This Amarkaner Life: Kurt's Ferrets

“We’re talking cats, dogs, rabbits, rats. A parrot. Ape. Chinchilla. Not a horse. And not a whale.”

Hello and welcome to a brand new season of Archipelago, a podcast about life in Denmark.

I’m James Clasper, and in this season I’m going to try something a little different.

You see, Archipelago gets its name because there are more than 400 islands in Denmark.

So, starting with season three, I thought it would be fun to get to know them a little better.

And where better to begin than the island of Amager — in southern Copenhagen?

Look at any map of the Danish capital and Amager is the teardrop-shaped island southeast of the city centre.

It’s home to the city’s longest beach, its biggest nature reserve, northern Europe’s largest aquarium — and about 200,000 people, including me.

To many, Amager is a rapidly changing place where smokey pubs and laundromats are fast giving way to fancy wine bars and bakeries.

To others, Amager will forever be tainted by the decision in the late nineteenth century to start sending all of Copenhagen’s human waste to the island.

And it didn’t take long for Amager to get a nickname that, well, stuck.

“Lorteøen. Shit island in English.”

That’s Kurt Helmann Jensen.

And for the avoidance of doubt, that’s:

“Kurt like Kurt Russell.”

And, much like his namesake, Kurt’s the star of this story.

“I’ve lived here in Amager for 58 years, and that's all my life.”

In a way, that makes him a true islander — or what locals call an Amarkaner.

A word that’s knowingly close to the Danish word for our Stateside cousins — Amerikaner.

“Not American, no thanks, but Amarkaner.”

Hence the cute name of this season, This Amarkaner Life.

A joke for podcast aficionados, that.

And as Kurt sees it, the definition of an Amarkaner is quite straightforward. 

“You love this place. Copenhagen is okay, but you don't have to go over the bridge to buy anything. You can buy it here on Amager. Amager is a great place. Amager is number one.”

“The bridge” he mentioned just then? Well, there isn’t just one.

In fact, six bridges connect Amager with the outside world.

Two go to central Copenhagen, three link Amager with the city's southwestern suburbs, and one connects it with southern Sweden. That one's famous. They even made a TV show about it.

Still, as Kurt says:

“You don't have to go over the bridge.”

Why? Because “there are so many special places here”.

Yes, there are.

So season 3 of this podcast is going to be all about some of the places that make Shit Island what it is.

KEYS IN LOCK, GATE OPENING

And we begin in Tårnby, a municipality in southern Amager, in a place that means a lot to Kurt.

“We are now at Dyrenes Mindegrave”.

That’s Danish for Animal Cemetery.

Or as Kurt puts it:

“It's a graveyard for animals from 1949.”

“There was a nice man who thinks we have to have a place where we can bury our pets.”

That man was AC Andersen, a local wholesaler who loved animals, or his own at least.

“And he thinks why is there no graveyard for dogs and cats and so on? Let's make one.”

So he did — on a leafy side street in what’s now a residential neighbourhood beneath the flight path to the airport.

And 75 years later, the cemetery is still going strong as the final resting place for 450 animals.

Which begs the question. What kind of animals?

“We’re talking cats, dogs, rabbits, rats. A parrot. Ape. Chinchilla.”

As a Monty Python fan, of course, I’d like to think the ex-parrot was a Norwegian blue — beautiful bird, lovely plumage, etc.

And just to be clear — the ape wasn’t a primate, it was a Capuchin monkey.

Indeed, it turns out there are certain limitations on the size of the animals that can be buried there.

“Not a horse. And not a whale.”

Seems reasonable —so what, then, is the largest animal that can be interred at the pet cemetery?

“A Great Dane.”

A Great Dane. Of course. I should have seen that one coming.

Now, Kurt knows all this because he’s the chairman of the association that runs the cemetery. 

Or, as he puts it:

“I listen to all the problems people have some time, and I talk to the people and come out here and fix the problem if they have any problem. That’s my job here.”

I know that makes him sound like some kind of MacGyver figure.

In truth, it means he deals with overgrown shrubbery, broken lightbulbs, and complaints about the way people are — or more likely aren’t — looking after their burial plots.

There are, after all, standards to be upheld.

“You have to take care of your own graveyard. That's the rule but not all do it.”

A case in point?

“We have some nice lady who has all her rabbits in here. And there are a lot of rabbit teddy bears on the grave and maybe too many some time.”

I asked Kurt who typically decides to bury their pets there. All types, he explains.

“Young people, old people, Jewish people, Christian people.”

For the most part, he says, funerals attract only a handful of mourners — close family, usually.

But every now and then, something unusual happens.

Not that long ago, in fact, a woman whose dog had just died called Kurt with a specific request.

