Postcard No. 2

SAAAAAAAAAAKRA Ø
— From Root to Crown

By Malene Lundén

Why so many A’s in the headline?
My finger refused to lift from the key. I really like A’s, so try slowly to get used to the sound, and think of all the many ways to express A.

Practical here and now
Folkedybet is a phenomenon that exists year-round, an unpredictable and quirky framework that lives on Strandengen in Ballen.

For the fourth time, the Energy Academy, together with a loyal small circle of enthusiasts and the SEMK association, invites all residents of the “optional homes” to participate in about three meetings before the festival in September 2025. The dates will be published in Samsø Posten.

What is a second-home resident? Bornholm describes it this way: the essence of being a second-home resident is about feeling connected to a place, even though you don’t have your permanent residence there. Second-home residents don’t just consume the place; they are actively engaged in one or more types of communities at the location, thereby contributing to the development of the place.

The meetings aim to bring forth what is stirring in the corners of Samsø and Denmark.

The Energy Academy hopes that people from all walks of life— Locals, entrepreneurs, part-time residents, experts, returning visitors, commuters, and those who have moved away—who still can and want to participate will join.

In 2024, the headline was:
“Sustainable life: Sticking your finger in the ground.”

The theme for Folkedybet 2025 is:
SAAAAAAAAAKRA Ø: From root to crown

Secret and mystery
We now reveal next year’s theme for Folkedybet 2025: Sacrament.

The word comes from the Latin sacramentum, meaning something holy or secret. It symbolizes something that is difficult to understand. Most of us may have completely forgotten this meaning—that the sacrament is not just an action performed for show—it contains something that is hard to grasp with the human mind, but which holds a deep, spiritual reality.

Island – Here and now
Last year’s Light in Darkness at Samsø Museum gave us insight into how the island as a concept is often used as a utopian ideal. Architects and artists have historically used the island to imagine future societies and settlements. The island becomes a microcosmos where human settlement patterns and relationships can be analyzed in concentrated form.

The speaker on the future of islands was architect Anne Romme and Jacob Sebastian Bang, who research and explore how collaboration and negotiations arise, where materials and ideas change hands many times.

The chaotic and unpredictable is part of the process, and new, unexpected potentials can emerge along the way.

Just like a Folkedybet, which must now emerge and which we must collaborate and negotiate about. We will see ideas change hands many times, and at times it will be chaotic and unpredictable. But we have seen the potential.

The theme From Root to Crown describes a symbolic journey from beginning to full unfolding.

Just as a tree grows from its root to its crown, we all undergo a journey of growth and transformation.

The Root: The foundation, where everything begins, and where our identity and values may reside.
The Trunk: The process we go through to find our balance, and the challenges we face along the way.
The Crown: The full unfolding of our potential, where we can share our life and give back to the world.

Postcards from the staff: Our special moments at Folkedybet 2024.

What do we take with us from one Folkedybet to the next?
There are many moments to explore. Some deadly, and others heartwarming; some fiery, and others completely down-to-earth.

To: Folkedybet

From: Søren Hermansen

I think my moment at Folkedybet this year was when, for once, I wasn’t responsible and had to present. Friday was in the hands of Malene Lunden and Mathias Switzer. They ran around with chef hats and controlled the flow of the battle in a lovely way, and I could stand there and enjoy the buzz and the conversation.

I enjoyed, among other things, and especially the presentation about the Hitchhiking Nation. I was caught on the bed when I was just going to Ballen, and a young man was standing there hitchhiking. I picked him up and only then saw that it was our presenter who was going to check out the hitchhiking culture on Samsø. I passed! even though it was a bit of a short trip into town – about 200 meters, but Carsten Theede got his picture and made a good presentation.

There’s a lot of talk at a festival like this, but Malene Lunden did a session where she got people to look for moles. She got people out of their chairs and started digging in the ground to see what was in those molehills. A very lively and physical presentation. There are smiles and movement in several ways. Communication is many things, and I am happy when I see people enter the experiences with energy and desire. We must search together and find something we don’t expect, is there. Change is a good thing!

As a Samsing, I am sometimes a little embarrassed by the folkloric. It can be too much. But Hedvig Hauge and Ole Kæmpe did it well. With a good dose of self-irony, they got people to sing and listen to Samsk dialect. It is a good feeling to hear your own language being used without it being too pathetic.

