Thank you to Ray Robinson and Jeff White for sharing this week's Wavescan program on Greenland and Denmark.
Jeff: In our opening feature today, Ray Robinson in Los Angeles is going to take a quick look at the Danish territory of Greenland, and then start a two part series on the importance the European country of Denmark has played in broadcasting history. Over to you, Ray.
Ray: Thanks, Jeff. There’s been a lot of talk lately about Donald Trump’s interest in acquiring Greenland as a US Territory. Greenland, of course, is currently administered by Denmark, although following a referendum in 2008, it did obtain the right to independence through an act of the Danish Parliament in 2009. The current Prime Minister of Greenland has said that they don’t want to be either Danish or American – they want to be Greenlandic, but they’re open to discussions. It will be interesting to see where this leads, as American investment in mining and defense activities could well lead to much needed employment opportunities and economic activity for the local population, but it set my mind thinking about the broadcasting situation there and in Denmark.
Greenland has a population of just over 56,000 people, with around 18,000 living in the capital, Nuuk. The rest of the population is spread over about 20 small towns and settlements, with only one, Sisimiut, having more than 5,000 residents. Currently, their subsistence economy is predominantly focused on fishing. So I found it surprising that the 2025 WRTH lists a network of 20 FM transmitters at 100 watts or more in the government run Kalaallit Nunaata Radioa (KNR), plus it says there are another 57 transmitters operating at less than 100 watts. These all operate 24 hours/day, 90% in Greenlandic, and the remaining 10% in Danish (mainly for newscasts). And interestingly, KNR does also still operate on medium wave, with two 5kW transmitters on 570 and 650 kHz, and a 10kW transmitter on 720 kHz, so you may want to try catching them sometime.
Besides KNR, there are also a few private stations on FM, one of which has a network of some 13 transmitters. In Nuuk, there’s an FM relay of Danish Radio Program 1 from Copenhagen on 98FM, and at what is now the Pituffik Space Base, formerly known as the US Air Force Base at Thule, there’s an American FM station, WTHL, on 97.1 MHz.
So let’s turn our attention now to Denmark itself. Their wireless history began when some very early spark-gap wireless stations were installed in Copenhagen and half a dozen rural locations just before the commencement of World War I. The purpose of these transmitters was to extend the telegraph network for both maritime and national communication, and to act as navigational beacons for nearby shipping. Maritime mobile stations were in turn installed on ships to facilitate bidirectional ship-to-shore communication. The original callsigns for these early wireless stations were single or double letters, usually an easy to understand abbreviation for the location of the station. When callsigns were regularized, they were then allocated in a three letter sequence beginning with OXA.
The first experimental radio broadcast in Denmark took place on October 29, 1922, more than 100 years ago. On that special occasion, a program was broadcast from a communication transmitter on board a ship in the harbor at Copenhagen, and the receiver was installed in a lecture hall in downtown Copenhagen. Following the inaugural single event transmission in 1922, two broadcast stations were launched in 1923. One was a station operated by a local radio club, and the other was a military transmitter that was diverted part time for broadcast usage. These two stations provided listeners with public information and music concerts.
Two years later on April 1, 1925, the Danish government nationalized all radio broadcasting, which was then organized as the Danish state broadcasting service. When callsigns were regularized, the identification for the main station in Copenhagen was OXQ, with a similar range of callsigns for the network of relay stations in rural areas. These stations primarily used lower frequencies in the medium wave band, and some also operated in the European long wave band.
In 1928, the first experimental broadcasts on shortwave were launched in Denmark. Two different stations were involved: 7MK in Skamlebaek and 7RL in Copenhagen. 7MK became permanent and was changed to the international callsign OZF five years later in 1933.
In the era just before World War II, the Danish government took up the matter of international radio broadcasting in earnest, and a 6 kW transmitter was installed at Skamlebaek in the early part of 1939. Test broadcasts from this new facility were noted in Australia around September 1939 under the callsigns OZH and OZF, and quite quickly a regular international broadcasting schedule was established.
Station OZH/OZF continued in service until it was silenced at the time of the German occupation on April 9, 1940. However, a few days later, the shortwave station returned to the air. During the war, radio programming was directed under the Ministry of Education, and the technical facilities were placed under the control of the Department of Public Works. An entry in an Australian radio magazine for June 1941 reports a very strong signal from Radio Denmark on shortwave. A few months later, however, OZU shortwave left the air for the remainder of the occupation era.
