SUMMER HOUSES

Danes have a thing about summer houses. Originally, they were small fishermen's huts, or wooden sheds, deep in the woods or down by the seashore. And that combination of simplicity, rudimentary facilities and isolation, has persisted, even though modern summer houses are as well furnished as ordinary ones, and it's difficult to find a plot that doesn't have immediate neighbours. Indeed, so popular are summer houses that they often cost as much as ordinary ones that are twice the size. Particularly if they are on the "first row" (i.e. right next to the sea).

It's the sea that is the key to this phenomenon. Danes just love sitting outside a summer house, looking out over the sea. Lots of people in the town where I live own summer houses, often just five miles down the road. When I point out that the sea is not very far away and very easy to get to, they reply "yes, but you can't sit outside your own house and look at the sea".

My wife is very Danish in this regard. We live about half a mile from the Baltic Sea, which is down at the end of the dirt road, which our road becomes. Yet she still has a wish to have her own summer house. If I had a spare million, then I would probably buy her one. But since I don't, then I won't.

Walter Blotscher