Hello! I’m Emma, and I am honoured to have been asked to contribute my swimmer portrait. I was born in 1983 in Boston, Massachusetts, in the northeast United States. I lived and went to university there until I was 21, then moved to England to go to graduate school. There I met my husband Matthias, a Dane from Copenhagen. [Insert long twisty story here, and] now we live in Frederiksberg, where we are raising our four boys, ages 3 to 12. I work as an editor at the powerfully named International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (Det Internationale Havundersøgelsesråd), which was founded in Copenhagen in 1902 and is the world’s oldest intergovernmental science organization. I do my work in English but, happily, can now manage most of my life admin, parent–teacher conferences, and swim-based socializing in Danish.
Growing up, I was a swim team kid with semi-permanent raccoon eyes and an enormous duffle bag of training gear that I would sit on while waiting for my lift home. I was fast, but not the fastest. My contribution was being hardy and disciplined about swimming the distance events, like the 1500m (“the Mile”). I didn’t have much of a “sprint” setting in me, but I could keep on swimming when others wanted to stop – which counted for something!
At some point in college, I decided that there was more to life than having one’s head in the pool and, from one day to the next, I dropped the swimming – for nearly two decades. Thank goodness I found it again! I have always been quite active. I got a decent ashtanga yoga practice going during my years “away.” But my body just loves to swim.
My return to swimming
Last year (2023), a colleague told me about Christiansborg Rundt a couple of weeks before the event. Not being on open water social media, I had no idea it was happening. I signed up for the 1000m and then, impulsively on the night before the event, the 2000m; rented a Sailfish; and just turned up. I loved it. Everyone who emerged from the harbour just looked so thrilled to be there, doing this! I returned my wetsuit, then quickly bought another one second-hand and started popping up at events throughout the late summer.
In October, I joined Copenwater on the recommendation of Marie-Louise Kristensen, whom I met at the Furesø crossing event and who very sweetly told me about Copenwater’s open trainings on Mondays in Nordhavn. I went to one of these and was so impressed by the attitude of the other swimmers. They were welcoming, practical, and obviously experienced. They were non-judgmental about the type or duration of others’ swims. Most intriguingly, they appeared to have no intention of stopping, even as the sky got darker and the water chillier. It seemed they were going to keep swimming—swimming—through the winter.
I had joined Copenwater’s Facebook group and, when I saw the listing for the Nordhavn winter swimming team with [the one and only] Christine Kastrup, I signed up without a second thought. My husband and I had kept a winter bathing routine going through the COVID winters, when we lived on Refshaleøen. Nevertheless, I very much thought of cold-water immersion as something to survive, not to enjoy. I could not approach the ladder without dread, and I could not be in the water without wanting to get right back out. I was essentially chasing an endorphin rush, not engaging mindfully with the surroundings or the activity. Frankly, that felt a little bit selfish, so I joined the class with the goal of developing a new relationship with the cold—maybe even with the sea.
I cannot say enough good things about that course and that experience. I will just say that I am now excited to swim in all [safe, green-lit] water. Calm, flat, warm-ish water is great. But unsettled, wavy, cold water is … better?
Open water swimmers are something special
The Copenwater swimmers are just great: kind, proactive, empathetic, generous, and just so excited to swim. Of course, communities of enthusiasts enjoying their leisure time tend to be good places to look for company. Nevertheless, I suspect that there is something special about open water swimmers! It may be that the sport attracts people who are reasonably good at checking their egos. After all, if you are coming to the open water “just” to swim—work on stroke technique, chase a personal best, win medals—then the sea is not the most obliging place. Open water swimmers seek variety and the unexpected; the challenge and interest of this sport comes substantially from the element of change. And of course, one always has to be wary and alert on behalf of oneself and one’s svømmemakker.
In other words, open water swimmers are constantly being humbled by the environment. While there is no shortage of ambition and drive among open water swimmers, these are always balanced by humility and acceptance that humans don’t make the final call. I think that that is quite an essential attitude with which to face the great big world, and I am happy to be around people who have accepted this.
My personal connection to the sea
Stating the obvious, the sea is always there. Always! And it’s always open. (It’s not always advised to enter, but that’s your problem, not the sea’s). You don’t need to wear shoes or a shirt, or even a suit. You can just swim. It’s so generous. It asks nothing of you and gives you the highlight of your day, year, summer, winter, at almost no cost.
