Postcards from employees
Samfundsakademiet
From: Søren Hermansen
“Samfundsakademiet” is perhaps the new name or the new cousin in the energy academy’s immediate family. After many years as the Energy Academy with energy transition as its main objective, the focus has changed. Energy is still important, but the circumstances under which it is provided have changed radically from cooperative ownership to developer and private financing. Local ownership has been replaced by a centralist and private economic market.
In recent years, a situation has arisen in rural areas that is like the one Samsø was in almost 30 years ago, when the local slaughterhouse closed and sent 100 employees into unemployment. The last cooperative business finally closed, and the historic community economy was finally laid to rest for Samsø. This also ended a local activity or function that for many years had solved a task for agriculture and the primary production on which Samsø lived. It was not only the direct effect that was affected, but an entire society that was organised around these cooperatives that handled and refined products that were to be sent to the market and provided Samsø with money to maintain a good life on the island.
The blacksmith, the electrician, the haulier and all the other service companies lived largely from servicing and developing the cooperatives and their members, and the profits that came out of the joint business could then be used privately to build houses, keep the community centre or the handball hall alive.
The consequence of the obvious and politically supported development is a “function-emptied” local community that does not have any of the common functions left that were once the glue that made a local community alive and engaged. Now you may still be the master of your own house but not co-responsible for the common economy if you ignore the tax you pay into the community. It is a bureaucratic community that works all too well but does not give the feeling of co-ownership and co-responsibility that a direct economic community gives.
The Velux Foundation has created a program they call Democratic Sustainability. Samsø Energy Academy is among those selected to implement a project within the Velux framework with the above title. It is a truly exciting and very important task!
With many years of experience in local development and co-ownership, the Energy Academy is a meeting place for many local communities that struggle with the same challenges as Samsø does.
Therefore, we are almost obliged to lead the way once again on Samsø and show that together we can take up the challenge and take responsibility for jointly creating a viable society in a sustainable landscape.
Happy New Year
A Year Marked by Community and Change
From: Michael Kristensen
Dear friends of the Samsø Energy Academy.
After yet another year in which the wind has buffeted us—both literally and figuratively—I once again feel a deep gratitude for all that we have experienced and created together. On my daily journey between Bakken and the Energy Academy, I am reminded that every season, every cloud, and every encounter with you helps shape our shared journey toward a greener future.
This year has been filled with people, learning, conversations, challenges, and new opportunities. It is in the meeting between everyday life and great ambitions that we find our direction forward.
My mornings most often begin with the scent of damp earth and sea breeze as I pedal my bike toward Ballen. Along the way, I pass the familiar fields where the landscape changes day by day—a quiet reminder that change is always possible when we work with nature rather than against it.
Over the course of the year, this route has led me to countless meetings and moments, each leaving its mark on our work.
We have welcomed international delegations from Japan, Canada, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and across Europe—curious minds eager to learn from Samsø’s energy adventure. As they moved through the island’s landscape, I saw the same spark in their eyes that I feel myself, when nature’s calm unites with our shared ambitions.
Once again, the Samsø Energy Academy has proven that the house is more than a knowledge centre. It is a living engine for the island’s development. With 3.000 – 4.000 visitors each year, the Academy helps generate significant spillover effects for the local economy: overnight stays, meals, purchases, and meetings—all of which create value for Samsø as a whole. For an island of our size, this truly matters.
By Samsø standards, the Academy is a medium-sized workplace. With 6–7 full-time equivalents, we not only generate shared benefit and knowledge, but also jobs, economic activity, and stability in the local community. We are proud of that.
The year has also reminded us that no organization stands still. Both among staff and within the board, we have been in the midst of a generational transition—a natural and at times demanding process that all living organizations must go through. Changes in roles, new people, new responsibilities, and new perspectives. It has required patience, openness, and a shared willingness to find the balance between experience and renewal.
Amid these changes, however, came welcome news: the Samsø Energy Academy has once again been included in the national budget. An important recognition that gives us stability, direction, and the opportunity to continue our long-term work for both Samsø and the rest of Denmark.
