Freetown Christiania

Summary

Stuff You Should Know – Freetown Christiania

Date: June 25, 2026
Hosts: Josh Clark & Chuck Bryant
Episode Summary by Podcast Summarizer

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Overview:

This episode explores the unique history, culture, challenges, and ongoing story of Freetown Christiania—a semi-autonomous, self-proclaimed anarchist commune located in Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1971 by squatters occupying an abandoned military base, Christiania evolved into one of the world’s most famous social experiments in communal living, counterculture, and alternative governance. Josh and Chuck delve into its founding, struggles with crime and drugs, the relationship with Danish authorities, and how it has changed over the decades.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Founding and Early Days of Christiania

• Location & Origins
  • Former military base in central Copenhagen, abandoned by 1971 ([02:45-04:29]).
  • Local residents, especially parents from the neighboring district Christianshavn, repeatedly tore down fences to let their children play in the area ([04:29–06:09]).
• Media Spark
  • Jacob Ludvigsen, editor of "Hoedbladet" (New Leaf/Main Leaf), published an article calling for the area to be used for free housing due to a housing crisis ([06:09–08:02]).
    • Quote: “Let's turn this into affordable housing. And by affordable housing, I mean just free. Come build your house here. Let’s turn this into an anarchist compound.” – Josh summarizing Ludwigsen ([07:25])
• First Rules & Early Self-Governance
  • Initial rule: No violence. Later, no hard drugs, no stealing, and community self-policing by shunning or exclusion ([09:54–10:11]; [37:46-38:20]).

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2. Community Development & Culture

• Physical & Social Infrastructure
  • Rapid transformation into a functioning community: communal baths, cafes, kindergartens, theaters (notably the Gray Hall), and more ([11:09-11:36]).
  • Rich art scene, murals, music, and performances: Bob Dylan, Metallica, Rage Against the Machine, and more performed at Gray Hall ([11:36–12:45]).
• Demographics
  • Around 800-900 residents, including about 150 children. Examples of children growing up there (e.g., Lukas Forchhammer of Lukas Graham) ([12:48-13:32]).
    • Quote: “He learned how to mix a Molotov cocktail before he learned how to mix a Long Island iced tea.” – Josh about Lukas Forchhammer ([13:28])

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3. Challenges: Drugs, Gangs, and Violence

• Pusher Street – The 'Green Light District'
  • Open market for hash and weed, later attracting hard drugs and criminal elements ([17:09–18:00]).
  • Pusher Street grew into one of the world’s largest hash markets, with an estimated value of $100 million/year by 2016 ([20:02–21:04]).
• Gang Wars
  • Notorious battles between the B.S. Motorcycle Club and Hell's Angels in the 1980s, including killings and violent confrontations ([18:29–22:05]; [21:04-onward]).
• Repeated Police Raids
  • Decades of police intervention: hundreds of raids, construction of police training facilities to mimic Pusher Street, and open animosity from law enforcement ([22:05–23:08]).
    • Quote: “The cops in Copenhagen hate Christiania... I get the impression, pull their hair out over the idea that this is just allowed to continue.” – Josh ([21:41])
  • Residents deployed creative strategies: baiting police raids to oust dealers, dismantling stalls themselves, and instituting no gang colors rules ([23:08–24:36]).
• Reform & Recent Changes
  • Heroin banned by the community (with urine tests), public campaigns to discourage hash purchases from tourists ([24:36–26:06]).
  • In 2024, the community and authorities physically dug up and removed Pusher Street to end drug trade there ([24:01–24:36]).

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4. Relationship with Danish Authorities

• Official Attitudes & Legal Status
  • Initial government saw it as a “social experiment”; later, multiple eviction threats and legal battles ([28:41–30:00]).
  • Court rulings went against Christiania, but authorities refrained from forcible eviction due to public visibility and potential backlash ([30:00–31:26]).
• Gradual Integration
  • The Christiania Act (1989): allowed residents to stay with some regulatory compliance (liquor licenses, certified kindergartens, kids attending government schools, etc.) ([31:26–31:57]).
  • Rezoning between conservation and urban zones, shifting strategies, and renewed eviction threats in the early 2000s ([31:57–32:05]).
• Collective Ownership Solution
  • In 2011, residents formed a foundation, raising 12.5 million kroner to collectively purchase land and pay rent—balancing anarchist values and legal realities ([32:05–34:48]).
    • Quote: “If you’re an anarchist and you need to make a deal with the capitalist devil, that’s about the best you can hope for.” – Josh ([34:04])
• Modern Governance
  • Highly consensus-based: 14 neighborhood groups, all major decisions by consensus—sometimes compared to “an out of control condo association” ([34:48–35:35]).
  • Selective admission: prospective residents now face interviews, a far cry from the open-door beginnings ([34:48–35:35]).

