Økologisk-land

One of the Torup "moon-dome" houses, with the community's windmill in the background. The black colour of the house is from the waterproof building paper (or something akin to it) that it is covered in.

It seems that one of the first and most common words I learnt here in Denmark is økologisk - literally ecological, but a more appropriate translation would be organic (ie as in organic farming, but not organic chemistry, which is anything but organic). The penetration of organic products into danish society is far more pervasive than I have seen anywhere else in the world, and goes hand-in-hand with strong support for other sustainable policies, such as an epic recycling program, superb public transportation, and endless bike lanes! Some people even take it to the point of developing completely self-contained ecological villages: Tom and Barbara Good, from "The Good Life", have taken over the entire neighbourhood, you could say! After Kulturnatten on Friday night, Dorthe and I spent the rest of the weekend at her parents summer house in Torup, one of the interesting highlights of which was visiting the nearby ecological village.

Torup is a small town in northen Sjælland (the biggest island in Denmark, and the one that has Copenhagen on it) and it seems to be mainly comprised of summer houses (bachs, in kiwi parlance). The houses there range from shoe boxes with outdoor toilets, to summer mansions, and of course everything in between. Summer houses are very common in Denmark it seems, and basically the entire north coast of Sjælland is covered with these houses to a depth of one to two kilometres: it really is quite impressive when you look at how many there are on a map. Being so close to copenhagen, its very popular just to head up there for the weekend to relax (along with everyone else :-)

The Larsen's summer house at Torup.

We left from Copenhagen on saturday morning - Dorthe took the train up there, and I was on my bike - its only about 70km to get up there from here, and so I went for a bit of a cruise through the danish countryside on my roadbike for about two and a half hours. It was a nice ride, especially once you get out of the city and into the countryside properly. And the really cool thing was that there were bike lanes almost all the way as well, which made for fun riding. The danish countryside reminds me a lot of the canterbury plains - heavily developed, with open vistas, lots of trees here and there, and of course, the rural patchwork of so many different fields. One thing that I did notice that was different through was the absence of animals, which does make it feel quite empty - basically all the animals in denmark are housed inside, only the økologisk piggies have to tough out the danish winter. The other main difference from canterbury is the preponderance of windmills for power generation everywhere - it really is quite a spectacular sight seeing a line of four or five of the big 2.3 MW windmills (which are about 100 m tall) towering over the surrounding fields.

I made it there ok, although I have to say I was rather frozen after nearly three hours of riding in 8 degree C temperatures! After a good solid danish lunch (ryebread, cheese, and danishes, of course) we decided that we would go mushroom picking in the nearby forest - this one of Dorthe's favour hobbies at this time of year. I am unable to tell a toxic mushroom from an edible but tasteless mushroom from a very rare and expensive one but fortunately Dorthe can. I wasn't really much use really, but it didn't matter as it seems that it is a very bad year for mushrooms, as we didn't actually get ANY at all... D'oh! Instead, we had a competition that I invented - first person to make themselves sick from eating too many blackberries wins! (there were lots of blackberry bushes fully loaded where we were). Dorthe wasn't too keen on that, so I just took part on my own. Even though I was the only one "playing", I still managed to loose, because we moved to another part of the forest that didn't have any blackberries at all. Oh well, in retrospect it probably wasn't such a bad thing!

The beach near Liseleje, on the north coast of Sjælland.

Our mushroom expedition was somewhat fruitless fungi-less (ha,ha!), but it did't matter too much in the end. Next day we explored around town a bit further on two classic old Raleigh three speed bikes - a bit of a change from the modern aluminium and carbon fibre road bike, I can tell you! First we went up to the beach, through the myriad summer houses and then along the coast for a while. Very nice area, if a little cold at this time of year.

Dysager house. The large conservatories facing south open into the living area making as much use of the sunlight as possible.

Next we went back to the ecological village at Torup for a look around. There are about 120 people living there, and has been there for about 15 years now. The village was an interesting mix of design styles, ranging from the seemingly standard brick house to unique futuristic domes. Some of the houses didn't look all that dissimilar from your normal house, until you looked a bit more closely and found that they were covered with solar panels and solar water heating systems. Most of the houses were designed to take maximum advantage of the very limited sun that you get at 56 N, with big glass windows and conservatories facing the south. Also very common was the use of natural and/or CO₂-neutral building materials (obviously), with the use of thatched or earthen roofs also being quite prominent. The village (its a cooperative) also own quite a bit of land around it too, and earns an income from both organic farming, and from the organic restaurant and shop on site too. They are also an exporter of power - they have their own windmill out the back. Much of the work there has also been done by hand, by which I mean little or no use of power-tools, which I thought was a little keen!

Detail of the main window in one of the dome houses.

It was an interesting place to visit. I especially found it interesting to see some of these ideas that, as a bit of a closet greenie myself, I have been reading about, being born out in practice. I think one of the things that struck me though was that in the end it wasn't really all that different from normal. Some of the houses looked a bit strange, but they weren't bizarre. The houses were all modern, comfortable places inside. The kids still ran around in the garden and left their toys everywhere. The impression I got was that the changes that had been made to make the village sustainable weren't as radical as some would have us believe. Rather, things were done with careful planning and an eye towards efficiency and sustanability. If anything, I think the place demonstrates that you can achieve sustainablility without having to completely uproot everything that we know and take for granted.

"Thors hammer". This house again has the conservatory in the front, but the roof is interesting: its basically dirt with grass growing on it, which acts as organic insulation. Also note the solar panels on the roof.

The return trip to Copenhagen was pretty uneventful, we just took the train back together. I did, however, pick up one of the local free newspapers while we were waiting for the train and found a picture of Mt Cook and Lake Pukaki in it, with a half page article on travelling in NZ. It then took me (and my walking danish dictionary, Dorthe) the rest of the two hour train trip back to Copenhagen to read it, but I did it (with a little help, of course!). The first article I have ever read in Danish. I was very proud of myself!

As an interesting sidenote, I was reading the Copenhagen Post (a free english language newspaper) the other day and happened across an article that said that the danish are one of the the worlds largest consumer of organic products, and in particular, the largest of organic milk - one in every four litres of milk sold in Denmark is organic, as opposed to one in every 16th in Sweden and one in every 50th in the UK. This is also reflected in price - organic milk is the only thing that I have found here that is cheaper than the US: One litre of normal milk here is 5.85DKK (US$1.01 at todays awful exchange rates, NZ$1.44) vs 6.85DKK (US$1.17, NZ$1.69) for the organic version. Compare this to the US where standard milk costs around $1.20 per litre and organic milk at least $1.85 per litre (NZ$2.65) and usually a lot more. That is quite a significant difference, especially when you take into account how much more expensive land is here. Økologisk-land indeed!!!