Social Analysis, Volume 55, Issue 2, Summer 2011, 45–61 © Berghahn Journalsdoi:10.3167/sa.2011.550203

Consuming Leisure TimeLandscapes of Infinite Horizons

Mark Vacher

Abstract: The aim of this article is to explore the Danish seaside as a culturally framed arena of experience. In the first part of the article, I present the appearance of Denmark’s seaside as a recreational location for the Danish middle class. Using Danish films that portray the middle class on holiday, the article illustrates the perceptual consequences of a specific appropriation of the landscape. The analysis of the relationship between landscape and people then introduces anthropological perspec-tives on time, consumption, and perception. Drawing on ethnographic interviews and comparative observations, I show how accessing and consuming the landscape as a recreational location come to constitute it as a finite arena of infinite time and space, as well as a distinct location that allows for equal social relations.

Keywords: consumption, horizon, landscape, leisure time, nature, sec-ond homes, perception

When I was 5 years old, I had a strange experience. Together with my friends, I witnessed the filming of the silent movie Vester vov vov. Fy and Bi [the main characters of the movie] were fishing from the beach close to my home. Using fishing poles, they threw their bait against the waves and the rising tide. It was the stupidest thing we had ever seen. How could anybody imagine that they could catch anything at a place that, one hour earlier, had been a sandy beach?

— Interview with Inge Romedahl, 2010

The filming of director Lau Lauritzen’s (1927) movie Vester vov vov (People of the North Sea) took place in 1926 just outside the small Danish fishing village of Løkken on the west coast of Jutland. In many ways, it was a strange movie, not only in the eyes of my grandmother (quoted above), who was the daughter of a local fisherman, but also regarding the plot and the choice of location. Vester vov vov is a love story about a beach warden’s daughter and a young man of

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unknown descent. When the beach warden opposes the relationship between the couple, they receive help from two kind tramps, Fy and Bi (Long and Short, in the English version), who have set up a provisional hut on the beach. Despite many complications and intrigues, including hooking a whale, the hut blowing into the North Sea, stranded ships, smugglers, and beautiful women, Fy and Bi manage to uncover the fact that the young man is the lost son of a wealthy English couple. This, of course, changes the beach warden’s attitude and ensures a happy ending for the film.

Regarding the location, Vester vov vov was one of the first films to make explicit use of the Danish landscape.1 While most other Danish films at that time were shot at dramatic settings in Norway and Sweden, Vester vov vov pre-sented the west coast of Denmark and the North Sea as regions of spectacular scenery. This way of perceiving the Danish landscape was new, not only to the film audience, but also to our eyewitness on the beach. From time to time, she would climb the dunes to look in the direction of the vast sea, but unlike the film audience, her attention would rarely be aimed at the panoramic view. Rather, the focus of her attention was the expected appearance of her father’s fishing vessel.

During the 1930s, motorists (often manufacturers and wholesalers) from the larger Danish cities began exploring more remote coastal areas.2 What they were looking for was an unobstructed view of the magnificent horizon as presented in Vester vov vov. This affected the visitors’ engagement with the local landscape, and, as a consequence, small coastal towns, such as Løk-ken and Blokhus on the west coast and Ebeltoft on the east coast of Jutland, started growing. The logic behind their growth was very different from that of industrial cities. Rather than factories and housing areas, hotels where erected, and, like Fy and Bi, some of the urban visitors began to construct cabins and small houses in the dunes and hills along the coast overlooking the sea.3 Mar-ginal land, which was of little interest to the local fishermen and farmers, who lived further inland, could be purchased for relatively little money, and, by the 1950s, large areas of dunes and other types of Danish coastal landscapes had been sold by locals to urban investors.

Starting in the 1960s, the urban commercial and industrial elites were fol-lowed by the upcoming Danish middle class, consisting of employees who, thanks to the economic boom of the times, had become house and car owners. Due to their status as employees, visits to the seaside were restricted to national holidays.4 The result was seasonal mass tourism and the advent of a tourist industry, including a new type of real estate agency, which aimed to profit from parceling out land along the coast and selling the new ‘must have’ of the Danish middle class—a sommerhus, or summer residence (typically, a second home). Today, more than 200,000 second homes, in the guise of cottages, cabins, and houses, are spread along the Danish coastline (Skifter Andersen 2008).

In the following, I will first explore the transformation of the Danish seaside from being the locale of small fishing communities to becoming a cherished holiday destination for the Danish middle class and its impact on cinematic representations. This remaking of the coastline, it will be argued, is the result

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of an evolving mode of production that influences not only the demography and the appropriation of the Danish seaside but also the way that this land-scape is perceived. As I will demonstrate, a visit to the seaside has become a way to encounter nature as a creative and in some cases even artistic force that expresses itself in the wood, stones, fossils, and amber that have been formed by wind and water and in visually stunning views, such as beautiful sunsets. In order to understand the cultural meaning of this encounter, I will introduce a phenomenological perspective on horizons developed by the French philoso-pher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. This perspective helps to explain certain spatial and temporal qualities that support a specific mode of consumption—one that stands out as especially appealing to the Danish middle class on holiday. After this analysis, the article will focus on the discovery of the Danish seaside as a holiday destination, utilizing interviews and comparative observations.