Throughout the year, we have hosted workshops, conferences, citizen meetings, and professional dialogues where residents, young students, researchers, and politicians have shared perspectives and ideas. The Academy has been buzzing with energy—not only the renewable kind, but also the human energy that arises when vision meets engagement.
Along the way, I have met many of you—in the fields, at the harbour, at football practice, in meetings, and in passing. It is precisely these everyday encounters that remind me why our work matters: because Samsø is not just a place, but a community that believes in action.
When I arrive at the Energy Academy and park my bike, I feel it again: the architecture, the light, the view of the sea, and the calm that rests over the building. This is where the year’s many impressions are transformed into concrete projects. This is where ideas are allowed to grow. And this is where, together, we take the next step into the future.
Let us continue this journey together—strengthened by the experiences of the year gone by—toward an even greener, more resilient, and vibrant future for us all.
A Love Letter to the Space Between Us
From Mathias Switzer
When I think about this year’s theme – a declaration of love for the ocean, the earth, the soli and the sky – I keep returning to something Esben shared in his talk on quantum physics. He spoke about the invisible space between particles. About relationships that cannot be seen, yet determine how everything moves. And he said a sentence that has stayed with me ever since: “It is not the things themselves that create change, but the connections between them.”
Perhaps this is the most accurate description of my work at the Energy Academy.
Because when we work with local development, energy transition, young people, culture, or community engagement, it is rarely the visible structures alone that create real transformation. It is everything in between. The trust. The conversations. The subtle shifts in everyday life. The moments where something begins to vibrate – like two particles suddenly entering into relation with one another.
This, to me, is also where love shows up in our work. Not as something sentimental, but as a particular attention to relationships: between people, between landscapes and ways of living, between the past we inherit and the futures we dare to imagine.
The ocean, the earth, and the sky are not only natural elements. They are metaphors for the systems we are part of. The ocean as movement and change. The earth as grounding and care. The sky as horizon and vision. Quantum physics teaches us that none of these exist in isolation – everything is held together by fields of relation.
And perhaps that is what I cherish most about working here: that the transition never feels like a “project,” but like a living fabric. A field where new connections can arise if we make room for them – through dialogue, curiosity, and the kind of local community that is both deeply grounded and endlessly complex.
When we talk about democratic sustainability on Samsø, we are, in a way, also talking about quantum physics – even if it sounds unusual at first. In both worlds, the real work begins by noticing what is usually overlooked: the weak signal, the emerging idea, the ways people influence each other long before anything becomes a decision, a building, or an energy solution.
This text is my small love letter – not only to nature, but to the in-between. To everything that never appears in a strategy document or a spreadsheet, yet quietly carries the whole transformation. It is here that change begins. It is here that it unfolds. And it is here that we practice, every day, tuning into the subtle connections that might already be becoming something larger
At taenke med jord
From Malene Lundén
Earth – an overlooked motif
Exhibitions have featured the sky, the trees, and the sea; the role of the road has also been examined. Land, on the other hand, is disappearing into banality, but has recently received increasing attention among thinkers who analyze the significance of climate change for our understanding of our role in the world. The French philosopher and sociologist Bruno Latour believes that we must use land to reorient ourselves. We must rediscover our connection to the earth in a very concrete way if we are to understand how we live on new land, in new soil, and within a new terrain.
The last word
In his obituary in The New York Times, it was stated that Latour, in his climate-historical analyses in recent years, believed that the world is undergoing nothing less than an “epistemic shock.” It is not the discovery of the heliocentric worldview, gravity, or the theory of relativity that is in focus, but the Earth as a fragile place, at least its outer part that humans have influenced: the critical zone.
What do we understand together?
According to Latour, the upper layers of the earth, where a large part of the planet’s organisms are found, offer an opportunity to understand and rediscover ourselves.
When we think with the earth, we are offered a long, planetary perspective that points to the past, present, and future.
Grounding connections
“Soil formation” provides a connection to the growth of plants and organic life.
