Category Archives: Spotted in Sønderborg

Sønderborg – Here You Can Build Your Own Future

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Two young guys, Kim Groth and Fynn Laue, have spent the last four weeks running around town, jumping in the freezing water and flying high to make shots for the profile video you see above.

During the production they kept a video blog which has been an entertaining look behind the scene.

We asked Kim and Fynn a couple of questions.

Where did you get the idea from to make this video?

We were hired by the Sønderborg community and ProjectZero to make a kind of promotional movie about the city.
When in pre-production we talked to a lot of key-people and interesting folks. Then we took all the information we got and wrote the voice over that made the basis for the movie.

Was it expensive to make and how did you finance it?

Compared to our other projects it is the most expensive at the time being. We were paid for making the movie but had to pay car-rental and buy new gear by our selves.

What languages is the video being translated into?

English, German and Danish.

Did you learn something new about the area during filming?

Oh yes!! Inspite of living here for more than 18 years now, we found that there still was a lot of stuff we didn’t know about. The skating hall for instance.

What is you favorite spot in the city?

The beach! It is so peaceful and the best place to make hard decisions.

I enjoyed watching your video blogs – did it take a lot of time to produce them?

About 3-4 hours per vlog.

What are your next projects?

We have no fixed plans for upcoming projecet, but you can always see updates on Fynns facebook page for upcoming movies or small project-updates.

Just Released: Per Vers: Bli’r Ved

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What do you do if you have a segway, two marching bands, a cool car, 30km of unused motorway, a helicopter and a camera? Well the Danish rapper/poet Per Vers had this and made this spectacular one-shot music video.

Per raps about keep going. He’ll keep going “longer than Run DMC, till he has more back hairs than Run Jeremy”.

The M51 motorway connects Sønderborg to the rest of Europe’s motorway system. It opened two weeks ago but before that we ran on it and some people cycled on it.

Vintage shopping in Sonderborg

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Isabella Thordsen is a 20 year old blogger from Sønderborg who has gained a big audience for her blog about fashion and her finds in secondhand stores in Denmark, Germany and London over the past three years.

Lately she has been going from one success to the next. Last year she received an award as best talent in Danish fashion blogging. In January of this year she launched a webshop with vintage clothes. The past Saturday she broadened the business by opening up a showroom where people can walk in and try clothes a couple of days a month.

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It is very admirable how she at a young age has turned her hobby and passion into a business and full time job. And it is quite gutsy to open a niche shop for vintage clothing in a small place like Sønderborg. But combined with a webshop and all she got going for her she will probably pull it off.

We went to see the showroom on her first opening and it’s a cozy place she has created full of quirky and smart objects and clothing.

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Check Isabella’s blog and webshop for when she opens the showroom for visitors.

Jernbanegade 33 1 sal.
6400 Sonderborg, Danmark

Did you Know…? Sonderborg Slot

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In February the monthly event by Cafe International was a guided tour of Sonderborg Slot. Michael and I had already visited this castle before we even moved to Sonderborg, but the place is worth more than one visit.

So what did I learn about Sonderborg Slot on this visit?
1. Sonderborg castle is on an island
You might not realise this, but as the castle developed over time it became progressively more connected to the mainland. A model of the earliest castle clearly shows that the area was originally an island. As you move sequentially through time  the models then show how the island and connecting paths grew over time as the castle was enlarged.

Sønderborg slot through times

2. The legend of the table
If you have ever heard of it: I’m sorry, but it’s not true, even if there is a painting of it in the castle. If you have not…then maybe never mind? (*still curious?)

3. Urine Pots
There is a small urine pot on display. On the bottom of it is an image of two local dukes and a text saying “You two are a miss. Therefore all Danes will on you piss“. I wonder what the pot did to deserve its fate…

Pee on the dukes

4. A thief for a museum director
No… not the current one! Nevertheless, a baptismal font that stands in one of the rooms stood for a long time outside a casino, where it came to the attention of the museum director of the time. The museum director could not persuade the casino owners to part with it, and he did not have the money to buy it. So one night he hired some strong men to help him steal it. The police tried to find the culprit but the mystery was not solved, until he removed it from storage where he had kept it and put it in the museum, together with a written account of what had happened to it. You can now see it on display on the 1st floor.

