mini dwellings, boats & edge gardens at Dragor, Copenhagen

The fishing village of Dragor is 10 minutes from Copenhagen's modern Airport, yet 2 or 300 years away from life as we know it.

The people who built it where traders and captians of tall ships, who almost certainly took the image of Dragor with them to sustain them over the rough and salty months at sea. Like cold Hobbits longing for The Parish, their night fantasies would probably zoom in on the domestic: the sweet wife awaiting them by the fireside, larder stocked with the berry jams she picked and preserved from the summer garden, baby on the way.


Due to photographic incompetence, the loveliest of Dragor is not shown here: Amythyst colored fish layed out for sale by the burly man who caught them, 'fast food' fish, just whisked from their shoal and ready to be eaten before the chimney in which they were smoked. The scent of birchsmoke was familiar, the scent of 'lapsang-souchong'.

I do believe there are tuna about the size of this fishing boat. Don't get too ambitious, mate.

Wooden boats rock

Perfect decoration for a jewel-like window

Every home had a tiny 'edge garden', tall self-seeded hollyhocks now in their hundreth or so generation. Useful perinnial Rosemary, or berry bushes, which where just finishing for the summer when I arrived.

I remember reading about oilcloth curtains in Robinson-Crusoe style tales. I wonder what these are? Little cubby houses cluster in the lanes where men dry their nets, lanes stacked with piles of old racks for drying fish, cages where plump bunnies were once kept, because fish pie every night gets dull.

Aspirational living

Heres a nice house for my mum. The internet reception would be great.

Well, these days Dragor has a few thousand residents, with a supermarket, library, community noticboards and choir. Most of the gardens are edible, thats just the way its always been here, as they had to wait quite a while for hubbie's ship, and even longer for the supermarket.

As a destination for starting a new life, writing your novel, or learning the art of medicinal herb gardening, this town could be just the spot.