A Real­i­ty of Rurality

Introduction

Since the 1950s, the rur­al pop­u­la­tion in Den­mark are aban­don­ing their home vil­lages and mov­ing into the cities. This is part of a glob­al ten­den­cy, in Den­mark caused by a decline in food pro­duc­tion and the attached indus­tries. As a con­se­quence, the social imbal­ance between urban and rur­al is grow­ing and reflect­ed in the mar­ket val­ue of prop­er­ty. Espe­cial­ly the rur­al built envi­ron­ment of every­day life suf­fers, as the homes of the remain­ing rur­al pop­u­la­tion increas­ing­ly become unsaleable and lat­er aban­doned. There­fore, aban­doned build­ings in var­i­ous states of repair have become a com­mon sight in the Dan­ish rur­al vil­lages. Ruins have in oth­er word become an inevitable con­di­tion of Dan­ish rur­al^[1].

The ques­tion is whether cur­rent large-scale strate­gic demo­li­tion projects, ini­ti­at­ed by the gov­ern­ment to counter the ruinous vil­lages, are the best pos­si­ble way to react to the grow­ing num­bers of rur­al ruins and if not, what is the alternative? 

This was explored through a series of preser­va­tion exper­i­ments, under­tak­en as research by design, of which two: ​“The con­trolled ruin” and ​“The con­fec­tionary” are out­lined and elab­o­rat­ed on in the fol­low­ing^[2]. These two Exper­i­ments have a tem­po­rary approach to preser­va­tion in com­mon, in which the pre­served object, here the aban­doned build­ing, under­goes con­tin­u­ous alter­ations sub­se­quent to the ini­ti­at­ing trans­for­ma­tive inter­ven­tion. They also share the pre­con­di­tions of being based on sub­trac­tive archi­tec­tur­al inter­ven­tions not unlike mech­a­nisms in decay, engage­ment of the local com­mu­ni­ty, and final­ly the con­cept of form­ing a cat­a­lyst, linked to a spe­cif­ic place, for exchange of local place mem­o­ry^[3]. Despite their sim­i­lar­i­ties, the exper­i­ments dif­fer in their times­pan. Hence, ​“The con­trolled ruin” was ini­ti­at­ed in 2014 as a long-term preser­va­tion strat­e­gy and is still active. Con­verse­ly, the ​“The con­fec­tionary”, ini­ti­at­ed in 2016, explored an event-based short-term preser­va­tion strat­e­gy and was delib­er­ate­ly demol­ished com­plete­ly after a two-month period. 

The fol­low­ing out­lines how these exper­i­men­tal inter­ven­tions were imple­ment­ed and describes the respons­es and atti­tudes they gave rise to with­in the local com­mu­ni­ties. Fur­ther, notions of and atti­tudes towards ruins through­out his­to­ry, in the­o­ry and prac­tice, frame the two inter­ven­tions enabling a dis­cus­sion on pos­si­ble new direc­tions in (rad­i­cal) preser­va­tion of the rur­al built environment. 

Thisted Municipality: The Field Lab 

Thist­ed Munic­i­pal­i­ty in the north-west­ern part of Jut­land con­sti­tutes the field lab and hence, host to all of the preser­va­tion exper­i­ments under­tak­en as part of what could be phrased as an emerg­ing counter-prac­tice of rad­i­cal preser­va­tion. The munic­i­pal­i­ty qual­i­fied as a field lab due to its iso­lat­ed geo­graph­i­cal loca­tion with sev­er­al depop­u­lat­ing vil­lage com­mu­ni­ties in which strate­gic demo­li­tions were already exe­cut­ed on a larg­er scale.

Fur­ther­more, ongo­ing expe­ri­ences of coop­er­a­tion between the researcher and the munic­i­pal­i­ty already exist­ed, com­pound­ed by a great cour­tesy towards being part of fur­ther exper­i­men­tal research, and a desire to seek alter­na­tives to the ongo­ing demo­li­tions of aban­doned buildings.