An old font from the castle

5. To the captors, with love – the prisoner.
Although Christian the 2nd was imprisoned in the castle, it doesn’t seem to have been too much of a hardship! He could buy whatever he wanted and had the best money could buy, from lobster and salmon, to beer and wine. He even kept the people at the local pub happy by every so often buying a round of beer to everyone.

6. Overeaten? Solution!
A solution might be to manage your portions and intake. However, this was not the solution rich people took in the middle ages! Instead the guests would have a feather at their disposal, so that when they were full they could summon a servant, tickle the back of their throat, and you can guess what happens! Of course, space in their bellies would not be a problem then!

These were some of many titbits we heard from Arne, the museum’s education officer, during the tour. Unfortunately there are no regularly organised tours that I know of, but I hope that if you are a large enough group something can be organised.

*Still curious about the legend? Here it goes: The legend of the table states that while Christian the 2nd was imprisoned in the castle, he continuously walked round a table dragging a finger around its edge. Over time, a groove to form in the table top as a result of the constant rubbing along the edge. You can see a statue called “The Myth” representing this opposite the castle.

The mysterious moving coffins

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If you understand Danish you should watch the YouTube clip below where museum director Inge Adriansen tells the story and read more here. If not read on for the English version.

When the first wife of Duke John II (Hertug Hans den Yngre) died in 1586 he created a tomb by the chapel in Sønderborg Castle. The tomb was protected by a beautifully decorated portal that depicts the 14 children he had with his first wife – he had 23 children in all. Behind the door stands the coffins of 46 descendants of the dukes of Sonderborg, Augustenborg and Glücksborg, the last is the line of the current Danish Royal family. The last to go in was duchess Louise Augusta of Augustenborg in 1843.

Photo: Museum Sønderjylland – Sønderborg Slot

The tomb is not open to the public so the video above gives you a rare peak inside. The bodies in the coffins are embalmed and last time they had the tomb of John II open was in 1969 where the coffins were restored. “They are in more or less good condition. As you would after lying around in dry air for 400 years” says Inge Adriansen.

For many years they thought John II was haunting the castle. The coffins did not stay put – they moved around! Once a year the tomb is opened up to get a spring clean and whenever that happened they could see in the dust that the coffins had moved from where they were the year before. Sometimes it had moved 10 cm, sometimes more. The cleaning people were afraid of working in the tomb alone so Inge Adriansen always had to go with them. When they asked her why the coffins had moved she said it was because the dead had hurried to jump back in the coffin when the sun rose. The cleaning personnel didn’t see the joke in that story. Since the castle did not have an explanation they chose to keep quiet about the moving coffins.

They finally figured out what was causing the moving coffins the year they had not moved. Suddenly one year in the 90s the coffins stood exactly were they had stood one year earlier. As Inga Adriansen cycled home from work that day she saw a Booze Ferry (Spritbåd) turn in the harbour and it dawned on her. In the 70s and 80s loads of ferries were stopping in Sønderborg and they docked by the pier right next to the castle. Up to 15 boats would dock every day and they bumped into the pier as they moored so the vibrations carried on into the tomb of the castle causing the coffins to move up to more than 10 cm in a year.

So there you have it. No ghosts were moving the coffins around. But I wonder what other stories the good people of the castle haven’t told us…

Her vogter jeg!

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Someone was very busy during the night leading up to Monday. They travelled across Sonderborg and put up posters like this one across town:

Jørgen Mads Clausen og rådhuset i Sønderborg

The guy in the poster is Danfoss’ chairman Jørgen Mads Clausen and the text is the same as used on signs warning people that a dog is on guard on the premises.

Her vogter jeg! Indgang på egen risiko

I’m guessing it’s a comment on the local politics where Danfoss and Jørgen Mads Clausen being the biggest employer in the area has (too much?) clout. Whoever did it and for whatever reason, I think it’s an interesting comment and the work paid off by getting mentioned in the online media JydskeVestkysten and Budstikken and now here.

