Country House Estate at Egeskov

The historic and elitist institution of the country house can have a role and function in Denmark's modern egalitarian society if it is opened up to the public in a the way that the estate at Egeskov has been, thus allowing everyone in the area to enjoy the grounds (provided they can afford the expensive entrance fees). People of all ages from all over Denmark, as well as international tourists, come to visit the country estate, and during our visit there today, we were able to see some of the resources the private estate shares with the public.

The current estate owner, Count Michael Ahlefeldt-Laurvig-Bille, has made a lot of changes in the estate to promote tourism and to encourage outsiders to come and use the space. The estate now has extensive recreational spaces for both children and adults, such as multiple play areas, large mazes, and even an impressive treetop bridge system, with educational information about the birds of the area.

         

The estate is extremely old, and dates back to the 14th century, so the site is a very interesting historical resource for visitors. The way the castle has been preserved and made open to the public also serves as an educational resource to visitors, as they can enter the castle and see how the nobility once lived. 

The count is a collector of many things, and allows others to enjoy his collections by storing them in museums located on the grounds. One of these is a historic car museum, and another an exhibition of the historical clothing of the royalty and their servants who used to live on the estate.

Selected as the most beautiful historic gardens in Europe, the majority of the gardens at the estate are also open to the public. Here, visitors are able to enjoy seeing impressively designed historic greenspaces, such as the 280 year old hedges with intricate and tangled branches that can be seen from within passageways through the massive walls of greenery. 

The public is also welcome to walk through one of the largest fuchsia gardens in Europe, with a variety of over a hundred different kinds of fuchsia, some of which are 90 years old. By opening up the gardens to the public, the estate owners have made the greenspace function to benefit a greater number of people.

 

In these ways, the estate owners like Count Michael are sharing their space with the public, and this allows the space to serve some function in Denmark's egalitarian society as the general public has access to the private spaces. 

National Park in Zealand

Compared to national parks in America, the space that will hopefully someday be a unified national park in northern Zealand (one of the main islands of Denmark) called Kongernes is different in several ways. It is much smaller than most national parks in the U.S. and is scattered throughout several areas.  Compared to woodlands in the United States, the types of trees are somewhat different in the Gribskov forest in Kongernes, and this difference in type of trees makes forests in the U.S. look very different than the forest we saw today. The trees in the Gribskov forest and some of the other forests that we have seen have been planted with beech trees in a an attempt to recreate the composition of the forests prior to the massive deforestation. In these beech forests, the dense canopy of the trees as well as the ground cover of fallen leaves prevent most underbrush from growing, creating an open forest floor that can easily be walked through. It also makes the forest look more sparse. In the U.S., especially in the Northern parks such as the large national park surrounding the Adirondack Mountains, the forest is extremely dense with a variety of types of trees and species of underbrush, and in most places it is difficult to walk through unless on a trail. 

There is free camping at Kongernes, which is virtually nonexistent in parks in the US, especially highly desirable and well used parks. In most of these, camp sites range from 20-30 USD per night. It is also free to enter the park, which is also rare for national parks in the U.S., which usually require the purchase of a day, season or lifetime pass to that particular park. 

In Kongernes, users have the ability to use the forest for a variety of unrestricted recreations. In many of the parks I have been to in the states, biking and making fires is either restricted or forbidden. Below, there is an image of a cooking site at the park where people are allowed to make fires and are even provided with firewood. Mountain biking is also quite popular in the park, and bikers are allowed to access any of the trails in the park, which differs from the pedestrian only paths found in most American parks.

While the way people use the park seems to be less regulated than parks in the U.S., the ecological aspects of the park are highly managed. As mentioned before, the majority of the trees have been planted in an effort to restore the forests, and trees from the forests are often planted and then taken down for lumber. The nature ministry which manages the park also controls the biodiversity of the landscape, and has recreated many bogs throughout the forest to restore the prevalent wetlands that once dotted the forest in the 1800s. In the U.S., there is more focus on preserving and conserving virgin forest rather than trying to recreate what once was, with minimal human interference in the natural systems.