In the first quar­ter 2021, Thist­ed Munic­i­pal­i­ty had a pop­u­la­tion of around 43,000 and cov­ered 1,074 square kilo­me­ters. The main town with­in the munic­i­pal­i­ty is Thist­ed, with a pop­u­la­tion of approx­i­mate­ly 13,000 habi­tants^[4].

The Controlled Ruin: March 2014: A Long-Term Attempt
of Radical Preservation

“The con­trolled ruin” was based on a neat­ly curat­ed par­tial demo­li­tion of an aban­doned build­ing which sub­se­quent­ly allowed the remain­ing rem­nants to decay nat­u­ral­ly. This pre­cise­ly designed inter­ven­tion trans­formed the aban­doned build­ing into a con­trolled ruin with­out a pre­de­ter­mined program. 

The exper­i­men­tal preser­va­tion was imple­ment­ed in a sin­gle-fam­i­ly house, orig­i­nal­ly the sexton’s res­i­dence, next to the medieval church, in the vil­lage Sned­st­ed with approx­i­mate­ly 1,200 res­i­dents. Most res­i­dents were exposed to the pro­to­type on a dai­ly basis, as it was locat­ed on a con­tro­ver­sial site neigh­bour­ing the medieval church and the busy main road into the village.

The inter­ven­tion reversed pri­vate and pub­lic, as the roof and major wall seg­ment were removed in a hor­i­zon­tal split-lev­el sec­tion, which delib­er­ate­ly exposed most eras of the building's pri­vate his­to­ry. The sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ty was allowed to engage with the pro­to­typ­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion, to re-inhab­it it, or even to demol­ish it. 

The build­ing had through­out its more than 100 years lifes­pan under­gone sev­er­al alter­ations in the form of expan­sions. The expo­sure of these alter­ations was enforced by the inter­ven­tion by pin­point­ing spa­tial-mate­r­i­al inter­sec­tions, through cut­ting and removal, in which the mate­r­i­al strat­i­fi­ca­tion revealed the building’s dif­fer­ent his­toric layers.

The con­cept of mak­ing the pri­vate past become the pub­lic present was intend­ed to cat­alyze an exchange of per­son­al mem­o­ries of the build­ing, the place and the peo­ple who used to live there. This exchange of mem­o­ries may have been enforced by some of the inher­ent prop­er­ties of the ruin, as elab­o­rat­ed on lat­er in the dis­cus­sion on the ruin.

In addi­tion to its intend­ed pur­pose, an exchange of mem­o­ry of place, the inter­ven­tion also trig­gered a dis­cus­sion of the mer­its of pri­va­cy among the local peo­ple. The cen­tral bath­room, includ­ing a bath­tub cov­ered with light blue tiles, was one of the most pri­vate spheres of the build­ing when still in func­tion. Now, the inter­ven­tion made it a vis­i­ble part of pub­lic space. This rever­sal proved to touch upon some cru­cial point to pay atten­tion to, when intro­duc­ing new her­itage prac­tices aim­ing for built envi­ron­ment of the recent past in a real-life set­ting. When vul­ner­a­ble aspects sur­face, it becomes obvi­ous that not all mem­o­ries are good mem­o­ries and not all mem­o­ries are meant for the public.

The inter­ven­tion com­plete­ly exposed the blue bath­tub to the pub­lic and it became vis­i­ble almost from a kilo­me­ters dis­tance. The rever­sal of pri­vate and pub­lic por­trayed the blue bath­tub as a focal point in the new inter­pre­ta­tion of the for­mer sexton's house.

On the land­scape scale, the com­po­si­tion depend­ed on the sea­son­al cycle. The pre­vi­ous sexton’s house, posi­tioned as an inter­pret­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tion of its alter ego, held an extra­or­di­nary posi­tion amongst the sur­round­ing land­scape. The dual­is­tic rela­tion­ship with the medieval church was ampli­fied as a con­se­quence of the sub­trac­tive inter­ven­tion that formed the preser­va­tion attempt, as the now exposed bright inte­ri­or col­ors were con­trast­ing the context.