Flooding in Sonderborg

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In the last weeks weather had squeezed a lot of water eastwards, towards the Baltic Sea. As this water moved back westwards into the inner waters of Denmark on Friday this resulted in flooding of the lower parts of the Sonderborg.

I discovered this around noon when I walked down to the fisherman in front of the castle only to discover that the whole pier had flooded. Quite disappointed that I could not get fish but more so that I for once had not brought my camera with me.

Luckily other people did bring out their camera like YouTube user Nohau1959 who took this 11 minute time lapse video of the water taking over the pier.

Local blogger Stine from 6400 Happimess was also on the spot with her camera and got some cool photos as she tests the waters:

Stine from 6400Happimess testing the waters

Also on Twitter a great photo appeared from William Philipsen.

https://twitter.com/#!/wphilipsen/status/155318054836912128

Update 10/01/12: William just uploaded more of his pictures to Flickr:

It even made it on national TV with a reporter standing in the freezing water and a happy kayaker sailing down the street (at 1.22 in the video).

The flooding was expected a day in advance so most places people were prepared and so far I have not heard of any major damages.

While the Sonderborg-side was getting flooded the harbour on Dybbol-side is higher and did not flood so with a bit of extra walking I managed to get the fresh fish I was after.

The First Block in Gehry’s Masterplan

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The architect Frank Gehry and his company created a Masterplan for the harbour in Sonderborg back in 2008. The masterplan was a rough sketch of how the urban landscape along the water across from Alsion could be shaped.

Instead of making specific designs for the buildings Gehry’s plan just had big blocks representing buildings as you can see above and below.

As far as I can tell the building in question is going to be the black buildings on the right on the picture below. It should be in front of the hospital a bit up the hill. (Residential C on this map)

The first building to become more concrete than a big wooden block is designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG). I don’t know the actual name of the house but it looks a bit like a sliced and twisted shoebox. On BIG’s website is a presentation of the house with this description:

How do you create dwellings that optimize the water and the view to the fullest?

[…] BIG’s project, Sønderborg, is a new 1,100 m2 residential building located on the northern side of the harbourfront close to the existing Sønderjylland Hospital.

From the water the building is viewed as a sculpture that rest on a soft hill and invites the viewer to explore the different angles of the architecture. From the other side the building is views as a series of volumes that twists and rises from the park creating an open but yet protected arrival space.

The building consists of 7 exclusive apartments with private terraces that extend the life inside the building to the outside in the warmer months. The terraces have a covered and uncovered area so they can be used even during rainy days.

To archive a better connection between the park where the building is placed, we have lowered the basement half below ground while the other half of the basements is covered by a soft hill. This means that you need to descent half a floor in order to get inside the apartments. This gesture means that the two lower terraces archive more privacy than if they were placed directly on the existing terrain.

–Bjarke Ingels Group

I think it’s a cool and bold building and the views will be spectacular. The sidings on the artists renditions are bright rusted orange, I wonder how that will look in real life.

The building is also set in the middle of a public landscape so unless you are at the top people can peak into your house from almost all sides.

It will be interesting to follow the construction and final finish of this building.

Photos in this post are from Byens Havn, Gehry’s masterplan Design Guide and BIG’s project description. I discovered the project on afasia.

Sønderborg Street Art

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We went for a walk through town yesterday and on the way back came across two guys painting a wall.

The guy on the left is Lars Jensen who used to perform as a rapper under the name L:Ron:Harald when I went to gymnasium in Tønder. I still remember the first time in ’98 when I heard a copy of his mixtape where he does gangster rap in the Southern Danish dialect. It was epic – nobody had ever done anything like that! He went on to release 5 records under that alias. He has been an active graffiti artist since he was young and has put colours on Sønderborg for three decades now. (Which I think he does under the name El’Jay?) This is what the piece on Jernbanegade looked like when we came by.

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Before writing this post I hadn’t seen much street art in Sønderborg but it seems like ElJay/L:Ron and others have been very productive in the past. What is now a big hole in the ground used to be a supermarket with a huge, dark parking lot where the city allowed kids to express their graffiti skills. David Sass travelling around nothern Europe on a bike stumbled on the famous parking basement in Sønderborg, full of graffiti and made this video of the parking garage that no longer exists: