Cafés in Denmark Copenhagen

From 1665 to the end of rationing

Coffee is believed to have reached Denmark in 1665, but it took until about 1820 to win over the farmers of Zealand.⁵ Merchants stretched it: an 1863 book on the chemistry of everyday life warned of coffee cut with chicory to raise the seller's profit.⁵

The Second World War almost stopped imports. Coffee stayed rationed until October 1952, and Danes made do with erstatningskaffe (substitute coffee), brewed from chicory root among other things.⁵

The sønderjysk kaffebord

Southern Jutland turned coffee into a feast. The sønderjysk kaffebord (South Jutland coffee table) took shape in the mid-1800s, once coffee had become cheaper and bread ovens more reliable: soft cakes first, then layer cakes, and at least seven kinds of småkager (cookies) to finish.⁶ Hosts aimed to have enough for twice the number of guests invited.⁶

After the region became part of Prussia in 1864, the authorities often refused liquor licenses to inns where Danish-minded people met, so the community built its own forsamlingshuse (assembly halls) and served coffee and cake there.⁶ During the First World War meetings were banned but coffee tables were not, and people gathered around those instead.⁶

Wienerbrød, the Viennese bread

Wienerbrød means Viennese bread. The usual origin story is a bakery workers' strike in 1850, when owners hired foreign bakers, several of them Austrian; after the dispute, Danish bakers kept recipes such as the kolatsche and added more egg and fat.⁷ In Vienna the same pastry is called Kopenhagener Plunder or Dänischer Plunder.⁸

Bakers have a name for the hollow in the middle of a round pastry, where the cream or jam goes: bagerens dårlige øje, the baker's bad eye.⁸ The pastry also traveled: Lauritz C. Klitteng promoted "Danish pastry" in the United States from 1915 to 1920, and is said to have baked it for Woodrow Wilson in December 1915.⁸

Barista titles and the brands on the shelf

Between 2001 and 2006 Danish baristas won the World Barista Championship four times, the last of them Klaus Thomsen.⁹ The roastery he co-founded, Coffee Collective, made its first two purchases from farms in Guatemala and Brazil and still buys from both.¹⁰

For filter coffee, the Scandinavian countries have long bought more washed arabica than robusta, which Thomsen links to a public that prefers cleaner-tasting cups.¹⁰ Coffee became a staple across the region partly through Norway's early-1900s prohibition and high alcohol taxes in its neighbors, and offering coffee to guests is still the custom.¹⁰

The supermarket brands are older. BKI, short for Brasil Kaffe Import, was founded by Svend Mathiesen in 1960, moved to Højbjerg near Aarhus in 1963 and is still owned by his three children.¹¹ Merrild grew out of a shop in Kolding; Douwe Egberts bought it in 1979, Lavazza took it over in 2015, and the Kolding roastery closed that year.¹²

Copenhagen, where Bodum began

Copenhagen has its own place in the story. Peter Bodum founded his housewares firm here in 1944; it sold its first vacuum coffee maker, the Mocca, in the mid-1950s and moved to Lucerne in 1978.¹³ Today the city's cafés run from light-roast filter bars in Nørrebro and Vesterbro's old meat-packing district to bakeries on Refshaleøen and tables along the Lakes.