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5. Culture & Quirks

• Christiania Currency
  • Minted its own currency, the Løn (wage), copper coins featuring a pot leaf, a snail, and the phrase: “Freetown of Christiania and live and let others live.” ([36:24–36:34])
• Rules
  • Evolved from “no violence” and “no hard drugs” to include bans on stealing, bulletproof vests, weapons, running (to prevent panic), and gang insignias ([37:46–38:33]).
    • Quote: “No running. That’s right... Running causes chaos or panic or something. [It] usually indicates that it’s a police raid and so other people are going to start running too. So don’t run, just walk.” – Josh & Chuck ([38:17–38:33])

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6. The Present & Future of Christiania

• State of the Commune
  • Drugs appear to be cleared from Pusher Street for now; public housing is slated for 2029, dividing opinions among residents ([38:33–39:29]).
• Ongoing Tensions
  • Internal debate on maintaining selectivity vs. welcoming new residents for affordable housing, preserving the original ethos or adapting to societal pressures ([39:29–40:41]).
    • Quote: “Over the years... the people of Christiania have gotten extremely selective of who moves in.” – Josh ([34:48])
• Class Structure
  • Author Burgs Madsen divided Christiania’s residents into “the holy ones” (activists), “the trash” (underclass), and “the liberalists” (middle-class newcomers who normalized and compromised the commune) ([39:30–40:41]).

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7. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Self-Policing:
  “Even anarchists love rules.” – Josh ([10:11])
• On Ironic Outcomes:
  “If you’re an anarchist and you need to make a deal with the capitalist devil, that’s about the best you can hope for.” – Josh ([34:04])
• On Christiania’s Social Change:
  “The idyllic days have come and gone, but from what I’ve read... it still seems to be a great thing for people who live there.” – Chuck ([35:35])
• On the Tourist Effect:
  “In peak vacation, summertime, they get as many as 10,000 people touristing that area every day.” – Chuck ([26:06])

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Important Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Time | |----------------------------------------------|-------| | Introduction to Christiania | [02:27–03:30] | | Historical context and founding | [03:30–08:02] | | Rules, self-governance, and social structure | [09:54–11:09], [37:46–38:33] | | Art and cultural life | [11:09–12:48] | | Notable residents/kindergartens | [12:48–13:33] | | Pusher Street & drug trade | [17:09–24:36] | | Police and gang violence history | [18:29–24:36] | | Eradication of Pusher Street | [24:01–24:36] | | Government and legalization efforts | [28:41–34:48] | | Modern administrative structure/admissions | [34:48–35:35] | | Currency and quirky rules | [36:24–38:33] | | Debate about future, public housing | [38:33–40:41] |

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Closing Thoughts

Christiania remains a living, evolving symbol of resistance, creativity, and compromise. While its radical roots have softened with time—and mounting pressure from authorities and changing demographics—the commune is still a vital, quirky, and inspiring urban experiment. As Josh and Chuck underline, its story is one of both utopian ambition and gritty reality, reminding listeners of the challenges and possibilities of communal life even in the heart of a modern European capital.

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This summary provided for educational and reference purposes. For the full experience and nuance, listen to the episode.

Transcript

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I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything. It's the rage bait.

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It feels like it's trying to divide people.

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[Josh Clark]

Maybe we could calm down a little.

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Let's meet at the Facts. Let's move forward from there.

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[Josh Clark]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartradio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And we're going on over to foggy Copenhagen town. Yeah, for this episode of Stuff you should know.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right, because we are talking about a a little sort of village neighborhood anarchist commune in Copenhagen, Denmark called Freetown Christiania, which was founded in 1971 and it has a pretty Interesting story.

[Josh Clark]

Well, yeah, it continues to. You had me at anarchist squatter commune. Yeah. So it is. I think there's something like 800, 900 residents there, depending on who you ask. And they just basically showed up, they set up shop in this former military base, and they said, we're not leaving. This is a free, free territory. And in fact, when you walk into Christiania, I just want to say Christiana so bad.

[Chuck Bryant]

I know. Me, too.

