and that I had to learn more about; for myself, and so that I could share it via my Living Lightly Project – dedicated to sharing inspiring stories of sustainable living.

I came to Copenhagen to capture on film what I had seen on several pro-cycling websites: tens of thousands of cyclists, of all ages and social backgrounds, whizzing around the city on two wheels, as if there were nothing more normal in the world. For a Dane with a long history of all-purpose biking, nothing could be more normal. For a Canadian lover of cycling, who has battled through some pretty tough traffic, nothing could be more amazing. If my camera had been turned on me, what you would have seen is the widest and silliest grin imaginable. That and my head swiveling back and forth to take in as much as possible of the bustling bicycle ballet going on in front of me.

Gleeful. That is how I was feeling: gleeful, approaching giddy. Part of me wanted desperately to find a bike and join in the fun; another part just wanted to step back and take it all in. With a ton of luggage and no bike of my own, the documentary filmmaker in me won out over the cyclist. At least for the first 24 hours. After that, it was onto the saddle and into the traffic for me. Into the bike traffic that is. You see, in Copenhagen most bike journeys, whether downtown, suburban or rural, are taken almost exclusively on bike lanes. Wide, extensive, well-marked and safe bike lanes.

They take you across intersections, around traffic circles and across bridges. They follow major boulevards, inter-city highways even; they take you down quiet streets; they guide you to the train station and the bus stop, where you can take the bike on board; they lead you to work, to school, to the soccer field, to the beach. Nothing could be easier and more normal. Except finding a parking spot!

Some Danes complain there are still not enough bike lanes. I’ll leave that debate to the locals. For me, what I saw was a whizzing, whirring example of what a North American city could look like with the right political leadership and allocation of resources from a municipal government. What is to be gained? Healthier citizens, cleaner air, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, greater mobility for the poor and the rich, quieter cities, reduced traffic speed, more jobs in the manufacture, sales and servicing of bikes; and way fewer road accidents. What is to be lost? One lane, or perhaps only a quarter of a lane on existing roads. That and, umm … nothing else I can think of!

I almost did not go to Humlebaek. After getting lost several times walking to Osterport station, my watch told me I was going to be very late. Here I was heading out to a small town north of Copenhagen to meet with the founder of Aarstiderne, a Danish company that distributes “boxes” of organic food to households that subscribe to their service. Would it be worth it? I already use a similar service in Canada. I was late, hungry and still suffering from a cold. It was far away, and would cost me at least $80 in trains an taxis. Oh, I had excuses.

Still, something was telling me I should go anyway. Buy a bad rail station sandwich, hop on the train and catch a cab. So I did.

Arriving at the Aarstiderne farm just outside of Humlebaek, the first thing that struck me was the beauty and harmony of the place. This was not only a working biodynamic farm, and the “corporate headquarters” of an organization with clients across Denmark and now Sweden; it was also a place where great care was being taken to promote beauty and tranquility. Logical for a company that wants to connect people with good food, grown and transported with less environmental impact, but I have seen enough companies that profess to stand for one thing, and then carry out their business in a way that makes a lie of their claims.

Warmth. That’s what I felt immediately. From founder Soren Ejlernsen’s warm welcome, to the offer of afternoon tea and fruit in the garden, in the sunny, late-afternoon light, to the ensuing interview with Annette Larsen (Managing Director) and then Soren, now with his infant daughter on his lap. Our open and wide-ranging discussion was gold for the purposes of my documentary. Here they were sharing their vision, reality, challenges and personal insights into the business of promoting quality food and promoting social change.

The warm feeling did not end there. At the invitation of Annette and Soren, I was back at Humlebaek two days later, on a Sunday, for their “Open Gates” community fair. Once again, the warmth was palpable, and this time literal. I had cycled the 50 kilometres (on great bike lanes and well-marked routes, I must add) on an unusually warm May 11 (my entire two weeks in Sweden and Denmark were unusually sunny and warm, leading to many comments about climate change), so I arrived hot and thirsty and hungry. And there was Annette, with a big smile and a “so glad you came”, giving me a tour of the displays, the booths of partner organizations (fair trade coffee, fresh juice, organic cotton items, etc.) that culminated with a tasty, healthy lunch. There was even meat, to the delight of this unreformed omnivore.

And there was music, and story-telling and pony rides, and gardening demonstrations for kids and parents. It was with some us online pharmacy no rx regret that I mounted the bike, tummy and camera now full, to head south again. But the beach was calling. Yes, the beach! In Denmark. On May 11!

