Задание №16430 ЕГЭ по Английскому языку

Denmark’s 300-year-old Homes of the Future

Most summer days on the Danish island of Læsø, you’ll find Henning Johansen at work. A native islander, Johansen is a thatcher. But on Læsø, a thatcher’s job is unlike anywhere else. Læsø’s most unique characteristic, however, is its houses, which are thatched with thick, heavy bundles of silvery seaweed.

Seaweed thatching began on Læsø in the 17th century and is largely unique to the island, though seaweed roofs were later reported to have been seen on Scotland’s Orkney Islands. Læsø, which had a thriving industry, had been deforested — trees were burned to feed the salt kilns — so islanders needed to find an alternative roofing material. The island itself has scant resources and, consisting largely of mud flats and sand banks, is difficult to cultivate, so instead residents looked to the sea.

Since 2012, Johansen has been reviving the technique as he replaces the roofs, the first in a generation to do so. “It's one of the greatest things in Læsø’s history, so it’s very important for the island,” he told me by phone from a roof he was working on. “It was women's work,” he added, explaining that since the male islanders were often out at sea, the women were left to look after the farms and houses. “They were alone on this island and taking care of themselves. They found a way to make these roofs, which is not seen elsewhere in the world. So, of course we are very proud of the heritage.”

But it’s not only for the sake of heritage that Johansen is reviving seaweed thatching. “Eelgrass is a very interesting material,” he said, “because it won't burn; there’s so much salt in the straw.”

While eelgrass is commonly referred to as “seaweed”, it is actually a type of seagrass, which has long leaves and can grow up to 2 m in length. It’s found all around the world, though largely in the northern hemisphere. Not only is eelgrass naturally fire-, rot- and pest-resistant, it also absorbs CO2 , and as it doesn’t require heat to produce, is carbon neutral when harvested and used locally. Eelgrass becomes fully waterproof after about a year and has insulation properties comparable to those of mineral wool, a dense, fibrous material made from molten glass, stone or industrial waste. A roof can last hundreds of years — one of island’s remaining seaweed roofs dates more than 300 years — for comparison, a concrete tile roof typically lasts around 50.

This combination of sustainability and heritage caught the eye of Copenhagen-based American architect Kathryn Larsen, who is currently researching how Læsø’s traditional seaweed thatching could be updated into a sustainable contemporary building material around the world.

Larsen wants to change the way the building industry looks at older techniques, which were “not only better for our environment, by using natural renewable resources, but were also creating buildings that were a lot healthier for us. Basically, we figured it out, we lost all this knowledge and we’re building ourselves into a bigger hole where buildings are getting worse and worse in air quality.”

On Læsø, Johansen still has 10 more roofs to replace. It’s been a long project, but one that he says he doesn’t want to finish “because it's much easier to tell you the history when you come and see me repair old houses.” Visitors to Læsø are invited to watch him at work on weekdays during the summer where they can see first-hand “the way it works, the material, and how interesting it is.”

Eelgrass is part of the world’s heritage, he said. “You can come to Læsø and I can show you your own history from your country” because it was once commonly used around the world — everywhere from the Dutch Wadden Sea where it was used for building sea walls to New England where homes were insulated with Cabot’s Quilt, a thermal and sound insulator made of dried eelgrass.

“It has a big history, which was very quickly forgotten and now I'm starting to tell it again. It's very easy to tell when you stand beside a very old roof, looking at it, and people say, ‘what a funny material’.”