“She told me ‘we will be some people who will sing, if that's all right, Kurt? ‘Yeah, that's alright.’ And the day came, and I said hello and that we could put the little dog in this coffin and two minutes, five minutes, there were 20 people, 25 people, 30 people, 40 people who sang. And I was almost crying because it was so beautiful to listen to this. There was something really special.”

Kurt also told me that while most of the bereaved pet owners visit their animal’s gravestone once or twice a year, a few make more frequent appearances.

“One special man comes here three or four times a week, and he has a chair, and he sits down and talks to his cat. Yeah, why not?”

And it isn't only pet owners who stump up 450 kroner a year for a coveted burial spot.

Kurt told me about a woman who occasionally brings wild animals she’s found dead in the street.

“We have a lady who two years ago came with a little, what do you call it? Pindsvin. Hedgehog? Yeah. That's yeah, that's right. And she had found it on the street dead. We said, yes, we can bury them here. Yes, of course. Oh, thank you.”

The woman later found a dead mouse and a deceased bird and decided to bury them together.

Credulity straining at this point, I asked Kurt to show me around.

“Should we go for a walk and maybe we can point out what you know of as interesting spots?"

And after pointing out where the nice lady had buried her rabbits.

“You’re gonna see here, there, we talk about this lady who has rabbits buried in here and there are lot of teddies and so on.”

He pointed out the gravestone of a giant dog.

“Big one. Yeah. That's a big one. And, um, He buys this one for his dog and I think, wow. They need a crane to put it down here.”

Along the way, Kurt explained that all of the animals are buried facing east…

“Because we think animals have a spirit too.”

Right on cue, we stumbled across the grave of the mouse and the bird that had been buried together and saw that the woman had decorated the grave with a Jack-o-lantern.

“There's a pumpkin. Yeah. Halloween lantern. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So she's trying to make it a little bit spooky here.

"Yeah. Yeah. Yes, that's right.”

That seemed an appropriate enough point to ask Kurt if the cemetery ever felt creepy.

"I've been here in the evening, and there's no ghost.”

We moved on because Kurt wanted me to meet his friend Jarl.

He’s a retired bookkeeper who volunteers at the cemetery too and, it turns out, has buried his pets there.   

“Two dogs, two boxers, Quark and Hannibal”

I asked Jarl how often he visited their grave.

“I think I come here eight to 10 times a year.”

And does he, like some of the other mourners, talk to them? 

“No, no, no.”  

I asked Jarl why he had decided to bury his dogs there.

“I think I'm happy because they are here and, and not someplace you don't know.”

We pressed on, past the electronic ornamental owl that’s meant to scare away birds until we reached the cemetery’s northeast corner, where Kurt stopped by a small headstone.

“And this is my ferret.”

“Luigi.”

“Yes.”

“And Thor.”

“Yes.”

Turns out Kurt had laid four animals of his own to rest here.

Four ferrets to be exact. 

Luigi, Thor, Astrid and Freya. 

“All four of them are buried here. The oldest one was nine years old, and the youngest one was only six. They got cancer. So that's the way it is. So, yeah.”

I asked Kurt why he liked ferrets.

“Because they are funny. Years ago I see a movie about ferrets and I think, Mommy, “Can I have a ferret?” “No”, she said. So when I grow up and got my own apartment, I think, now I can get some ferrets.” 

“Do you miss your ferrets?”

 “Yes, of course, I do. Of course. Especially Luigi and Thor — they climbed up in my jacket and took my wallet and put it down on the sofa. So where is my … ah, Thor. And he looks really, really, 'I have not done anything', so, yes.”

“Do you come and sit and talk to them or nothing?

 “No. I go down here two or two times a month.”

“You have a lot of memories of them.”

“I have a lot of movies of them, and they have made so many troubles. Yeah, they were, they naughty. Yeah, my first dog grew up with Thor and Luigi and every morning when I went down with my dog, and she had done what she had to do and come up, she would go up and stand between the cages and wait to let them out so they can play. So why do so many people not have fun together, I think, but different animals don't fight. If you know the meaning of this? We have so many people in the world who fight each other because of a difference in thinking or something like that. But animals can do something together. Yeah."

“We can learn a lot from them.”

“Yeah.”

“Including ferrets.”

“Including ferrets, yes.” 

“All right. We move on…”.

As we left Kurt’s ferrets resting in peace, it occurred to me, in a way, this little corner of Amager captures the essence of the place.

Much like the rest of Shit Island, it’s quaint and quirky — but if you look close enough, you might just find hidden depths.

Or as Kurt would say: “Amager is a great place… Amager is number one.”

MUSIC

You’ve been listening to episode one of This Amarkaner Life, the third season of Archipelago.

My name is James Clasper; many thanks for tuning in, and I’ll see you next time.