Coast - Series 5 - Denmark

Coast explores the strong bonds Britain has with its neighbour across the North Sea, Denmark. The Danes top the polls as the happiest people on Earth and Neil Oliver investigates the uniquely Danish concept of 'hygge', a cosy comfortable feeling almost impossible to translate into any other language. From palatial beach houses that are off limits to foreigners to Denmark's oldest seaside resort, Neil discovers how their coast keeps the Danes happy. Nick Crane examines how the Danish made big business out of selling bacon to Britain. Following defeats in the Napoleonic wars and the loss of lucrative farming land the Danes put poor soil to work rearing pork, but why did the British gobble it up? Alice Roberts sets sail in a full-scale replica of a Viking longship to see how they gave the Norsemen the edge over the English in battle. Alice also discovers how over 8,000 Danish Jews managed to escape the Nazi concentration camps in a flotilla of fishing boats that braved hostile waters to reach the safety of neutral Sweden. Miranda Krestovnikoff meets some unflappable red deer, who make themselves at home on a windswept shoreline, despite the fact that they share the sand dunes with tanks from the Danish army. On Heligoland Mark Horton reveals how in 1947 Britain's Royal Navy blew this tiny island apart in the largest non-nuclear explosion the world had ever seen. It's all the more remarkable because Heligoland is an island that used to be British. Dick Strawbridge gets access to the construction of one of the world's largest offshore wind farms, learning how wind turbine towers are built 10 miles out to sea using technology that may soon transform the British coastline, as offshore wind farms become an increasingly familiar sight.