When ​“The con­trolled ruin” was first imple­ment­ed in the ear­ly spring 2014, vis­i­bil­i­ty from the dis­tance was par­tic­u­lar­ly high, due to defo­li­a­tion of the sur­round­ing trees. This supreme­ly vis­i­ble appear­ance and the new­ly gained dual­is­tic con­stel­la­tion between church and what remained of the sexton’s house caused an increased pub­lic aware­ness, giv­en that the medieval church was the land­mark and the pride of the vil­lage. The trig­gered aware­ness fos­tered some skep­ti­cism towards the new­ly arrived and more vis­i­ble ele­ment in the old vil­lage-scape, but sub­se­quent­ly this may have aug­ment­ed the dis­cus­sions and exchange of mem­o­ries among the local residents.

Con­verse­ly, it appeared that when the sur­round­ing trees came into leaf, they inci­den­tal­ly cre­at­ed an inti­mate space in the gar­den of the for­mer sexton’s house, as the pub­lic expo­sure decreased rapid­ly and the dual­is­tic rela­tion to the medieval church van­ished. Fur­ther­more, the inti­mate space may have cre­at­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty for a dif­fer­ent and more pri­vate kind of con­ver­sa­tions regard­ing the past of the place to the ben­e­fit of the over­all exchange of memories.

Less than a year after the imple­men­ta­tion ​“The con­trolled ruin” faced the con­se­quences of its first Dan­ish win­ter. The effects of frost ero­sions scarred the pro­to­type, thus sig­nif­i­cant­ly soft­en­ing the pre­vi­ous­ly rig­or­ous mod­ernistic designed edges of walls. Some of the walls made of hol­low bricks turned into piles of rub­ble, where­as walls of con­crete and mas­sive brick­work proved more resilient towards the cli­mate. This was expect­ed, as well as the imme­di­ate reac­tions from the local community. 

Most of the reac­tions may be ascribed to the inher­ent prop­er­ties of the ruin and thus, elab­o­rat­ed in depth lat­er on in the dis­cus­sion. To obvi­ate increas­ing crit­i­cisms, a parish evening was orga­nized by request of the researcher to equip the local com­mu­ni­ty with a forum to address their ques­tions and crit­i­cisms. It also aimed at pro­vid­ing the vil­lage com­mu­ni­ty with insights into the research per­spec­tives as well as the inter­na­tion­al con­text of the research project. The parish evening con­vinced the local com­mu­ni­ty of the legit­i­ma­cy of the changes in the vil­lage-scape caused by the inter­ven­tion. The com­mu­ni­ty was after­wards some­what con­vinced that some­one at a cer­tain stage would take action and was allowed to do so. This actu­al­ly hap­pened on the ini­tia­tive of the sex­ton and the Parish Council.

In spring 2015, the sex­ton affil­i­at­ed to the neigh­bor­ing ceme­tery cleaned up ​“The con­trolled ruin”, and began to add green plants. More­over, the Parish Coun­cil fur­nished the pro­to­type with two sets of tables and bench­es. From this point, ​“The con­trolled ruin” moved towards the con­cept of the clas­sic ruin as known from the roman­tic peri­od. In addi­tion, at this stage the ruina­tion process began to slow down. The added roman­tic cloak and re-fur­nish­ing, at the ini­tia­tive of the local com­mu­ni­ty, changed the sta­tus of the pro­to­type. The rem­nants of the orig­i­nal sexton’s house were now re-vital­ized as a recre­ation­al addi­tion to the ceme­tery. This local­ly facil­i­tat­ed revi­tal­iza­tion did not pre­vent an exchange of mem­o­ries of the build­ing and the place. Con­verse­ly, it increased the num­ber of vis­i­tors and con­se­quent­ly the poten­tial too, for fur­ther exchange. The local community’s atti­tude towards ​“The con­trolled ruin” at the church changed in a more pos­i­tive direc­tion, as the crit­i­cisms, accord­ing to the sex­ton, dimin­ished fol­low­ing the local com­mu­ni­ty-dri­ven revi­tal­iza­tion. The roman­tic cloak, ini­ti­at­ed by the com­mu­ni­ty itself, may have estab­lished a less intim­i­dat­ing sit­u­a­tion for the local res­i­dents, soft­en­ing the pro­sa­ic aspects of aban­don­ment and con­tem­po­rary decay with­in the rur­al vil­lage-scape. In short, an act of appro­pri­a­tion took place^[5].