[Josh Clark]

That extra I just throws me off. But it doesn't matter because I'm foreign to this. I'm foreign to the people of Denmark. So I will say I will just deal with it. Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

At any rate, when you walk into Christiania, there's a sign that says, you are now leaving the Europe. European Union.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Pretty cool. So the backstory here is in the 17th century, that's the 1600s, by the way. In Copenhagen, they built a big fortress and some ramparts there to, you know, as protection, obviously, because that's what ramparts are. And in the 1830s, they built an artillery barracks there. They grew over the course of the 19th century. But then in the 1900s, Denmark was like, you know what? No one's gonna come after us. We're Denmark. Everyone pretty much likes us, so we don't need this kind of presence here. And so in 1916, the southern part of the base was closed and actually, like, converted by the country into a park. And then in 1961, parts of the ramparts on the northern end were transferred to the public. And then about six years later, between 67 and 71, they finally, the military got out of it all together, and there was a completely abandoned military base there by 1971.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So, I mean, and it's pretty decent size. Part of it's a park, so it's alluring. It's in the middle of essentially, downtown Copenhagen. So it's kind of, like, attractive to people. You know, it's not out in the middle of nowhere. It's, like, right there. Let's do something with it. And there is a neighborhood right next to it called Christianshaven. Christianshaven, if you Anglicize it. And they. Apparently the parents there kept tearing down the security fences to allow their children to go in and play in this abandoned military barracks.

[Chuck Bryant]

You know, I actually looked up the V in Denmark and how you treated that thing.

[Josh Clark]

Did I butcher it? Is that how I treated it?

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, I don't know, because I bet you're probably right. But what the Internet said was that the V. And I'm sure. Someone can write in and let us know that the V is pronounced like a V when it's in the front of a word, but is treated as a W when it's in the middle or rear of a word.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, so let me try this again. Christians Hahn.

[Chuck Bryant]

Maybe that's how they pronounce it. I don't know. I'm actually, I'm genuinely curious because that's always thrown me.

[Josh Clark]

Christians Hauen. That's what I'm going with.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right. That's what I'm going with, too.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. Well, anyway, it's a neighborhood and they tore down the fence. And apparently the local authorities, I think the military at first, and then the government kept building the fence. They're like, this is to keep you out. Stop tearing it down. And the parents in the neighborhood said, never. And they kept tearing it down. And finally the government just gave up and just left it to them to let their children play.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So it became a kids playground. In October of 1971. There's a guy named Jacob. Oh, here's another bee. I'm going to say Lugwigsen.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

If the Internet is correct. And he is the. Or was then the editor of a. Actually, it turns out it's the most popular kind of counterculture rag in Denmark called the Hoedbladet.

[Josh Clark]

It means new leaf.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, I saw it meant the main paper.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, the main leaf. That's what I saw.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay. I like new leaf too, because you can turn those over and good things happen.

[Josh Clark]

That's what I thought.

[Chuck Bryant]

So he was the editor of that thing. He needed some content to put in there one week. And so he and some of his buddies went and did kind of a fun little. Hey, we're going to take over this old barracks. And so they did an article. They took pictures of them having picnics and having fun and waving around air rifles. And you'll have to remember this is just after the military had left it. So it's very much like an anti war sort of little fun piece they were doing. And in the article he said, civilians have taken over the forbidden city. Except he said it in the language there.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And he also, in this, the article that he wrote to accompany it, he said, hey, there's a bunch of different things we could do with this old military base. But there's a housing crisis right now. The prices of apartments and rents and all that are really, really high. So young people are getting forced out of the city or can't move to the city. Let's turn this into Affordable housing. And he said, and by affordable housing, I mean just free. Come build your house here. Let's turn this into an anarchist compound. And they. I think the local colorful community answered the call pretty much immediately.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, you put out a call for anarchist commune, free rent and doesn't matter where you are in the world, you're going to get some people knocking on your door pretty quickly with their patchouli and their hacky sacks. And they were all in. Certainly in Denmark. As far as the name Christiania, there's a bunch of stories it could have been named after the king who commissioned the barracks. Or maybe a twist on that neighborhood that you talked about, the Christian Shoen. Or maybe Oslo pre1925. So no one can quite pinpoint exactly why it was named Christiania, but that is what it was so dubbed.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And that's what it's still dubbed today because it is probably the most successful anarchist squat in history.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure.

[Josh Clark]

It's been around for 70 years or no, 50 years.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hey buddy, I was born in 71.