Forest near Copenhagen

Due to massive deforestation in Denmark, the country that was once covered in forests of beech trees only consisted of a mere 3% of forested area by 1800. The amount of area devoted to forests has been increasing continually since this time, due to factors which include efforts to rebuild the forests. 

Now, about 12.4-12.8% of Denmark consists of forests, and the majority of these are man-made (planted by humans) and regularly managed. This has been increased within the last decade, as the Danish Forest Act of 2004 was instituted. The main purposes of this act (and reforestation in general) are to protect the forest and to increase the total forest area, and in doing so, create sustainable forest management. By increasing the area devoted to forest, they hope to provide recreational benefits, conserve the biodiversity of the landscape, protect the environment by reducing CO2 in the atmosphere, and conserve the cultural and natural history of the forests of Denmark.

A large amount of valuable land close to Copenhagen has now been given over to forest in efforts to undo the damage done by deforestation, and one of the areas where this has been done is in the town of Skovbrynet, where we visited today. Despite pressures to develop these areas so close to the biggest urban center in Denmark, the area at Skovbrynet has been planted for these same ecological and social reasons listed above, especially as a recreational resource, with trails throughout the woods so that people may enjoy activities such as hiking and mountain biking in the woods. 

Below is an image of the Danish Greenspaces class enjoying the resource by taking a walk on one of the trails, and experiencing the natural beauty of the forest.

Even though it is a human created and maintained forest, it appears to be quite natural. In the following two images, the biodiversity can be seen in the forest; in one, there is a bog that may have naturally formed once the forest began to develop, and in the other, a variety of types of plants are shown, that have grown in as underbrush under the canopy of planted beech trees. 

The Danish Coast

 

Denmark’s coastscape has shaped life and identity in Denmark in several ways. One of these ways is through the industry of fishing, as the people of Denmark have used their coastal areas heavily for this purpose both in modern times and throughout history. Despite Denmark’s small size, it is the fifth biggest exporter of fish in the world, and the largest in Europe. The coastal towns still retain their fishing identity, as the ports are active and packed with both new and historical vessels, and the Danish fish, such as the popular herring, are sold to locals and tourists alike in these beach towns. Below, a historic work vessels is displayed, showing how the Danes take pride in their identity as fish exporters.

 

 

 

We visited on of these towns today, called Gillelej, which has the fifth biggest fishing port in Denmark, to see the industry still at work as a crucial part of their society. Below is an image of the port, which is heavily used daily.

 

Much like the kolonihavn created during times of industrialization, the coast was also used as a way to escape from the dirty, polluted urban environment. Many people began to build summerhouses along the northern coasts of Zealand and in Jutland around the nineteenth century. At first these were difficult to obtain without some wealth, but by the turn of the twentieth century, the middle class was also able to use these summerhouses as a recreational resource as they were made more affordable to all. They are still used today as an important element of Danish lifestyle, as Danes of a variety of income levels often spend up to six months out of the year staying in these summer houses, enjoying the beauty of the coast and escaping the urban lifestyle. Some of these summer houses can be seen below from Gillelej.

Space in Danish Artwork

The artist Eliasson allows the viewer to simultaneously experience time and space through his works. He creates literal atmospheres with natural processes and phenomena in the form of installation sculptures. One of the main ways he unites time, space, and the viewer is by utilizing movement. One of his works is titled " I only see things when they are moving" and another is a large circular walkway on top of a building with colored glass walls that shift the view of the surrounding landscape as the viewer moves through the space and sees  changing colors. 

In one of his works, he uses the movement of falling water as a way for viewers to measure time and space. To do this, he installed large waterfalls in the city of New York that span from the tops of buildings into the bay. With this work, he takes advantage of the natural human sensory process of depth perception that occurs when movement is observed at levels of distance. When something that is falling is closer, then it will appear to move more quickly. If two waterfalls appear to be exactly the same size but seem to be moving at different speeds, then they will create a sense of depth and scale, as the slower moving one will feel both larger and farther away. The waterfalls he installed were quite large, and serve to show the viewers who see the city from the opposite shore just how large the city is, and how far away they are in order to really give viewers an idea of the grandness of the space. 