How­ev­er, years lat­er some of the more sen­si­tive prob­lem­at­ics, relat­ed to preser­va­tion based on pub­lic expo­sure of pri­vate spheres, sur­faced. Despite a pos­i­tive atti­tude towards the research project in the begin­ning, close fam­i­ly mem­bers to the deceased pre­vi­ous own­er com­plained about the decay­ing remains of their child­hood home, and espe­cial­ly the fact that the place had become pub­lic. This added anoth­er dimen­sion to the con­cept of long-term, how­ev­er still tem­po­rary, preser­va­tion strate­gies build­ing on par­tial demo­li­tion and sub­se­quent inte­grat­ed decay process­es, espe­cial­ly when it comes to pre­served objects belong­ing to the every­day envi­ron­ment of the recent past. Atti­tudes of emo­tion­al nature sim­ply tend to changes over time depen­dent on impact of sev­er­al vis­i­ble or invis­i­ble, but unpre­dictable and very com­plex sys­tems. In this case, the pass­ing of a close fam­i­ly mem­ber may have swayed the attitude. 

The fragili­ty and diverg­ing atti­tudes with­in rur­al vil­lage com­mu­ni­ties expe­ri­enced through the age-long engage­ment in rela­tion to ​“The con­trolled ruin” indi­cat­ed on the one side an urgent need for fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tions, as the local iden­ti­ty proved con­nect­ed to the phys­i­cal anchor­age point with­in the vil­lage con­text. On the oth­er side, the rad­i­cal preser­va­tion exper­i­ment revealed a poten­tial ele­ment of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, as the pri­va­cy of those with the clos­est per­son­al rela­tions to these anchor­age points risk pub­lic expo­sure^[6]. There­fore, anoth­er preser­va­tion exper­i­ment was ini­ti­at­ed. This exper­i­ment addressed, in con­trast to ​“The con­trolled ruin”, a build­ing which in the past played a more pub­lic role with­in its com­mu­ni­ty. Fur­ther, the exper­i­ment was based on a con­cept of imma­te­r­i­al preser­va­tion. Hence, the inter­ven­tion ini­ti­at­ing the preser­va­tion was event-based and not leav­ing any spared phys­i­cal rem­nants sub­se­quent to the intervention.

Theatre Installation: Implementation March-August 2016.

The ​“The­atre instal­la­tion” was in con­trast to, but still learn­ing from, the ​“The con­trolled ruin” entire­ly aim­ing at set­ting an exam­ple of imma­te­r­i­al preser­va­tion of a build­ing. In short, the strat­e­gy was based on boost­ing a cen­tral pub­lic build­ing which used to be a com­mu­nal gath­er­ing point in a rur­al small town before its com­plete demo­li­tion. The preser­va­tion itself was based on cre­at­ing a tem­po­rary on-site cat­a­lyst of an exchange of per­son­al mem­o­ries into the col­lec­tive mem­o­ry to sub­stan­ti­ate the local iden­ti­ty and strength­en the com­mu­ni­ty cohesion.

The ​“The­atre instal­la­tion” was imple­ment­ed as an event-based trans­for­ma­tion of an aban­doned con­fec­tionary into a the­atre instal­la­tion, focus­ing on engage­ment with the local com­mu­ni­ty in the entire process from ini­tial work pri­or to trans­for­ma­tive inter­ven­tion to the com­ple­tion of the demo­li­tion. Sec­tion-based inter­ven­tions were inte­grat­ed as part of the The­atre instal­la­tion in sim­i­lar fash­ion as in the ​“The con­trolled ruin”. The con­fec­tionery was cho­sen, as it played a major role as a gath­er­ing point for the local com­mu­ni­ty from the 1920s to the begin­ning of the 1980s. Up until 2011, the build­ing was part­ly occu­pied by the wid­ow of the last con­fec­tion­er. In 2016, although aban­doned for almost five years and now con­demned to demo­li­tion, it still held a cen­tral posi­tion in the mid­dle of the pedes­tri­an street of the sec­ond largest town in the munic­i­pal­i­ty. The ​“The­atre Instal­la­tion” was imple­ment­ed in coop­er­a­tion with Teater Nord­kraft, an exper­i­men­tal the­atre, as well as local res­i­dents and Thist­ed Municipality. 

