About hittegods.dk & lost-and-found.dk

This is my story. Not world-changing — but for me, that's a matter of viewpoint.

In 2011, my youngest son Joshua was six years old. He left his hat on a public bus. No big deal, right? But this was his favorite: a raggedy blue elephant hat, with little ears and a small trunk on top. He didn't go anywhere without it. He loved it to the core — sometimes he'd even walk around the flat wearing it, as if it were his pet.

I would never have guessed that forgetting it on the bus that late afternoon at Svanemøllen Station in Copenhagen, on our way home from kindergarten, would be the beginning of a wild goose chase.

We had just stepped off the bus when we realized the hat wasn't with him. Joshua broke down in tears — he thought it was lost forever. And I, being his dad, and of course a mighty problem-solver for this small mishap, calmed him down: "I know what to do. We'll get the hat back, don't worry." I knew exactly where to report it. I would do it right away and pick the hat up the next day. The promise and the certainty calmed him, and we went and got a treat to fill the void.

The public transport system — top-notch and well organized as it is — never found the hat. I had done all the right things: contacted the bus company's lost-and-found right away, filled out the form, followed up every day for over a week. Nothing. I even filed a police lost-and-found report. Nothing.

I had to hope my son would forget about the hat. He did not. When I finally broke the news, he was heartbroken. He had gotten used to being without it — but not to the idea that his almighty dad couldn't figure it out. All of this over a hat that was seemingly worthless to anyone else.

That's where the research began. I called and met with the police. I studied the official lost-and-found system. I went through the entire procedure at Copenhagen Airport, where hundreds of items are handed in every week, and learned what happens when no one claims them. And then I checked the most obvious place anyone would look: www.lost-and-found.dk (www.hittegods.dk) — and the site returned... a blank page. It didn't exist. I tracked down the owner of the domain, set up a meeting, drove across the country, and after some intense conversation, we made a deal. Now I could do something about this.

A year later — December 2012, taking effect on 1 January 2013 — the Danish lost-and-found rules changed for the worse. Under the new regulation, the police now assess every item handed in: anything judged to be worth less than 500 kroner loses the normal legal protections of the hittegods law. Such items can be destroyed, donated, or sold at auction if the owner doesn't appear "within a suitable period" — and items considered not worth storing at all can be destroyed the moment the police receive them. Suddenly, all blue elephant hats — and thousands of small treasures like them — could legally go straight in the bin on day one.

So I built a central place where people would at least have a chance to find them, outside the official channels. I created www.hittegods.dk and www.lost-and-found.dk, and although the sites were never the most modern, thousands of people visited every month.

Now, in 2026, we are relaunching — modern, user-friendly, and built with one hope: that even the smallest item will be registered here, lost or found.

People Helping People™

— Chris 2026, Copenhagen, Denmark