SISC's history

From very early in its history, SMil had organized island camps in old army tents on beautiful and undisturbed Danish islands.
And here it begins.
In the summer of 1988 for the first time we had some guests from outside Denmark and it turned out GREAT.

Spurred by the success of the year before we invited even more foreigners – mostly by asking the campers from last year to spread the word. And they came and we had a great time.
But we froze our asses off. We had a cold and windy summer that year and we gradually found out that:

Tents – especially old army tents – are full of places where wind and if you are lucky, only wind can get in. Tents have no walls and it is very difficult to tie up people when the tent pole is not too stable and a determined masochist may walk off with the whole thing. Also it is not so funny to shit in a bucket, to wash up in cold water under open air.The civilized man meets nature – nature wins.

During the winter of 1989-90 luck struck us. The idea of four walls around us had been there for awhile, but we were still just another activity group in the organization. A SMil member, just bought this farm somewhere outside Aarhus, and asked us if we were still interested in having a real farm for the camps.

When we saw the camp we were blissfully unaware what we started. It consisted of a well kept main building and 3 stable and barn buildings in various states of exotic decay – good, bad and ugly.

We started with ugly. This was the old pigsty and is today the sleeper. The roof had partially blown off and the floor had collapsed under rot and the weight of wet hay. The floor, hay, and half the roof lay on the floor and it took the effort of five madmen and a female pyromaniac to clear them out.

The roof was then rebuilt and the floor reestablished over half the room, creating our sleeper balcony. In the old foodstuff storeroom we made a shower and today’s sauna.

The cow stable was also cleaned out, and a few minor holes in the roof were patched. Between the cow boxes a wooden floor was laid and a bar established in the calf boxes. We then hosed down both stables and whitewashed the walls

Then we looked at the barn. It was the good part – a lot of good roof and timbers and sound walls. All we had to do was fill in a truckload of sand for the floor and set up a lot of chains and stuff.

Luckily for us, the old farmer was the collecting type, who never threw out much of his old junk, and we made these first improvements out of at least 50% recycled materials.

Also it was a great help that somebody was working in the city’s recycling facility, where all sorts of old furniture etc. was taken in, sorted and sold cheap.

After winter and spring of 1990 we had made a good start. The stables had been cleared and cleaned, a sleeper was established and a wonderful dungeon was set up in the old barn.

The next year we made two camps instead of one and week 30 and 32 were established.

During the winter of 1991 the idea of setting up a proper organization grew into a plan. Up till then we were still an activity group under SMil Aarhus. But the late spring of 1992 saw our first general assembly.

Today we refine the buildings without losing the charm by straightening out too much. The idea is not to make a hotel out of the place but to keep the camp atmosphere.

In 2002 we were finally able to buy the place, and keep improving it every year, extending with an outside woodburning hot-tub, sauna, and more dungeons.

In 2009 we have 7 weeks of summercamp + several various weekend arrangements, and we expect to have more than 250 people staying.

SISC remains to be a non-profit organisation, meaning that all money not spend on expenses running the place, or food for campers, will be spent on maintaining and improving the facilities which are by now a beautiful mix of the old and nasty cobwebcovered, and the brandnew, tiled and floorheated.