Eco in Denmark: Odsherred.

Arriving in Odsherred on August 1-9, there was a little village in the middle of the yellow fields. 16 families with children live here, the ecovillage established at a parking lot where the public road ends. In Denmark it is not called "ecovillages", though rather eco society. This is because ecovillages do not only appear in the middle of yellow fields, but also nearby the towns. Because they are so integrated as local contributors, that they are not separated from the average citizen and not seen as anything "exotic". 


Welcoming me at the community, were two parents who were architects from Copenhagen and little girl. Sun was shining, and the garden smiling at my willing hands to take a big deep dig into its soil. Like a village, these houses do have quite big gardens. The biggest investment they probably had to make, was acres of space and field to build their sustainable home. The rest of the upwards - and widely constructed area, costed them the minimum of money.

To understand how cheap it is to build this home and how much they gain from its sustainability, to create yet more freedom and yet more flexible activities in everyday life, one has to know its ground philosophy and ground fundament which I'll try to explain through some of these blog posts. This is not something new in Denmark. In fact, Norway where I come from, is estimated 15 years behind - both in the infrastructure and development of societies like this. 

But the interesing part, is that all industrial countries seem to move towards ecological balance as a result of consumer needs and consumer's deadly health from functional lifestyle, so therefor Denmark and Germany are frontiers of life style whereas countries like Norway do have a lot of peace development across borders and energy research. The sad thing, is that we seem to group ourselves as "they do this" and "we do that" , instead of looking at the society as one building and developing board where we need the eco balance as the pre-fabricated lifestyle seem not so much in balance at all. I'd avoid saying commercial lifestyle, as ecological lifestyle can be super commercial when given a chance, like we have proves in Denmark. So there is no separation between earning and slow consumption here.  

In fact, slow consumption and models given thoughts to profit the society and planet just as much as yourself, seem to be the winning gain in the end. And this we must not forget; our future and now is dependant on each other both ways. So if you want a good now, look at coming aspects so that you can relax. Knowing that your future will be a good one is surprisingly healthy for stress and concentration it seems here at the ecovillage. And the only "stressful" thing you really need to worry about, is to dedicate time for creativity and social meetings to develope the common ground where your house lives. 

Yes, lives. The house lives. And by building breathing straw bale houses, external air conditioning is a no buy and no use. The more natural material, the more they figure out how the elements work with each other to get all the resources we normally just copy from nature in the other synthetic way anyway.