The inten­tion of the instal­la­tion was to trans­form the aban­doned con­fec­tionery into a peep­hole box and, through real-time stream­ing, to mir­ror the event to a min­i­mal recon­struc­tion of the con­fec­tionery in a black box at Teater Nord­kraft in Aal­borg. Apart from the local impact, the stream­ing also rep­re­sent­ed an attempt to increase pub­lic atten­tion to the social inequal­i­ty between rur­al and urban in Den­mark. The trans­formed build­ing was to become a medi­a­tor between the rur­al vil­lage envi­ron­ment and the city. 

Fur­ther­more, and more impor­tant­ly, on loca­tion, the the­atre instal­la­tion aimed at cat­alyz­ing an exchange of local mem­o­ries embed­ded in the con­fec­tionery to redeem these intrin­sic imma­te­r­i­al qual­i­ties before the imma­nent demo­li­tion of the build­ing. The con­cept was to gen­er­ate increased atten­tion to the con­fec­tionery through a two-month re-open­ing dur­ing sum­mer 2016 before the build­ing vanished. 

Cycli­cal light­ing and audio tracks orches­trat­ed the phys­i­cal inter­ven­tions and the local com­mu­ni­ty itself man­aged and main­tained the instal­la­tion inde­pen­dent­ly dur­ing the dai­ly open­ing hours. The reopen­ing of the old aban­doned con­fec­tionery as a tem­po­rary boost of the exposed mem­o­ries of both the build­ing and the place, proved strik­ing­ly appeal­ing to the local com­mu­ni­ty. More than 150 par­tic­i­pat­ed in the confectionery's grand reopen­ing 4 June 2016. The local res­i­dents count­ed for a high per­cent­age of the atten­dance through­out the most of the sum­mer. Many res­i­dents from the city, who had vis­it­ed the mir­rored instal­la­tion at Teater Nord­kraft in Aal­borg, sup­ple­ment­ed this, and fol­low­ing they made the two-hour dri­ve to Hurup to vis­it the confectionery.

In con­trast to the ​“The con­trolled ruin”, the ​“The­atre instal­la­tion” did not leave phys­i­cal remains, as the inten­tion was to cre­ate an imma­te­r­i­al impact. The con­fec­tionery remained open for almost two-months (4 June to 31 July) dur­ing the same open­ing hours as the oth­er shops on the pedes­tri­an street. 

It was through the engage­ment with the local com­mu­ni­ty the two-month of reopen­ing was pos­si­ble. Dur­ing the entire peri­od of reopen­ing, the com­mu­ni­ty itself facil­i­tat­ed and kept the instal­la­tion run­ning. Not only did they open and close the instal­la­tion in accor­dance with the oth­er shops on the pedes­tri­an street, they also served cof­fee and pas­try in the court­yard every Sun­day. The court­yard was fur­nished for this pur­pose, using a refec­to­ry table and bench­es placed under­neath an old elder. The idea was to encour­age the vis­i­tors to gath­er around the refec­to­ry table, pro­vid­ing an infor­mal set­ting for dia­logue and encour­ag­ing an exchange of mem­o­ries of the place^[7].

The boost of the wan­ing con­fec­tionery, before its inevitable destruc­tion, proved to instill a greater aware­ness of the com­mu­nal iden­ti­ty among the local res­i­dents that they them­selves formed part of. 

Boost­ing an endan­gered build­ing before its fore­see­able erad­i­ca­tion places sev­er­al demands on both the build­ing and the envi­ron­ment. First, the impact is depen­dent on the loca­tion. Sec­ond, the impor­tance of the build­ing in rela­tion to the com­mu­ni­ty will most prob­a­bly be reflect­ed in the degree of local inter­ac­tion. Third, being present on site is cru­cial to suc­ceed in involv­ing the com­mu­ni­ty and thus, the suc­cess of the ini­ti­at­ed preser­va­tion. In con­clu­sion, when the inter­ven­tion is run­ning autonomous­ly through total embed­ment in the local com­mu­ni­ty, it can lib­er­ate itself and achieve its purpose.