[Josh Clark]

Sorry. Yeah, it's been around as long as Chuck and Chuck's been around. So it's pretty impressive.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's 55 years old. Let's just say it like you said it was. I don't know if you said it, but they had a pretty good start there because it was just abandoned by the military in 1971. So it's not like it was falling apart or anything like that. It wasn't like fancy. But the buildings were all pretty great and they had electricity and running water. And as they got going, it wasn't like, hey, let's get together and be a community. It was just like, hey, you can come here and do whatever you want. But one thing I love about people is when you get enough people together for a period of time, they don't like too much chaos and they all tend to come together. I feel like maybe it doesn't always work out, but initially I feel like they all seem to come together and say, like, hey, let's get organized a little bit.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it's very Hobbesian.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And the point of that is that this group that started out as an anarchist commune, or not even a commune, I guess, just a bunch of anarchist squatters formed an anarchist commune. Like you said, they came together, they started making rules because even anarchists love rules.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

The first rule was no violence, which is a pretty good first rule. And that was the only rule for quite, quite a long time actually. And The. The way that these anarchist squatters who lived in Christiania enforced the rules was through, like, social pressure, exclusion, shunning. They. They policed themselves. Right. So if you. If you did commit violence, you would be forced out of this. This neighborhood one way or another. And that was essentially one of the first things they came together to do was to kind of self police. And then the second thing they came together to do was to take care of the trash. Because there are two things that people do in any situation, especially when there are no rules. They'll fight and they'll generate garbage and just leave at places.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So they said, hey, you know, that was literally like the first thing they did is they formed a garbage team to deal with the waste.

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[Chuck Bryant]

Businesses started to open up a little bit, and it didn't take long. Within a few years, kind of like by the mid-70s, it was its, you know, own little society in there. They had communal baths that they built. They had cafes, they had shop collectives, they had a kindergarten. They had a theater. A few theaters, I think, but the largest is the Gray hall, which is still there today. I think I looked up the capacity. It looks like it seats about 1,500 people.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, wow.

[Chuck Bryant]

And they've had some, like Bob Dylan played there. Metallica and Rage against the Machine both played there.

[Josh Clark]

So did no Effects. Morrissey. Prodigy.

[Chuck Bryant]

Did Morrissey show up, though?

[Josh Clark]

Probably not. He was scheduled. Yeah, And I saw Steve Ignorant from Krass played there too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Who's that? I don't know.

[Josh Clark]

That Crass. The punk band Krass Anarchist. Yes, you have?

[Chuck Bryant]

I have him before.

[Josh Clark]

I've heard of them before, and I know you listen to everything I say.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so Christiana was obviously. I think they had. Their motto at first was black sheep from all classes unite. And they attracted a lot of artists, obviously, early on. And still the place is kind of teeming with art. You can just look up pictures or you can go on YouTube. And there are quite a few YouTube videos of people just doing like a little walking tour of Freetown Christiania. And it's awesome. It looks like there's murals everywhere. They started hosting plays and musicals at the Gray hall over the years. And it's just sort of a lovely place if you're into art, you know, any kind of visual or musical art.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I think I said there were about 800 to 900 residents. I saw about 150 of those are kids. And there are children who are raised, like you said, they've established kindergartens there, and there's a guy named Lucas Forshammer. He's the lead singer of a group, a band called Lucas Graham and they sing in English. I think they're biggish from what I saw. It's kind of pop country almost. He was born and raised in Christiania and I was reading a Rolling Stone article with him and it was really interesting because he seems very mellow and nice and open. But one of his quotes was that he learned how to mix a Molotov cocktail before he learned how to mix a Long island iced tea.

[Bethenny Frankel]

Wow.

[Chuck Bryant]

Which is interesting because they generally, I mean, we'll talk about when things got a little violent, but they're a peaceful people.

[Josh Clark]

They are, but they also, you know, the cops show up whenever they want and this is like a group of anarchist squatters and they don't really like police presences and. Yeah, yeah. So it's a. There's this real undercurrent under this whole story because the. There's. It's a generally positive story. But you also can't forget we're talking about anarchists squatting in the middle of a modern city and being pressured from outside and pushing back on that pressure in ways that, you know, you can't forget.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. So I think we sort of teased a bit of a dark side and why don't we take a break and we'll talk about another type of person who moved to Christiania right after this.

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[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so we mentioned that lots of like, cool, free, spirited artists moved to Christiania and put on plays and musicals and painted walls and did all kinds of fun stuff, opened shops and cafes. But also that became what was known as the green light district, where even though marijuana was illegal in Denmark, they would sell drugs there, mainly pot. And it was called Pusher Street. They sold the street where they sold the drugs was ended up being called Pusher Street. It was generally, like I said, selling weed and hash, not the biggest deal. But anytime you have that kind of thing, somebody will come in wanting heroin or acid or whatever you name a drug. And harder drugs did kind of come in and it got pretty out of hand. And they had a lot of problems with the cops and eventually gangs over the years.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, they did. Because I mean, marijuana is not recreational. Marijuana was not and I think still is not legal in Denmark. So this is like flagrant open selling of hash in particular. And because this is a black market, the people who are willing to kind of step up and, you know, offer those services or those products are criminal elements. So those gangs and in particular the. How are we going to say this? The BS Motorcycle club.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, everyone knows what that is, we don't cuss on this show, but that's. That was one of their names.