On the other hand, the sea is such an egotist. It doesn’t care what you think it looks like that day. It couldn’t care less about your plans. It doesn’t take requests. It does whatever it wants, and it goes, “Listen, this was your idea. Do what you want, but it’s on you.” You can’t argue with it. You just need to learn as much as you can, prepare, and accept whatever you get.
But while the sea looks so proud and invincible, it is not. It is vulnerable. To me, the sea is the ultimate gift, and it is also the ultimate call to action on behalf of the planet.
I have never—honestly, never—finished an open water swim in a worse mood than I started it. I cannot think of an activity that so consistently clears brain fog or promotes a basically optimistic attitude towards whatever else is happening that day. I thus feel very grateful to have the sea as the primary place where I swim.
Further, the sea has a way of making humans a bit philosophical. Perhaps because it’s both so familiar and so mysterious? (FYI: humans have mapped the surfaces of Mars and Venus more extensively than they have the ocean floor!) Or because it’s a constant, carrying on no matter what’s happening in your odd little life? Life can be a real struggle, but the sea has a way of re-setting everything to basics. It’s about being wet or dry, warm or cold. It’s a great reality check.
Ocean Conservation
How do you contribute, or want to contribute, to the conservation and protection of the marine environment?
I am very lucky that my working life focuses on precisely these things. I work in the secretariat of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), which exists to develop, coordinate, and promote research on the marine environment by scientists in its Member Countries. I and the publications team are there to make sure that the scientists’ works are clear and understandable to our whole community, most of whom are not native English speakers.
Some of the documents I work on are advisory in nature. ICES is a chartered advisor to international regulatory bodies on matters pertaining to ocean resources: fisheries management, conservation of vulnerable marine areas, etc. It has kept this status for many decades because its advice is seen as credible and non-biased, and language use is important for maintaining this delicate position.
Working in this area, one of course hears a lot about the impact of human activities on the functioning of the oceans—and of course, it is not a very nice story. Most of us have heard about pollution, and some have heard about eutrophication, a big word that means when an environment becomes over-enriched with nutrients, creating devastating imbalances within that ecosystem. This is the process behind the disappearance of marine life from the Baltic Sea and many other places.
We are all obligated to balance our need to use the sea with the need to conserve it. I cannot make government policy that bans fishing techniques that harm the ecosystem, but I am very honoured to play a role in the process of influencing such policies.
Best experience with Copenwater in 2024
The winter swimming course was frankly a transformative experience for me. I was astonished at how much my tolerance of the cold increased over just a few months. How it happened is hard to explain, but perhaps I trained myself to understand that being in cold water for a while was not, in fact, as extreme and frightening a condition as it seemed. I could choose to panic—but I could also, you know, choose not to panic. Instead, I could just swim! And those swims in 4, 6, or 10 degrees are among the most mindful, peaceful ones I have ever had. I’m not joking. I can’t wait to do it again.
Returning to the water more regularly has been so delightful that I want to enjoy it in as many ways as possible. If Copenwater ever gets that synchro team going, I will be there on day one, ready to be tossed in the air. I also just signed up for the HSK adult team in springboard diving, because why not?
I have also been really thrilled about the On Tour and WaterTrek initiatives: the best possible excuse to visit beautiful areas, many of which are new to me. By the end of this season, I will have swum in organized events at Faaborg, Löddeköpinge (Sweden), Gilleleje Havn, and Enø, as well as from Kastrup to Dragør (a fantastic swim that passes right under the airport runway) and in various spots around Copenhagen. It’s hardly the most packed calendar out there but, for now, I am just loving the chance to use swim routes to learn more about this part of the world.
Hopes for the future
I am certain that Copenwater will continue to grow and attract an even broader variety of people. That could be expats who may never have contemplated swimming in a city harbour, or it could be younger people who think of the sea as a place to “bathe,” not to swim. Indeed, while I’ve got nothing but goodwill towards well-managed swimming pools, I can certainly only see the upside to introducing more young kids to open water swimming. This doesn’t need to remain an activity that people discover later in life.
I also think that “swim tourism” has a lot of potential. Denmark and its neighbouring countries are just filled with inviting places to swim. I imagine that the WaterTrek calendar in 2028 will look very busy.
I have one wild ambition as a Copenwater member: leading a WaterTrek to Cape Cod! This past July, I swam about a 6K around a peninsula where my family has vacationed for my entire life. It was just beautiful, and the varied coastline and changing proximity to the nearby bay created some lively conditions that were so entertaining to swim.
