Historical Vernacular Gardens Beyond Norway's Arctic Circle

Abstract

This study examines the historical vernacular gardens of North Norway, and is mainly based on a survey done in the county of Troms in the 1980s. The study shows that traditions for the design of gardens and the use of garden plants reflect climatic conditions, geographical location and current fashions. It is a general feature that main trends in the gardens of the affluent work as models for more simple vernacular gardens, and this is also the case with the surveyed gardens of Troms. We find here the proto-garden, a simple garden with beds and plantings controlled by a straight line. This is influenced hardly at all by style, trends or availability on the market. It may have been established during the last century or it could be older. Yet we also find the vernacular cottage garden influenced by a style developed from the Renaissance gardens of southern Europe. In the most carefully made gardens the proto-garden and the impulses from the Renaissance garden are fused together – it makes a type of garden which is genuinely northern. The fenced garden located by the wall of the dwelling house was most common. With the house situated on sloping ground, a stone-built retaining wall was constructed and the ground filled up in order to make the garden as level as possible and to create a terrace. It was mainly native trees fetched from the woods, as well as old “exchange and give away perennials” and flowers and vegetable annuals, all locally available, which characterized the plant material of the historic farm and cottage gardens of the north.

Keywords:

• Garden history
• Vernacular garden
• Cottage garden
• Parterre garden
• North Norway

Notes

1. The survey was conducted in the summers of 1986, 1987 and 1988 by the Troms County administration, and the material belongs to the Heritage department of the county. Some of the material was used by Lunde (1987).

2. See http://www.blueplanetbiomes.org/climate.htm (accessed 5 March 2010); http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6ppen_climate_classification (accessed 5 March 2010).

3. The Köppen Climate Classification System is the most widely used for classifying the world's climates. Most of the coastal area of North Norway is classified as Cfc (maritime subarctic climate), but in the northeast as Dfc (subarctic climate) and Etf (arctic tundra climate). See http://www.hageselskapet.no/portal/page?_pageid=33,265516&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL (accessed 5 March 2010). The Norwegian system for hardiness zones is not correlated with the English or American system. In Norway there is a system based on both summer warmth and length and on winter cold.

4. In 1986 and 1988 a garden survey was carried out by the County administration of Finnmark. The material is kept at the heritage administration. In 1983 a garden survey was conducted in Nordland, as a part of a thesis for the degree of landscape architecture (Bjørsvik, 1984). Its focus was the old trading settlements and estates of Nordland. The gardens of the municipality Melbu are discussed in Eggen (1998).

5. In England the term “cottage garden” has a negative image in academic circles, due to the paintings of Helen Allingham, the literature of William Robinson and the garden design of Gertrude Jekyll. Roberts (1996: 179) describes it as a “massaged image which was itself reinterpreted as an element of a professional garden language”. See also Dixon Hunt and Wolschke-Bulmahn (1993b: 7–9) for the discussion of the term cottage garden. The Norwegian term stuehage does not have these negative connotations, but is still best translated into English as a cottage garden.

6. Kvæfjord, Harstad, Lenvik, Torsken, Bardu, Målselv, Tromsø, Karlsøy, Lyngen, Storfjord, Kåfjord, Nordreisa, Skjervøy.

7. See http://www2.artsdatabanken.no/faktaark/ (accessed 22 March 2010). The plant has different names: Heracleum tromsoensis, H. persicum, H. laciniatum. This plant most probably came to North Norway(Alta) in 1836 as a garden plant and its remarkable spread since has been as swift, and unwelcome, as a plague.

8. http://nn.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alfred_Eriksen&oldid=836542 (accessed 23 March 2010). Alfred Eriksen (1864–1934) was vicar at Karlsøy from 1891 to 1911.