[Josh Clark]

And then the world famous Hell's Angels.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think you mean the H E Double Hockey Sticks Angels.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. Thank you. Those two gangs ended up trying to take over Pusher Street. And there was actually a gang war from 1983 to 1986 between those two gangs. And a lot of it played out on Pusher Street. Now, like you said, the people who live there are pretty much peace loving. They're self, self governing. They're just generally mellow people.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And now all of a sudden there's motorcycle gangs at a war in the middle of your. Of your town. And I saw there was an article by, I think, a guy in Vanity Fair, of all places, about this. And he said, if you want to imagine Pusher street, imagine a quaint little small town with a strip mall going right through the middle down Main street with 40 liquor stores on it. Yeah, that's essentially what he said. This is like. So this just basically developed. And remember, these people didn't like, plan Pusher Street. It just started to happen and then it got out of hand, certainly out of their hands, because they're anarchists and they can't call the cops because they don't believe in that kind of stuff. They can't sick the government on these people. They don't believe in that kind of stuff. So they had to do whatever they could to kind of try to keep this element out as much as possible. And they really had a hard time with it for decades.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, one of the other rules that they eventually brought in was that you can't wear gang colors. I think by 2004, supposedly, or reportedly up to 25% of Christiania was reliant on the drug economy. And that same Vanity Fair article said that Pusher street had the biggest hash market on the planet and said it basically had 40 different stalls selling 40 different brands of hashish. And the cops in 2016 estimated that the drug trade on Pusher street was worth about 100 million American dollars a year, or 1 billion kroner. So it was like that way for decades and decades. There was violence. There was at least one killing. I think the cops in 1987 found a dismembered body under the floor of one of the gang's hangouts. And there was just a lot of push and pull over the years with the police trying to rid that scene from there. And certainly the people, you know, like most of the people on the inside wanting it gone.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I mean, there were like, there were. I think the Hell's Angels eventually overpowered the BS Motorcycle Club to the point where they folded because they kept carrying out broad daylight hits on the BS Motorcycle Club's leaders. And one of those took place at Christiania. As recently as 2023, there was a fatal stabbing, fatal shootings. In 2021 and 2022, there was a shooting that injured three people, one of whom was a cop. So you can imagine, like if. If there's certain liberal vanguards of Danish society, they're like, let them live, let them stay. This is an experience, a social experiment. The cops in Copenhagen hate Christiania and are just. I get the impression, pull their hair out over the idea that this is just allowed to continue. Especially when cops start getting shot and other people get murdered in broad daylight in this place.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. I mean, they had in 1992 like an 18 month campaign to get all the drugs out of there. That didn't work. At one point they were patrolling 24. Seven there is. In 2004, they had built. The cops had built a Pusher street replica at their training facility so they could literally train for like exactly how to handle that area. And there was a song, even the 4th District Police Department wrote a song about the dealers that had the line, clear out Christiania, take the S down. They will never, never smoke a joint again. That's what happens when cops write songs, by the way.

[Josh Clark]

Right, I know. They, they also. In 2022 alone, they raided Pusher Street 100 times.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And they kept bouncing back. It kept bouncing back. I saw that even though they didn't call the police, this was somebody who was explaining it on Quora. I'm not quite sure what their, their bona fides are.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So take this with a grain of salt, but they seem to not be quite sensationalist. They said that at one point the residents of Christiania essentially baited a police raid is how they put it. They. I'm not quite sure, but they did something that they knew would attract the police. They knew it was coming and so they warned everybody who lived in Christiania about it. And they didn't warn any of the dealers on Pusher street to basically use the cops to get these guys out of Pusher Street. So that's, I guess, one tactic you could possibly use if you're not willing to call the cops. But they, they also themselves would go disassemble these stalls. They. They would, as a group, stand up to the Hell's Angels in the BS Motorcycle Club and push them out. But even if the cops were doing it, if the residents of Christiania were doing it, it did not matter for decades. They would come back and they would sell hash and, and make money and essentially intimidate the people who live there.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. And they even said, nevermind, that was a terrible joke. I'm not even going to say it. But in 2024, they finally, finally this, just a couple of years ago, dug up Pusher Street. They. They literally dug up and got rid of that street altogether and got everyone out of there. And they. I think Copenhagen announced plans to build a pub, some public housing on where Pusher street used to be. So, you know, there's like local crafts and stuff being sold on Pusher Street. Now. It remains to be seen if the drug trade is going to come back, but hopefully that did the trick and it's out of there.