During the climate crisis, the concept of growth has acquired not only a positive connotation as part of market and consumer thinking. Soil, on the other hand, as fertile ground and substrate, carries a connotation of sustainability that invites a new kind of thinking.
With soil cultivated in the reflective space of art, we are given something else to think about.
Here, there is no fertility without transience, and there is no free lunch. Earth and transience are partners in an endless dance, and heaviness and boundedness are realities right before our eyes.
Vanity and transience
“Vanity is basically a reminder of our transience,” says Jens Grund, editor-in-chief of Berlingske. If you think about vanity and transience at the same time, you become aware that vanity is irrelevant, as it is only a temporary stage until death.
New thinking and seriousness
Think Tank Europe’s Covid-19 timeline showed that we could die—and even die alone. We were given serious realities to deal with and much to think about.
The last word Art and science
I co-created the exhibition Transience at Galleri DUG on Samsø in 2022.
COVID-19 provided a new, smaller window for thinking new thoughts.
Objects have been collected and studied over a number of years, and the way these objects disappeared and turned to dust in unregistered space and time has been documented and hand-drawn.
The exhibition Transience represents new thinking, and the discovery of soil became a breakthrough.
At the Energy Academy, we work with LABLAB, a Swedish innovation organization that explores how energy and landscape are inextricably linked. For two years, we have focused on earth as an element—how it is fixed and forms the basis for discovering and thinking about landscape. To unite and gather this artistic work into a shared project space with science and practical experience is an acknowledgement. We thank the Velux Foundation for its support, and we look forward to seeing whether we can come together to think with the earth.
Ground control to Major Tom
From Alerxis Chatzimpiros
It has been a while since I started noticing the world changing fast – every year, it seems, at an even faster pace. My reality in Europe is changing too. Even what I once considered foundations and principles, things I could rely on, no longer feel set in stone. Suddenly, they are being questioned.
And this is scary.
When moving through darkness or navigating the unknown, it becomes essential to stay focused on direction, find balance, and not lose hope. In my field of work -the green transition- optimism is scarcer than it used to be. The need to implement what has already been agreed upon is urgent. At the same time, support and capacity building for those working on the ground remain far from sufficient. It feels pretty dark.
Yet there is a persistent light coming from Samsø. The Energy Academy continues to motivate me not to lose hope and keep going. Being part of our team means working in a space where learning, experimentation, and team cooperation are essential, a space where we grow together. It’s ‘hyggeligt’!
My colleagues and I aim to enable change rooted in trust, dialogue, and the courage to act even when the path ahead is unclear. And we will keep the light on for travellers to get inspired about what possibilities and democratic sustainability can look like on islands, in Europe, and around the world.
I recently rewatched the trilogy of The Lord of the Rings. It is remarkable to see a coalition of different beings sharing responsibility to protect their world as they know it. So I remain hopeful for a big Helm’s Deep win. In uncertain times, the sense of shared purpose becomes more than a motivation. It is vital.
A Place Where I’m Allowed to Care
From: Gabriela Papova
The design of systems shapes how we live and work, often in ways we barely notice. How attention is directed, which choices are made visible, and how structures are arranged all influence behaviour and priorities, much as landscapes are shaped over time by wind, water, and use.
In my work, I stay aware that every decision carries weight not only in how things look or function, but also in their social and material consequences. At Energiakademiet, there is room to take this responsibility seriously. Care is part of the conversation, even when answers are not always clear, and solutions are still being shaped.
As we enter a new phase, we are focusing on strengthening our digital presence while remaining grounded in our core identity. The aim is to communicate the Academy’s knowledge, projects, and values in ways that are clear, accessible, and considered, allowing information to move with intention, like water finding its way through soil, shaping what it touches without force.
What I value most is being in a place where care is allowed to be present in the work itself. Where questions about how things are made, maintained, and used are taken seriously. Thoughtful choices, even small ones, shape larger systems over time. Our actions, both digital and physical, leave traces in the world. Being attentive to those traces is part of how I understand responsibility here.
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