The long table dinner, bonfire and Tromleorkester were touchingly lovely!

To: Everyone who dreams of the night sky

From: Michael Kristensen

It was a quiet evening at Folkedybet, and I found myself under the endless starry sky. With the soft grass beneath me and the cold breeze welcoming my face, I felt at that moment completely alone in the universe – yet deeply connected.

The special moment came when I saw a shooting star streaming past. I closed my eyes for a moment and made a wish. Time stood still, and I felt that the stars were whispering to me. But it wasn’t just the stars that created magic this evening.

After the communal meal, where we shared food and laughter, we were visited by the Tromleorkestret, who played a small concert. The music and the impressions swam through the air, and I could feel the community around me, as if we all became one with the music, the experience, and the night.

Every time I think back to this evening, with my family, it reminds me to cherish the little moments and the bonds we create.

Folkedybet is not just an event; it is a feeling, a reminder to dream, and a sanctuary for the soul. I can’t wait to share more experiences and gain new ones from this magical place!

Ancient sounds, in sound and sensation we are all equal

By Tanja Nellemann Kruse

The multi-artist and musician Brian Max Gibson’s performance with homemade instruments and his invitation for collaboration on his self-built object instruments made from recycled materials, which mimicked existing string and percussion instruments, really captivated me. So, I recorded and participated with the presence of a camera in one hand so that the other hand could be used to play.

Being drawn into the unfolding of a sound work that historically stretches into both the music and visual art worlds, where children and adults participated on equal terms with Brian, became a unique experience for me during Folkedybet.

In this universe, where we were both co-creators of the sound and attentive receivers, where the giver and receiver roles were blurred for a while in the exploration of these beautiful objects and their surprising and beautifully skewed, unexpected, and universal sounds, you found yourself in a space where the investigation was just as important as being able to listen to each other and play together.

Gitte’s invitation to explore scent also moved me, especially the scent exercise: Scent Safari, where I together with Tea and Charlotte, got surprised outside the tent, because the more you smell, the more you can distinguish between scents that once seemed identical. Grass must surely smell the same, right? But suddenly, multiple nuanced scents unfold. Through this sensory awareness exercise, you quickly sharpen your sense of smell, and the varied scents of the grasses tickle new chords in the tiny hairs of your nose.

A Conversation About Smartphones and Their Impact

By Mathias Switzer

On Friday morning, I put on my chef’s hat—and then it’s showtime. Folkedybet is underway, and we welcome students from the public school, the folk high school, and the independent school. There’s a special sense of anticipation in the air as Arne Mathiasen from Dumbphone.dk takes the stage to spark an important conversation about smartphones and their influence on our lives.

The conversation about smartphones went deeper than expected. It quickly became clear that there may be a generational divide in how we experience our digital and physical lives. For many in the older generation, there’s a clear separation between what happens online and what happens in the physical world. But for younger people, these two worlds have merged into one. The online world is no longer a parallel reality, but an integrated part of who they are and how they navigate the world.

In the tent, you could feel how this realization created a shared awareness. Suddenly, we might have understood each other better—not just over differences, but over similarities. The conversation opened up a deeper reflection on how we all use our smartphones and what they mean for our lives. Perhaps we took a step closer to understanding how our relationship with technology shapes us—and how it might change.

This moment of understanding, where the generations met in a conversation about something as seemingly mundane as smartphones, turned out to be deeply meaningful. It became a shared learning experience, which felt like a step towards something greater: a new way of seeing each other and reflecting on our digital lives.

This was my special moment from Folkedybet 2024. See you next year.

To: Planet Earth

From: Tea Palmelund

Dear Planet Earth,

We have come closer to each other. And I don’t think I’m the only one who feels this way. When I smelled the grass at Folkedybet, we became intimate and touched by each other. It’s about an ordinary earthly encounter in its simplicity. From my human perspective, it was a special meeting because I was sensory present. For you – mother earth – it might not have been so spectacular.

Gitte Just did a remarkable performance in the fluttering circus tent at Folkedybet. She trained us – spectators, listeners, human bodies – to use our senses and make a scent mapping of the landscape around us.

With the snout first, we went out and encountered the salt meadow. Something incredible hit us right away. Grass smells completely different. Clipped, wet, fresh, dry, thick-leaved, fine. It was a rich palette that had to be mapped on a spectrum of intensity, duration, impression and expectation. There is a lack of a vocabulary for the scent of grass. In simplified terms, one can describe that something was sweet, while others were spicy, sometimes very intense and sometimes weak and mild. You should probably try it yourself.