[Josh Clark]

And one of the other things I saw are actually two other things that Christiania residents did over the years to keep drugs out as best they could. The first one, I think came in the late 70s when heroin started to make a real appearance. And they were like, you know what, we don't want heroin here. We don't want hard drugs. You want to drink, you want to smoke hash, you want to smoke pot, whatever, that's fine. But we as a group are going to say, we don't want heroin here. So they essentially forced out the heroin dealers and they said, you heroin addicts, if you want to stay, stay, but you have to quit heroin. You have to go into treatment. And get this. They said, we're going to test your urine randomly to make sure that you're staying clean, and if you're not, we're going to force you out. And I was like, I looked into how they did that, and apparently there was a resident who could detect heroin in urine with just one tiny sip. At any rate, they really did drug test people. That was the first time they did it. The second time they appealed to the public and they said, help save Christiania. Buy your hash somewhere else. So they were actually actively trying to keep people from buying hash in Christiania, which apparently is supposedly not actually cool to do, but it's such a tourist spot and tourists just will go buy hash whenever they can out in broad daylight, that it was just thriving for decades.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, I think they said they get in the, like, peak vacation, summertime, they get like as many as 10,000 people touristing that area every day.

[Josh Clark]

For sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

So it's a very busy area. But it seems like they've eradicated the drugs, at least for now. So their relationship with the government over the years is that's sort of been up and down. And we'll talk about all that right after this.

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[Chuck Bryant]

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So no dinosaurs and dinosaurs.

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[Josh Clark]

So Chuck, you were saying that the government has had a love, hate or lenient, not so lenient relationship with Christiania over the years, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

How?

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, I mean, you know, they came in and took over a military base. They were building fences and they were getting torn down and sort of like, yeah, you can have a playground and then okay, you can live there. And you know, I think as it started to build, there was just some raised eyebrows, but they weren't causing a lot of trouble. So they let them go. And by 1972, the government's official stance was like, all right, this is a social experiment. Let's see how it goes.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So you think, oh, that's great. They're going to leave us alone. Nope. The next year, the government was saying, like, we're not sure about this social experiment thing. Everybody needs to leave by April 1, 1976. And the people of Christiania did not take that sitting down. They sued the Danish government. They protested. The courts ruled against Christiania over and over again. But despite, you know, legally being able to go in and clear everybody out, the Danish government just would never go that far. They threatened to. They came up with plans and they came up with compromises, but they never went so far as to just go in and remove everybody.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, they've. They've threatened eviction and, like, had official eviction decrees and then revoked. But yeah, like you said, they. They. I think it would be a. It was so well known by that point, it would be a really bad look for the government to go in and, you know, rip fam. Like literal families out of there that were basically doing pretty good. I mean, from what I saw, the only kind of downside was the hash trade that went on there for so long, and that was just in one localized area.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And that seems to be how the government, and the police in particular, really kept the heat on the residents of Christiania. Like you said, that seemed to be the only real problem with it I've seen. If you remove that whole drug trade, the crime in Christiania is very, very low. So regardless, because nobody could get a handle on the drug trade, in 1989, the government actually passed what they called the Christiania act that said, you guys can stay, but you're going to have to work with us a little more. Pub owners are going to have to start getting liquor licenses. We're going to need to certify your kindergarten teachers, stuff like that. Right. Like, there had to be some sort of governmental intervention. Their kids have to actually go to government schools outside of Christiania. There's just more involvement that the government insisted on. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

A couple years before that, in 1987, they said, all right, the new plan is you can stay here, but we're going to divide up this area and the neighborhood is going to be rezoned into two areas. The military ramparts, where a lot of your homes are, is going to be a conservation zone, and you're going to have to move out eventually. And then the second area is what we're going to call the urban zone, and you can basically stay there. And then in a couple of years, they announced all the plans just to make things a little more official.

[Tony Ayo]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And it stayed that way for a couple decades. And then 2001, the government's like, just forget that. Forget it again. We're gonna evict you guys.