In February 1946, Radio Denmark shortwave was reactivated with the same 6 kW transmitter, a unit that had been manufactured locally under the designation K7. At this stage, three callsigns were in use, one for each frequency: OZF, OZH and OZU.
At the same time, a new shortwave facility was constructed at Herstedvester, where a new 50 kW transmitter, manufactured jointly in Italy and Denmark, was installed. This was inaugurated on October 1, 1948 under multiple callsigns in the OZ series.
If you’ll permit a personal digression, I grew up on the eastern outskirts of London, England, where my grandparents were avid shortwave listeners. As a teenager, I was quite intrigued by the possibility of being able to hear distant stations, and in the late 1960’s they lent me a shortwave radio. One of the first foreign radio stations I remember listening to was the Voice of Denmark (as Danish Radio then styled itself in English). They still only had that one 50 kW transmitter at a site about 5 miles west of Copenhagen, which they used either on 9520 kHz with the call OZF5, or on 15165 kHz with the call OZF7.
I remember listening to them on weekend mornings on 9520 kHz, and in particular their DX Window program in English on Sundays at 1030. Most of their programming was in either Danish or English, but they also had a half hour nightly block in Spanish to South America. Then, at the end of 1969, they ceased all broadcasting in foreign languages, including English.
But, it was through DX Window and also Sweden Calling DXers that I first became aware of the existence of a book called the World Radio & TV Handbook, a copy of which I managed to locate in Foyle’s Bookshop in Tottenham Court Road in London. And guess what? The WRTH turned out to be
published in Denmark, with the editor at that time being the infamous Jens Frost. I now have paperback copies of all editions of the WRTH from 1971-2025, and a few years ago I was also able to buy the 1947-1970 editions on CD-ROM in .pdf format. So I now have the entire set – all 80 editions. It was interesting to see that the 1948 edition was published bilingually, in Danish and English, with most of the front section in Danish
Through the WRTH, I became aware of SWL clubs and I learnt a lot more about the hobby of DX-ing. I joined several clubs, but the best as far as I was concerned was the Danish Short Wave Clubs International, or DSWCI, of which I remained a member for decades. In the early 1980’s, I helped prepare a column in the monthly magazine. Ken Baird in Scotland was the editor of the ‘Unofficial Radio’ column which mainly carried news about offshore and landbased pirate stations in Europe. He’d send me his monitoring notes in longhand each month, and I would type them up (on a typewriter), add graphics from QSL cards and bumper stickers, and make the whole thing exactly fit two pages. Then I’d send it off to Denmark, and eagerly await the next month’s newsletter, Short Wave News, by mail.
Over the years, proposals were made in Denmark for a big new shortwave station with two 500 kW transmitters. However, a 100 kW Brown Boveri transmitter was installed instead at Herstedvester, and this was inaugurated at half power in May 1982.
By the late 1980’s, it was decided that the Herstedvester facility was too expensive to maintain, so it was closed and in its place, Denmark began broadcasting their international programs via Radio Norway International, beginning on February 12, 1990. Three different sites were used for that, in Frederikstad, Sveio and Kvitsoy, and monthly programming in English was reintroduced. Here’s a recording of Radio Denmark via Norway in January 1996:
But the end came, and the shortwave service of Radio Denmark signed off for the last time just over 21 years ago, on December 31, 2003.
The old QSL cards bearing the callsigns OXQ, OZF and OZH, together with the Radio Denmark QSL cards showing the map of Denmark, pictures of the station, and a painting representing the national anthem, are now valued collector's items.
So, from the single and simple demonstration event in Copenhagen in 1922 has grown the entire domestic broadcasting industry in Denmark which today operates more than 100 local transmitters. These government and private commercial stations are on the air almost entirely in the FM band and on DAB+. The official Danish Radio Programs 1, 2, 3, and 4 have long since closed their medium wave and long wave transmitters, but there are still two independent stations that operate on medium wave:
• World Music Radio on 927 kHz with 300 watts, and
• Radio 208 on 1440 kHz with 650 watts ~ a tribute station to Radio Luxembourg.
They both operate 24 hours, so listeners with a decent loop aerial in Europe may be able to pick them up at night, since the medium wave band there is much less crowded than it used to be.
Back to you, Jeff.
Jeff: Thanks, Ray. Next week, in part 2 of the series on Denmark, Ray will look at the birth of European offshore broadcasting, which took place off the coast of Copenhagen way back in 1958.
(Ray Robinson/Jeff White/Wavescan)