The Properties of Ruins in the
Contemporary Rural Built Environment

By intro­duc­ing the con­cept of age val­ue as a mea­sure­ment tool based on the appre­ci­a­tion of age itself Alois Riegl did not only devi­ate from his pre­de­ces­sors in the form of Vien­nese aca­d­e­mics who often ascribed the more intan­gi­ble aspects of inter­pret­ing the past to divin­i­ty. Riegl did also, and more impor­tant­ly in this con­text, expand the cat­a­logue of what a ruin could be. Such expan­sion led to the con­cept of the unin­tend­ed mon­u­ment that would also allow pre­vi­ous­ly neglect­ed build­ings of the every­day envi­ron­ment to assume val­ue on the basis of the accu­mu­lat­ed traces of their entire lifes­pan^[8]. Where­as the inten­tion­al his­toric mon­u­ments over time through restora­tion is turn­ing into copies of them­selves and pre­sent­ing a par­tic­u­lar past as if it was the present, the unin­tend­ed mon­u­ment of the built envi­ron­ment is com­prised of a spa­tial mate­r­i­al palimpsest^[9].

The build­ings of the every­day envi­ron­ment are as such unin­ten­tion­al mon­u­ments. Espe­cial­ly the exis­tence of the build­ings of every­day life are par­tic­u­lar­ly con­test­ed in sev­er­al ways as already out­lined. In the con­text of the rur­al vil­lage, these build­ings form part of an inter­wo­ven mesh of imma­te­r­i­al net­works and rela­tions between build­ings, places, peo­ple and their mem­o­ries that goes far beyond the phys­i­cal bound­aries of the indi­vid­ual build­ing itself^[10]. The build­ings of every­day life do not call for atten­tion, as they are part of the ordi­nary and thus, their dis­ap­pear­ance goes eas­i­ly unno­ticed. This does not mean that they no longer are impor­tant to the sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ty as they may, for instance, form anchor­age point of the col­lec­tive mem­o­ry and there­fore also still play a cru­cial role in main­tain­ing local iden­ti­ty and com­mu­ni­ty cohesion. 

Through­out his­to­ry the atti­tudes towards ruins have oscil­lat­ed depend­ing on their con­tem­po­rary artis­tic move­ments as well as geo­graph­i­cal ori­gin. Obvi­ous­ly, roman­ti­cism in west­ern Europe brought the ruin into focus and cel­e­bra­tion. In con­trast, the Russ­ian and lat­er Sovi­et view on ruins has a far more prag­mat­ic posi­tion that may arrive from wide­spread pover­ty but also as a counter-posi­tion to the imposed west Euro­pean roman­ti­cism^[11]. Sim­i­lar ten­den­cies are vis­i­ble in the for­mer east bloc. In Riga, the cap­i­tal of Latvia the his­toric ​“lay­er” of the Sovi­et era, phys­i­cal­ly rep­re­sent­ed as Sovi­et mod­ernist build­ings, is cur­rent­ly being erad­i­cat­ed through demo­li­tion and sub­se­quent­ly replaced with con­tem­po­rary re-inter­pre­ta­tions of pre-WW2 art nou­veau build­ings. This con­sol­i­dates a fast and irre­versibly erad­i­ca­tion of the recent past of a nation as seen so often before through­out his­to­ry. The fast erad­i­ca­tion of his­to­ry of the recent past in the Dan­ish rur­al built envi­ron­ment may not be as polit­i­cal­ly imposed as the case in Latvia although the result is the same. The great­est dan­ger in such erad­i­ca­tions may be obliv­ion, as for­get­ting may pro­duce a risk of his­to­ry repeat­ing itself, when all the traces and phys­i­cal remains of the unwant­ed recent past are erased.