When we direct and fine-tune our feelers towards the planet, we are a part of – I think we come closer to a (perhaps romantic) relationship where we are mutually affected. This is the sensitivity that we humans need to restore in order to be able to make planetary decisions that benefit not only humans, but also the millions of other living organisms on the planet. When we talk about climate problems and circular lifestyles, we are in a planetary perspective that requires planetary sensitivity.

That is why I am writing to you – planet Earth – whom I would very much like to get to know better.

What is deadly to you?

By Malene Lundén

Yes, the bridge over Kattegat, or perhaps Folkedybet on Samsø are among many threats to you and the island.

“Deadly” is perhaps too much drama, and in this case, it is to turn up the internal heat.

Sometimes the debate on Samsø is embarrassing. I am nervous about the consequences, because I meet many people who are seriously full of care for my well-being and the well-being of the island, due to far too many bad vibrations and amounts of grumbling from 6-8 people, mainly on social media and Samsø’s online newspaper.

Maybe you do not experience a phenomenon such as Folkedybet, or the bridge as “deadly” at all. Oh, I completely forgot the solar cell project in Brattingsborg – Ørby and Pillemark – Brundby, which you and I do not yet have all the information about or understand the consequences of.

Will you move if the bridge comes, or if the Energy Academy tries again this year with a folkedyb 2025, or if the solar cell project on the southern part of the island succeeds? Folkedybet is a framework for gathering, because it insists on the importance of being able to organize and getting off to meet. Folkedybet is for us to discover in a whole year what irritates, provokes, establishes or is deadly for how a safe community grows from the 22 rural villages and all the way out to the open country.

Who else collects and creates a framework for everything that falls between the chairs, or everything that falls on the floor?

2024, that is, the entire year that has almost passed, we have met for countless gatherings and info meetings. It turned into a wild festival program that is the framework for the deadly. Folkedybet has manifested itself for the third time, which is also the turn of luck. The Energy Academy has invited and encouraged people with interests ranging from “NO to solar cells Bisgård 2022”. Or “NO to the bridge 2023”, or the new “Area Plan plus 22” as a future collaboration between Samsø municipality, Copenhagen University, and the Energy Academy.

My desire is lurking, you know: that impulse just ready to throw all my grievances, with all my closed and often compromise-seeking actions overboard to choose drowning, rather than stiffen and lose the courage to live, and the confidence that peace and love overcome everything.

That’s why you have to come to Folkedybet next year. Without you, it cannot go deep enough.

Samsø is life-extending and completely uplifting.

Imagine that the great ‘WE’ on Samsø will be able to meet and be together on the beautiful Strandeng, which has temporarily and over time, become a place not just out there, but anchored in our hearts for those of us who live on Samsø.

Better times

By Alexis Chatzimpiros

It is a Friday evening in September, outside the Energy Academy building in Ballen on Samsø. It’s an unusual time to be here, but it’s not a normal Friday. A big circus tent has been pitched and throughout the day hosted a local dialogue about the island, the nature and the culture, with activities and conversations around it. The whole event was meant as an open invitation to the island community, without any registration and formal rules, yet with the doubt whether any citizens would actually show up.

The sun has just set, and beautiful colours have formed. It’s very calm, there is no one around me. It’s getting chilly, too.

I walk towards the big tent looking at the pink and purple colours on the sky right above it. All I can hear at first are my footsteps on the gravel, but as I am approaching, I hear music. A warm light comes from the big tent, lighting it up like a Christmas decoration. The music is still on, it’s ‘Better times’ by CS. Nielsen.

I approach the entrance and realize that despite the cool evening, the big tent is half full. CS Nielsen is on stage with his guitar, while people wrapped well in their coats sit around him and sing along.

I feel warm. I am not alone.

It’s a magical ending of a good day. People did come.

The music in the big tent reminds me of the passion we share.

We say that whoever attends a meeting are the right people. But as the music fades, I am thinking: how do we further share our passion? How do we get those, who chose to be elsewhere, also to come?

What we offer is unique. How can we get people push their boundaries, allow openings in their thinking and work more with us?

The light goes off, I smile to my colleagues, it’s time.