He emphasizes the importance of allowing viewers to be able to experience the space as 3 dimensional and tangible, saying that the public will treat the natural environments with respect and will engage more with them if they are feel like they are part of them, and tries to achieve this in his works. 

Golden Age Painting

The golden age of painting in Denmark occurred during the 19th century, beginning in the early 1800's into the late 1800s with the school of painting called Skain. During this period, the landscape  was used often as a key subject in painting, and was created in a way to highlight its importance to Danish culture and as a way to cope with difficult times. The landscape was portrayed as being incredibly beautiful, often beyond reality, and almost always of scenes of open expanses of nature in the summer time, with fluffy clouds, open fields and happy looking subjects. One painting showed fishermen and their wives, hard at work but seemingly content. These paintings served as a political tool, as the fine arts academy of Denmark was highly influenced by prominent social and political figures of the time, and served as a way to improve the morality of Danish people during difficult times. The following image shows how nature was portrayed as being more powerful than man, as the sky and water take up much more area of the painting than the giant castle, and the figures are minuscule. This is in line with the ideals of romanticism, which glorified nature and the mystery and beauty of the landscape. 

In the paintings, the brush stroke was thought to be a sign of poor quality of the work, and the artists tried to make the paintings as photo realistic as possible. 

After the invention of the camera, the artists began to use more painterly techniques, and were more willing to experiment with less idyllic imagery. In this painting, issues of descrepencies between the sexes are adressed, as a girl stands sadly by the ocean in a dress while a group of boys have fun splashing naked in the ocean. The space is still beautiful and the expanse of nature is vast compared to the subjects, but the content is slightly less positive. 

Visit to Himmelhøj with the artist

During our visit to Himmelhøj, we had the pleasure to experience three dimensional artwork in the landscape with the artist himeslf, Alfio Bonanno. After hearing him speak about his ideas and his artwork, it was very exciting and interesting to get a chance to see and interact with his work. Some of his ideas, especially those of using aspects of the surrounding environment as a part of the artwork, were very apparent in in the sculpture. In the following picture, the dynamic contrast between the buildings and the sculpture can be seen. The geometric buildings clearly in view behind the sculpture would seem at first to be problematic; one would guess that they would compete with or detract from the aesthetics of the artwork, but Bonanno said that he does not mind the aspects of the environment in the background, because as he said, these elements are "part of it."

It was very interesting viewing the pieces with the artist to see how he reacted to changes in his artwork that happen over time. Because the sculptures are made of natural materials, they are subject to weathering, damage and general deterioration, but the artist became very upset when he saw the way the sculptures were being maintained and the way they had been vandalized. He finds details extremely important in his artwork, and was upset to see that the details were not being kept up to his standards. He commented on nails that were broken and sticking out of the wood as potential hazards for children, and noticed that the wood on the stairs was not in line with the rest of the wood. It was a much different experience being there with him pointing these things out, because I would not have otherwise noticed these issues. It allowed me to see things that I wouldn't have and to view the work as an ever changing object rather than a fixed permanent structure. Below Bonanno is inspecting his creation and trying to make small repairs.

 

In his other pieces at Himmelhøj, Bonnanno also used reclaimed natural materials to create temporary installations. The wood in the following installation is beginning to decay, and some are beginning to break. This stimulated a conversation where we discussed some of the issues the artist must encounter when trying to make decisions about how to maintain work and what to do with future works. He asked us if we thought it was better to try to preserve the work or to just naturally let it be go through natural processes, and there really does not seem to be an easy answer. The artist is usually more inclined to allow nature to take its course and to allow the wood to decay naturally, but he said at a certain point it may not be usable as it was intended. This was very beneficial  for me, as it allowed me think about the issues of creating artwork in a natural and ever changing setting.