Cousin-hunting in Scandinavia

by Mary Wilhelmine Williams

We were hungry, of course, after our walk, so as soon as we arrived we proceeded to prepare a luncheon. I made coffee on the oil stove while Cousin Lars fished all sorts of delectable canned and preserved foods from the shelves in the barnacle and arranged them in artistic confusion upon the table in the arbor—which is the dining room of the establishment. And while we consumed the coffee and the delectables Cousin Lars told me about the “garden.” It is his play place; he goes out to work among his flowers almost every afternoon; and he and his sons quite frequently spend their Sundays there, having a picnic luncheon in the arbor. Until a few years ago, he had a house in town set in the midst of a large garden; but when the din of the growing city became too offensive, he sold the place, rented his present top flat on a blind and, consequently, quiet street, and secured this garden—an arrangement which he likes much better. Copenhagen is very decidedly a city of flat-dwellers.

But the interesting and really splendid fact connected with the garden is that Cousin Lars’s is only one of fifteen hundred little gardens, all of which have sprung up around Copenhagen within the past ten years. The land is leased by those who work it from the commune of Copenhagen or from private individuals. Plats of as few as sixteen hundred square feet may be rented from the commune for one-half to three-fourths of an öre per square foot annually. Land owned by private individuals rents a little higher. Water is piped to the lots by the owners, who also furnish free wheelbarrows for use in gardening. Several tiny lots form a block, as in a regular city, and between the blocks run diminutive streets about ten feet wide. Some of the narrow passageways have such picturesque names as “Rosen Allé,” “Odins Allé,” and the like. The Christian Danes have not completely forgotten the gods of their fathers, you see. The blocks, in tracts of ten acres or so, are surrounded by the owners with strong open-work fences; and each family holding land within the tract is supplied with a key to the big gate. Over the gate appears the name of the tract, which is sometimes “fancy,” like “Flora” and “Iris.”

The renters fence their own little plats to suit their inclinations and pocket-books; and they build their houses after the same fashion. Since the “gardens” are merely daytime and fresh-air institutions, generally the buildings are one-roomed and tiny. In fact, they look as if they might be the playhouses of an army of parent-tired little children who had run away and set up for themselves. Many of the structures are very cheaply built. One “playhouse,” which caught my attention, was an abandoned street car masquerading under a luxuriant mantle of vines; but it was every bit as much of a success as an orthodox bungalow, for in the tiny yard several flaxen-haired, rosy-cheeked children were shouting and playing. Instead of house numbers, the owner’s names, as a rule, appear over the doors—generally the names of women; but here and there I again noticed “fancy” names, such as “Johannes Haab” (Johanne’s Hope) and “Christines Lyst” (Christine’s Joy), which suggest how much the simple little recreation places mean to their owners.

Aside from the narrow walks, every square foot of soil in each plat is just crammed with green things growing. In many cases where the houses indicated poverty, the ground was largely planted to vegetables—one garden was a single large potato field. Since the rent amounts to only a few dollars per year, those who wish to do so can more than pay their expenses by their vegetables; and in addition they have all of the fun of the wholesome, out-of-door life. But most of the plats have been converted into charming flower gardens; and of all of these Cousin Lars’s is the most worthy of the prize.

Though many sorts and conditions of people are represented by the fifteen hundred plats, most of the renters are poor “working people.” As a rule, the families pass their Sundays in the gardens, and in many cases the mother and children are there also during most of the long summer days. After work hours the father joins them for supper in the “playhouse,” and later the whole happy family returns to the city to sleep.

I had heard of such “gardens” before; they have them in Germany, and call them “Lauben,” or “Gärtchen”; and I was delighted at the chance to see them in detail for myself. Now, I only wish that we might have them around the great, congested cities in the United States. The population would be so much healthier, both mentally and physically, if gardening could be substituted for idle gossip, cheap society twaddle—or worse. As Cousin Lars remarked on the way home, such wholesome, out-of-door recreation would go far towards settling many problems arising from city life.

After we had explored the place to my heart’s content, we walked to the end of a car line and rode back to the city. Now I am again in my room in the hotel, finishing up this letter to you, preparatory to my departure to-night. Cousin Lars and his sons are to be at the pier to wave good-by, so I shall not feel that I am in a “far country.” Whither do you suppose that I am bound, Cynthia?

CHAPTER III

BORNHOLM AND THE BORNHOLMERS

Rönne, Bornholm,