In the late 19^th cen­tu­ry Ger­many, the nation­al mon­u­ments were rebuilt and sup­ple­ment­ed to sub­stan­ti­ate the notion of the Ger­man empire. Until 1871 Ger­many was more bound togeth­er of ​“a sense of a nation” rather than being defined by ter­ri­to­r­i­al bound­aries, as the lat­ter was not ratio­nal due to Germany's con­struct of sev­er­al king­doms and unions as well as its unsta­ble com­plex of bor­ders as a result of war. This is what could be phrased as pro­grammed obliv­ion or rewrit­ing the past of a nation^[12].

The ques­tion is whether a halfway delib­er­ate pro­grammed obliv­ion is tak­ing place in Dan­ish rur­al uti­liz­ing the strate­gic demo­li­tions as method, when inalien­able anchor­age points of the col­lec­tive mem­o­ry, part of the foun­da­tion of local iden­ti­ty as well as com­mu­ni­ty cohe­sion, rapid­ly are erad­i­cat­ed^[13].

To under­stand the prop­er­ties of ruins in rela­tion to rad­i­cal preser­va­tion of aban­doned rur­al build­ings, it seems rel­e­vant to intro­duce notions of the ruin in roman­ti­cism, as the ruin was praised in west­ern Europe dur­ing this peri­od^[14].

In the roman­tic peri­od the ruin was ascribed to have the abil­i­ty of evok­ing emo­tion­al feel­ings. This is ren­dered vis­i­ble in lit­er­a­ture as well as in the arts and archi­tec­ture of the time. The frag­ment­ed writ­ings of the peri­od resem­ble the bro­ken enti­ties of the phys­i­cal ruin. In oth­er words, the gap between the frag­ments stim­u­lat­ed an indi­vid­ual inter­pre­ta­tion of what might have con­nect­ed them in the past^[15].

Pro­fes­sor Jonathan Hill at the Bartlett describes the ruins as pre­cur­sors of change, as they are bring­ing a par­tic­u­lar past into present, a par­tic­u­lar past that is lost. As such they also point towards an uncer­tain future^[16]. This auto­mat­i­cal­ly leads to the dis­cus­sion on atti­tudes towards ruins in the con­tem­po­rary con­text of Dan­ish rur­al. The ruin grad­u­al­ly reveals its pri­vate past to the pub­lic as the inte­ri­or becomes exte­ri­or as part of the decay process­es. Thus, the full his­to­ry of the build­ing is ren­dered vis­i­ble as a mate­r­i­al x‑ray. The unleash of the pri­vate sphere into the pub­lic cre­ates a dis­tur­bance of the atmos­pheres of the place or in the Ger­man art crit­ic and philoso­pher Wal­ter Benjamin’s words ​“a sud­den shock of awak­en­ing”. This sub­stan­ti­ates the roman­tic notion of the ruins as capa­ble of evok­ing emo­tion­al feel­ings^[17].

Sim­i­lar­ly, to the roman­tic notions of the ruin, the out­lined inter­ven­tions prompt­ed a spe­cif­ic con­di­tion. It was as if the bro­ken­ness lead­ing to the rever­sal of pub­lic and pri­vate through the sec­tion-like method proved an abil­i­ty to instant­ly trig­ger latent per­son­al mem­o­ries linked to a spe­cif­ic build­ing or place. In oth­er word, the unleashed mem­o­ries were fill­ing in the miss­ing parts of a bro­ken enti­ty. Mem­o­ries that pri­or to the inter­ven­tion had been concealed.

How­ev­er, the over­all pos­i­tive atti­tude towards ruins in the roman­tic peri­od are not nec­es­sar­i­ly shared by the peo­ple liv­ing in the rur­al areas today. First of all, the cel­e­bra­tion of bro­ken­ness and frag­ment in roman­ti­cism was for the elite only and there­fore not direct­ly applic­a­ble to con­tem­po­rary rural­i­ty in Den­mark in which the every­day envi­ron­ment is dom­i­nat­ing. Accord­ing­ly, it may not come as a sur­prise that bro­ken­ness in the rur­al vil­lage-scape is not appre­ci­at­ed by the local com­mu­ni­ties, as it, in Hill’s view, is a symp­tom of an uncer­tain future. This may be the rea­son, why the strate­gic demo­li­tions are wel­comed by many vil­lage com­mu­ni­ties, as the demo­li­tions on the short term pro­vide a cleanup. Fur­ther­more, when frag­ile and vul­ner­a­ble her­itage aspects impor­tant to rur­al iden­ti­ties, embed­ded in the bro­ken­ness, are imma­te­r­i­al and intan­gi­ble of nature and thus, invis­i­ble, the rur­al vil­lage com­mu­ni­ties are not to be blamed.

