Processes of aesthetic transformation in ordinary landscapes

The paper concerns an aesthetic and cultural exploration of a landscape element; windbreak planting, which is commonly used in windswept agricultural landscapes. In Denmark, windbreak planting is a fairly new landscape element connected to the agricultural reforms of the 18th century where it was distributed systematically as an almost industrially produced landscape element. Windbreaks are now regarded as a traditional element in the Danish agricultural landscape.
As a landscape element it is an international phenomenon known and used in Germany, France, England etc. Originally local farming practices, natural conditions, techniques and national legislation in the respective countries, formed the aesthetic expression. In this respect one could speak of the impact of northern nature on the aesthetic expression of the Danish windbreaks, as well as the impact from national phenomena. These features determined the specific aesthetic and architectural identity of ordinary Danish, i.e. Nordic, landscapes.

Contemporary cultural changes such as the aesthetification of everyday life and of ordinary landscape, i.e. farming landscape, are now manifest in the way the windbreaks are motivated, established, perceived and used.
The primary function of the windbreaks as a one-dimensional landscape object intimately related to farming, is in this way changed to a multi-dimensional aesthetic object where aspects of recreation and a traditional aesthetic approach to landscape appear along with utilitarian aspects.

This is seen both as an example of how transnational contemporary cultural changes have an impact on local Nordic farming landscapes and their aesthetic expression and as an example of how processes of transformation in aesthetic experience and interpretation have an impact on the general understanding and use of ordinary landscape.