[Chuck Bryant]

So finally, in 2011, the government in Denmark said, all right, you guys can keep doing your thing, but you gotta buy this land. Like, we gotta get something out of it. And that was a tough nut to crack for the residents there, because first of all, they didn't have that kind of dough. And second of all, that was not what they were all about. Individual property ownership wasn't their jam. And so a lot of them were turned off by the whole idea of kind of owning that. But then I think they saw the writing on the wall, which is like, well, this is what allows to stay, at least.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

So they raised the money. They didn't go out and buy individual parcels of land. They set up a foundation that would cover all of the land that they needed. And they raised the dough. They raised 12 and a half million kroner, and that was enough to buy about a quarter of that land and then pay rent for the rest of it.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Get this. They also took out bank loans, which. Can't you see them, like, showing up with, like, their hair kind of parted and like, styled as best as they can, but they're still wearing, like, their leather vest with the anarchy symbol painted on the back.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, I mean, that's the movie version. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So the. The way that they got around that private ownership thing was they pooled everything together and they bought it collectively. So Christiania itself owns the land that these people live on. The people pay rent to the community. They also pay essentially a HOA fee of something like 176 kroner, I think, or dollars worth a month.

[Chuck Bryant]

1350 kroner. Well, see, that's the trade off is the rent is about $4.67 a month American, but the maintenance fees are 1 96amonth. So they're basically saying, like, hey, you can live here for almost nothing, but it still costs money to run this place. And you're all going to pitch in for that.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly right. So that's actually a pretty good workaround. If you're an anarchist and you need to make a deal with the capitalist devil, that's about the best you can hope for. So the government was like, well, that's your land now. Okay? We can't do anything. But that's about a quarter of the land. There's still a bunch of land left. And if you don't buy this, we're going to build public housing. That seems to be the threat, ironically, that the government now uses over Christiania is we're going to build housing that is open to the public. And you're not going to have any say about who moves in. Because over the years, in another great stroke of irony, the people of Christiania have gotten extremely selective of who moves in.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, you have to do an interview now to move in. It used to be like they would just accept anybody, but, you know, they got more organized. I think there are 14 different neighborhood groups there now. And you know, there's a lot of. I think it just got a little more complicated as time went on. Like there has to be consensus for changing even very minor things like changing out the windows of a building. I think the New York Times did an article on it that said it was like an out of control condo association. And you know, like I said, you have to go through an interview process just to live there now. So I think sort of the idyllic days have come and gone, but from what I've read about just contemporary articles now, it seems to still be kind of a great thing for people who live there.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure. Like there's a sewer system, like we said. Garbage collection's been there a long time. They have recycling centers, they have the gray hall. There's cafes, bistros, there's just a lot. There's like a. It's a city. It's like a little city that was self built and also self governed. They also have their own currency, the lune L O O with a slash through it, the metal O N, which means the wage. It's apparently equal to about 50 Danish kroner. And it's a minted coin made of copper. I could not find where they have it minted, but they have minted currency in Christiania. There's a pot leaf and a snail on one side.

[Chuck Bryant]

Nice.

[Josh Clark]

On the other side it says Freetown of Christiania and live and let others live.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wow, that's pretty nice.

[Josh Clark]

But they have minted coins.

[Tony Ayo]

How?

[Josh Clark]

Well, you just.

[Chuck Bryant]

You can get a coin minted.

[Josh Clark]

I can't. I have no idea where to go get a coin minted. And I don't even know how to begin to find out.

[Chuck Bryant]

We could get a coin minted. There's like podcasts and people do like challenge coins and stuff all the time. So It's a service you can have.

[Josh Clark]

Well, are my eyes open now?

[Chuck Bryant]

You've never gotten a challenge coin from someone or.

[Josh Clark]

I don't even know what that means.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, it's like not even. I think there are other names for them too. But you can get like a coin made like Ben and Adam, I think for Greatest Generation had coins made.

[Josh Clark]

Well, they didn't give me one.

[Chuck Bryant]

And you could give them to people. My brother in law in the marines, they got a coin minted for his. I was about to say graduation, his retirement, and so he gave me one of those coins. So it's a thing.

[Josh Clark]

That's awesome. Will you give me a coin?

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Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'll just hop on over to Coins R Us and input my. What do you want? I'll have Momo on one side and Yumi on the other.

[Josh Clark]

Perfect.

[Chuck Bryant]

And maybe like a palm tree and a Georgia peach.

[Josh Clark]

Can you put them both in profile and make them look like queens?

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, they already do.

[Tony Ayo]

Okay, great.

[Chuck Bryant]

Shouldn't be too hard.

[Josh Clark]

That's a great coin, man. Thank you. Let's see what else? Oh. I talked about how there are only a couple of rules to start. And the first one was violence. The second one was no hard drugs.