 

The first thing you usually hear about Christiania – a sort of alternative town within the city of Copenhagen — and indeed the first thing most visitors actually see, is all the pot dealing going down on Pusher’s Street. But if you stop there, you will miss the real Christiania. The Christiania that, several decades after its creation as a self-governing experiment in alternative community building, offers a host of insights into human character, self-organization, resilience and autonomy.

If you do go deeper into Christiania – way deeper, literally and figuratively – to find out what is really going on, not just what’s going down, here is what you might see and feel.

Stimulated. Christiania stimulated me, and challenged me. At first glance you see a mess. A jumble of old buildings, many well past their prime, lots of graffiti, and piles of stuff, junk, everywhere. You assume chaos, because that is what you see, or think you see. Beyond that, there is a real community here, anarchic as it may be or seem.

I would never have known about it, if not for the personal contact I had been given. Alfred Christensen has lived in Christiania for more than two decades. He knows most people there, and they know him. He is married, has three children, is actively involved in the politics of Christiania, and keeps very busy installing renewable energy systems, and encouraging recycling of materials and resources of all kinds.

Through Alfred, my wife and I were able to see Christiania from the inside, with all its blemishes, and get some understanding of how it works. Fundamentally, it works through the very active involvement of people like Alfred. They go to community meetings. They debate. They argue. They disagree. But ultimately they make decisions with the good of the community in mind. It is messy and time-consuming, but people who stay there prefer it to the distant, top-down type of government that exists in most towns in Denmark, and indeed the world.

What did we get to see? A public bath-house that gets its hot water from solar thermal panels; Alfred’s district heating system, which is finding its way into more and more buildings in Christiania, mostly using recycled equipment; photovoltaic panels providing electricity to a number of homes; a thriving building supply recycling business; a home-grown bicycle-making business (unique Danish bikes with a two-wheeled cargo/child carrier attached to the front) that has outgrown the community and now assembles most bikes elsewhere in Denmark; a daycare set in the greenest, most peaceful urban setting you could imagine. And so much more that we did not have time to see, let alone understand.

Would I live in Christiania? I don’t know. Would I dismiss it as some failed utopian hippy experiment? Certainly not. There is too much that is positive. Too much for the rest of the orderly, “real” world to learn.

The island of Samso is a four-hour trip from Copenhagen: two by train, and then two more by ferry. It is hardly the place you would expect to be a beacon of light to the world when it comes to energy autonomy. But it is. So much so that Samso is deluged by foreign visitors each week, ranging from journalists to professionals to politicians.

Our first reaction – my wife and I – on stepping off the boat was to declare, “I wish we were spending more than one night here!” Samso was clearly that kind of place you wanted to get to know, to settle into, to breathe and taste.

Serenity was what we felt. Serenity, and much more.

What the people of Samso have accomplished, in one decade, is to move from being as totally dependent on fossil fuels as the rest of the world, to now generating more electricity and heat from renewable energy than they can use. Samso did this not by some government dictate; rather, it was the people who rallied behind a couple of local innovators to take their energy and resource security into their own hands.

Like Freiamt, the German village I visited earlier, Samso is the kind of conservative agricultural region (with a healthy dose of summer tourism thrown in) that you might not expect to be ‘early adopters” of renewable energy and organic farming. But Samso is an early adopter, not so that it can boast of being greener than anyone else, but because the numbers showed that investing their hard-earned dollars in wind turbines, solar panels and biomass district heating would bring the people a far superior economic return and a more secure future than putting it in the bank or investing in the stock market.

So, here on this serene island, we met no-nonsense farmers who, with a twinkle in their eyes, gushed about what a positive experience this shift to renewables has been. And they are not done yet. Many of the citizens are looking for further ways to reduce their energy demand, improve their crop yield with less chemical input, and add additional generation capacity so they can sell it to the grid that serves continental Denmark and a handful of other Nordic countries.

What do they make of the flood of tourists, some racing about with cameras and microphones in hand? I was told they are proud. Proud to have proven to themselves that they can move forward and adopt progressive practices, but without having somehow sold out the soul and the character of the island. In spite of all the frenzied activity, Samso remains serene. The kind of place where you can borrow a bike to ride back to your hotel from an impromptu barbecue with a local family, leave it unlocked in front of your hotel so the owner can pick it up later, and sleep peacefully, undisturbed by worries of theft, or by the wind turbines that turn in near-silence all around the island.