I’m an indoor girl, but as I rode through the countryside outside Stockholm I was tremendously moved by the landscape. Not the raw power of it, but the quiet, incisive ways people have intervened to tame it. There are farmhouses here standing in thousand-acre plots, yet they’ve been set within small yards that as are intensely and exquisitely maintained as those in the most precious American suburb.
I’ve always felt that New Yorkers fetishize outdoor space, colonizing any square foot of occupiable roof, courtyard or sidewalk with stanchions, potted plants and cafe tables, however uninspiring the results. Mayor Bloomberg and his transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Kahn are using similar strategies to domesticate our streets, using concrete bollards, folding chairs, and green paint to shape no-drive pedestrian zones in Times Square and Union Square. But in the Swedish countryside, where there are land and views all around, farmers have done just the same thing, claiming small spaces for themselves in the simplest manner, with a row of bushes, stone paving, a big tree, wood fences, or a pair of lawn chairs. Against field and forest, these little suburban yards look like they’ve fallen out of the sky. This way of building a fence might be a primeval, civilizing act; it’s how we make a place for ourselves in the world.