[Chuck Bryant]

No hard drugs.

[Josh Clark]

As the gangs got more. Became more and more of a problem. You couldn't wear gang colors.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

No stealing, no bulletproof vest. That's actually a pretty grim rule. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

You get shot, you're going to die.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. Take it like a man. And guns and knives. That was all part of one rule.

[Chuck Bryant]

And no running.

[Josh Clark]

No running. That's right. Why?

[Chuck Bryant]

They said that running causes chaos or panic or something.

[Josh Clark]

Panic. Yeah. All right. Yeah. And they were saying that that usually indicates that it's a police raid and so other people are going to start running too. So don't run, just walk.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Lifeguard rules.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. So the current state of Christianity is exactly the same. They managed to get Pusher street closed down, or at least they got the pushers out of Pusher Street. That public housing is still on the offing. I think it's supposed to start in 2029. And the. The neighborhood's very divided about it. Some people are like, no, we want to know who's moving in here. We want to vet who moves in here. And we don't want, you know, 300 public houses built in the middle. I think they were going to build it in the middle, like right down Pusher street to kind of make it so Pusher street never comes back. The other faction, I guess, is like, no this is actually great because we need affordable housing. Copenhagen is very, very expensive still. So this is going to bring like younger people and artists and allow people to kind of move in. And we need that kind of new blood too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure.

[Josh Clark]

So I talked about different factions. Right. There's this author who I think back in 1981, he was a Christiania resident, but also a scholar, and he wrote a book, Burgs Madsen is how I'm going to say his name. And he essentially divided the. The. The population of Christiania into three socio economic or essentially three cultural strata. One was the top were the activists who he calls the holy ones. The bottom stratum was the. He called them trash. And then the middle stratum was the liberalists. And he essentially said that the liberalists came from the middle class outside of Christiania, moved to Christiania. And I get the impression where, like the least radical, the least anarchistic. And he essentially asserts all the way back in 1981, he points to the liberalists as the ones who led to this kind of normalizing, compromising of Christiania. That makes it a little less radical than it originally was.

[Chuck Bryant]

I thought you were going to say hash users, hash makers, hash dealers and hash haters.

[Josh Clark]

And the hash itself, it has rights in Christiania.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, that's right. That's a group into itself.

[Josh Clark]

So, yeah, that's the future of Christiania. You got anything else?

[Chuck Bryant]

I got nothing else. It's on my list to visit if I ever get over that way.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, I can't wait to go to Copenhagen someday. I want to just go to all of Scandinavia. Yeah, Oslo, Oslo, Stockholm.

[Chuck Bryant]

Everything I've heard is just great. It's just like, if you like nice people just riding their bikes everywhere, then it's for you.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure. I think Monocle magazine called Copenhagen the world's most livable city.

[Tony Ayo]

Nice.

[Josh Clark]

All right. We'll go there someday, Chuck.

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[Josh Clark]

And I need to go figure out some other Scandinavian cities to visit too, so I can rattle them off.

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[Josh Clark]

Chuck said that's right. So it's time for listener mail.

[Chuck Bryant]

This is from Troy. Hey, guys. Been enjoying the show for a few years. And I saw the Camp David episode and I had to listen right away because my dad was a captain in the Marines and stationed at camp David from 1971 to 1973. We lived down the hill from the camp in military housing. And when the President Nixon at the time was not there, we were generally able to use the facilities on the camp. Everyone that was allowed on the camp or in the camp, had their profile with picture and the guard post and you could drive right up to the gate. At the time I was 5 to 7 years old and actually learned to swim in that Figure 8 pool. There's a picture out there of Gerald Ford and his dog by the pool at the exact spot I remember just going for it and jumping in. My dad passed away in 2019 and while going through his stuff I found his short autobiography. I was really surprised at how candidly he described some of this because he never really talked about it that much. Below is an excerpt of his memories there and he included a really nice page from his dad that I read and it was awesome. I still have some memorabilia from the time there as well, including Camp David playing cards and a Russian clock given by some dignitaries that visited to keep up the great work. And that is from Troy Buescher.

[Josh Clark]

Well, thanks a lot Troy. That's a great story. And if you want to be like Troy and tell us a personal story, especially a sweet one about your dad that has to do with one of our episodes, we want to hear from you. Send it off to stuffpodcastheartradio.com

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[Josh Clark]

Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.

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[Chuck Bryant]

What do you mean?

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[Josh Clark]

Huh?

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[Josh Clark]

So tasty.

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[Chuck Bryant]

With more than 4,000 interactive games, songs

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[Josh Clark]

So no dinosaurs.

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