Prose Explaining Poetry: The Reykjavik Botanical Garden

The Botanical Garden: Moving to Erikshuis

By David Stanley from Reykjavík, Iceland

One of the most significant things to happen to me in Iceland was something I could not have planned: it was moving to Erikshuis. This ‘house’, a large wooden cabin turned SEEDS community building became something much more to me over the month that I lived there than a temporary residence: it became a kind of historical minefield of myth and memory, a safe haven away from the overly-touristed streets of central Reykjavik and eventually a source of creative inspiration. Erikshuis at first appealed to me purely on its own merits as a community accommodation; I knew nothing of the story that lay behind it. This story was pieced together over time, and largely thanks to information provided to me by the staff working at the Botanical Garden. As the history of the house unravelled itself, my admiration for it grew. It became as monumental to me for the characters that inhabited it and the lives it staged over time, as the sprawling mansions you find in Marquez novels or Steinbeck’s rattling prairie houses.

So what made it so special? As a building in its own right it had bundles of charm. It was large enough to sleep twenty people in an assortment of dormitory rooms and the raised ground floor level had a spacious community kitchen with a large wooden table at its centre and comfortable living room. It was clear that the building had seen better days, the floor noticeably slumped in places and the wood and furniture all bore a faded, though rustic look. As well as peeling paint and depreciating floors, the building had been used excessively by short and long-term volunteers since SEEDS took it over. It was full of the evidence of these mainly creative camps: strings of paper art and cuts outs, tattered atlases lining the walls, old photographs bearing witness to great former times blue-tacked up on the pine panelling. I realised that Erikshuis’ shabby-chic aesthetic did not meet all of the volunteer’s expectations; but for me its partial degradation and even structural incoherency was all part of its charm. It made it feel like a house, a place that had been lived in and loved. It bore like an old war veteran, the traces of all the campaigns and personalities that had found a safe-haven beneath its rafters.

However, the house itself would mean nothing to me if it hadn’t been built where it was. It was located on the fringes of the municipal botanical garden, in a large park on the capital’s west side. Due to the spill-over from the Botanical Garden and the persevering efforts of a gardener long ago, the house was surrounded by trees. Their branches chequered the overgrown lawn and small meadow outside and cast shadows against dormitory windows. Those of you who have been to Iceland will know how exceptional this is. Iceland is a country with astonishing natural scenery, but comparative to its size, very few trees. The sad plight of Iceland’s treeless demesne was brought home to me during a workshop I attended in April, presented by a representative from the Icelandic Forestry Association. This association committed to re-foresting the island, had been set up philanthropically by the Danish government fifty years ago. I imagine they wanted to encourage their remote Scandinavian satellite state to cultivate or reinstate their own native forest. As well as being a matter of national honour, it was also seen as one of the key strategies to combat one of Iceland’s biggest environmental threats: soil erosion.

The researcher leading the presentation claimed that there was evidence from the past suggesting that Iceland was once abundantly forested – he estimated 40% forest coverage, especially in coastal areas. However, now Iceland is the least forested country in Europe with a paltry 0.3% coverage of native forest and woodland. What happened?  Over-exploitation of the island’s forestry resource by settlers. It is a familiar story; heedless of their rapacious consumption of natural resources over a period of hundreds of years, Icelandic settlers depleted the native tree stock. It was not replenished. Now the only native trees to be found in Iceland are mangled prototypes of the Icelandic silver birch: gnarled, tangled and shrub-like. Due to its harsh and tempestuous climate it takes a long time for trees to grow in Iceland and the settlers did not plant as much wood as they cut down for timber to survive the long, dark Icelandic winters.

In Miklabraut or the town centre I found myself missing trees and parks. The stern grandeur of the fjord landscape was dazzling but it was not homely, I wanted leaves and branches; something more pastoral. But at Erikshuis there were trees and lots of them. In fact the cabin was surrounded by them and discretely tucked away in a back corner of the botanical garden I found a kind of quiet contentment in my environment that was singularly lacking on the busy Miklabraut thoroughfare.

Over the weeks that I spent volunteering at the Botanical Garden, brushing away protective layers of leaves from hibernating shrubs, pulling the slick white bulbs of various invasive species from the rich black soil, yet more nuggets of information about the house floated in my direction. It turns out that a recent project by the Reykjavik City Council to drain the valley upon which the Botanical gardens and Erikshuis rested, was unsettling the foundations of many of the older buildings. It also materialised that Erikshuis as well as the small bungalow named Laugatunga in which our volunteer group took our lunch and midday break, belonged to the Botanical Gardens as they were bought up by the city council years ago. Who were the owners before the sale? Well, as the director informed me, the original owner of Erikshuis was a man called Erik who built the house himself. He was a very educated man and a pioneer in botanics and gardening. Indeed it was the greenhouses that he erected in the extensive grounds of Erikshuis with the help of his wife and children, that provided the impetus for the foundation of the state-funded botanical gardens project itself.

What did he grow in the greenhouses? I was curious, knowing as I did how late Icelandic flora and fauna is to bloom and how short-lasting the flowering period is when they have budded. Bananas, replied Gurðer. I couldn’t believe my ears. Bananas! In Iceland? In the 1930s and 40s! It was an incredibly story. Gurðer smiled. Yes, Erik was the first biologist in Europe to try and grow bananas in greenhouses. My brain was racing, I couldn’t believe that my beloved Erikshuis was built by that man and that the foundations of the greenhouses still visible beside the office of the botanical gardens were his own pet project. Somehow – I can’t remember where now – I managed to see some photographs of the House in its heyday, when Eric lived there. It was in a much better condition then, immaculately presented with an arbour of roses arching about the front entrance. And his daughters! They were clearly middle class girls, the Icelandic land-owning class, yet they looked delightful, with bouncy shoulder-length hair and sparkling white pinafores. Apparently after Erik died his daughters continued to look after the greenhouses and their father’s pilot projects.

After I had seen the photographs and metabolised the story, I returned to the house with even more relish than before. He seemed such a powerful symbol somehow, did Eric, a pioneering and ambitious man undaunted by the environmental constraints of his time. He made beautiful places and devoted his time to realising unimaginable projects. He was an idealist in the best possible sense of the word.