More recent­ly how­ev­er, an aware­ness towards the imma­te­r­i­al and intan­gi­ble aspects of cul­tur­al her­itage has emerged, as stat­ed by ICOMOS in the ​“Con­ven­tion for the Safe­guard­ing of the Intan­gi­ble Cul­tur­al Her­itage” in 2003 or by Lau­ra-jane Smith in the paper ​“All her­itage is intan­gi­ble” ^[18]. In the after­math of the ICOMOS con­ven­tion, the def­i­n­i­tions of what can qual­i­fy as intan­gi­ble her­itage remain extreme­ly broad, result­ing in a lack in devel­op­ment of new alter­na­tive meth­ods to iden­ti­fy and pre­serve or acti­vate the more ephemer­al parts of built her­itage^[19].

Conclusion

Iron­i­cal­ly, vast amounts are used on the inten­tion­al mon­u­ments to pre­vent nat­ur­al decay by turn­ing them into copies of them­selves over time, where­as oth­er vast amounts are spent on the rur­al built envi­ron­ment of every­day life to pre­vent decay through strate­gic demolitions.

Through­out the last cen­tu­ry, the com­bi­na­tion of urban devel­op­ment and preser­va­tion prac­tices has result­ed in mon­u­ments being iso­lat­ed as his­toric islands, frozen in time, and com­plete­ly detached from their con­tem­po­rary con­text. Today they appear as muse­um pieces on dis­play, alien and arti­fi­cial in their appearance.

The rur­al built envi­ron­ment on the oth­er hand is chal­lenged more than ever. ICOMOS has brought atten­tion to the intan­gi­ble and imma­te­r­i­al aspects of cul­tur­al her­itage. Still, two decades lat­er, con­tem­po­rary her­itage prac­tices have failed in devel­op­ing new meth­ods to iden­ti­fy, pre­serve, or acti­vate mate­r­i­al, imma­te­r­i­al, and intan­gi­ble aspects of the rur­al built her­itage. Bear­ing the out­lined rad­i­cal preser­va­tion attempts in mind, the con­tem­po­rary dis­course on cul­tur­al her­itage plays down the impor­tance of engag­ing the rur­al built envi­ron­ment of every­day life in the dis­course. Despite this, the preser­va­tion exper­i­ments unearthed sev­er­al of unrec­og­nized intrin­sic imma­te­r­i­al qual­i­ties linked to build­ings or built envi­ron­ment emp­tied of func­tion. This reveals a gap, in research and in prac­tice, that calls for new direc­tions in cul­tur­al her­itage. New direc­tions being based on more dynam­ic and engag­ing approach­es to the field. Approach­es that are embed­ded in the rur­al com­mu­ni­ties them­self to the ben­e­fit of the wan­ing iden­ti­ties of the rur­al vil­lages and from which new rur­al iden­ti­ties can emerge. 

Rur­al vil­lages exist in a frag­ile equi­lib­ri­um of mate­r­i­al and imma­te­r­i­al net­works that is vul­ner­a­ble to abrupt inter­ven­tions imposed as for instance top-down gov­er­nance such as the state funds for demo­li­tion projects. Learn­ing from the counter-prac­tice of rad­i­cal preser­va­tion it seems cru­cial that Dan­ish rur­al must be changed from with­in. Nev­er­the­less, there may be one dif­fi­cult pre­con­di­tion for a rede­fined cul­tur­al her­itage appa­ra­tus that can obtain the unseen aspects of rural­i­ty. Name­ly, a broad­er soci­etal rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with the recent past.