The Appearance of a New Consumer Class

Since the making of Vester vov vov, the Danish landscape, and especially the horizon, has become a sought-after commodity at any price, ranging from the cost of a movie ticket to that of a cottage overlooking the sea. From being part of an exotic film adventure in the late 1920s and the site of extravagant activities reserved for wealthy industrial entrepreneurs, the vast Danish coastline turned, during the 1960s, into a realizable dream for the upcoming middle class. The fact that the Danish seaside was becoming more accessible to the middle class had a significant impact on its cinematic depictions. From the mid-1950s, the choice of main characters and the presentation of the chosen locations, as well as the narrative composition of the movies, came to reflect the appearance of the new consumer-oriented class.

In Vester vov vov, the main characters are two unemployed tramps, the local residents, and a young man whose background is unknown. This is not the case in Far til fire på landet (Father of Four in the Country), a film directed by Alice O’Fredericks (1955) almost three decades later. In this movie, a widowed father from Copenhagen, his four children, and his brother go on a holiday to a small fishing village on the east coast of Jutland. By coincidence, it turns out that their neighbor from home, a young man who is very interested in the old-est daughter of the widowed father, is also spending the summer in the village. Fortunately, the young woman shares his feelings, which, after the necessary narrative entanglements, results in a summer romance. As for the three other siblings, they make friends with two children who are spending their holiday in a luxurious sommerhus and with whom they explore the countryside, provid-ing the more dramatic passages by getting caught in a small boat on the wild and perilous sea. The father and uncle spend their time relaxing, the former by reading police novels and the latter by painting the landscape.

Far til fire på landet differs from Vester vov vov in at least three significant ways. Firstly, rather than being the focus, the local population in Far til fire på landet is reduced to an exotic and stereotypically presented element of the

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background. The film’s focal point is placed instead on the urban middle class, which is imported into a locality that it finds simultaneously recreational and worth exploring.

Secondly, in Far til fire på landet, the seaside location is portrayed as being spatially connected to the urban middle class. While the world of Vester vov vov was located far away in a remote and isolated part of Denmark, the opening scene in Far til fire på landet takes place in the home of a typical middle-class family in a typical Copenhagen suburb. After deciding to go on holiday, which, in the movie, is presented as the essential starting point, the family embarks on a journey toward the main location. At the end of the movie, this journey is repeated in the opposite direction, bringing the principal characters back to their homes in middle-class suburbia.5 This connection between middle-class life and the seaside is to be found in many later films that represent the Danish seaside as magnificent and picturesque.6 The trips take place by car, sailboat, or public transportation, communicating not only the means to reach these locations but also the idea that most people are able to travel there—and with relative ease.

Lastly, with regard to temporality, the narrative composition of the two films differs to a great extent. In Vester vov vov, the time frame is set by the drama. The main characters arrive at the location more or less out of coincidence. In spite of their nomadic nature (being tramps), they nevertheless feel commit-ted to staying as long as it takes to uncover and solve the local drama, thereby postponing their departure into an undefined future. In Far til fire på landet, the drama unfolds, culminates, and finds its happy conclusion within the narrative framework of a summer holiday. The main characters in the latter film arrive at the location as a result of a decision concerning a specified time frame (where to go on holiday); they camp at campsites or stay in second homes, which are paid for and accessible during a predefined period of time; and, finally, they leave on a fixed date in order to return to their everyday lives. In other words, the location in Far til fire på landet is presented as a commodity that is both reachable and consumable within the limited period of a holiday.

Consuming Leisure Time

I will now analyze the forces behind and the outcome of these excursions to the periphery of Denmark. To do this, further exploration is needed of the relation-ship between certain temporal conditions of a capitalist mode of production and what one might call the phenomenology of the horizon. As will become clear, the temporal conditions of capitalism have a fundamental significance in relation to the constitution of holidays as a phenomenon.

According to anthropologist Arjun Appadurai (1996), leisure time is a prod-uct of work. It is, he states, “time left over from work, produced by work, and justified by work” (ibid.: 79). Leisure time, including holidays, is a commodity in the sense that it is bought by selling labor. As a commodity, it is detached from the sphere of production, yet, as Appadurai indicates, it is nevertheless sur-rounded by it. Although holidays are spent away from and outside of work, they

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presuppose work, and since leisure time does not produce or provide the means to support a livelihood, for most people going on holiday implies an obligation to return to work. In that sense, it resembles many other commodified objects of consumption. Nevertheless, being of an exclusively temporal nature, leisure time (including holidays) to a great extent faces the risk of being used without being properly consumed.

This is not say that other commodities lack temporality. On the contrary, being temporal is true of all commodities.7 They can deteriorate, break, or fall apart without being consumed. However, leisure time, unlike most physical objects, is a commodity that is devoid of any predefined substance. Its content has to be infused by the consumer before it can be consumed.8 This puts pres-sure on consumers and explains why, for many people, leisure time has to take place, acquire content, and gain substance in ways and at locations significantly different from everyday life in order to optimize its use value in relation to relaxation and recreation. Going away marks time as different, and spending it at special locations doing special things fills it up and prevents it from vanish-ing without a trace.

The idea that holidays have to be spent away from quotidian life corresponds with a survey made by the Danish sociologist Hans Skifter Andersen (2008). When asked about their reasons for owning a second home, 78 percent of the respondents replied that it was their need to get away from everyday life. In that sense, owning or renting a second home can be understood as a means, as well as an end, to spending leisure time—or, to put it differently, it can be seen as an investment in optimizing the chances of a satisfying consumption of leisure time. Spending time at the seaside in a sommerhus thus implies a sequence of consumption, arising from a capitalist mode of production, which begins with the commodification of time through leisure time (cf. Appadurai 1996) and stretches to encompass the commodification of space through the purchase or rental of a second home.

This commodification of time and space has a significant impact on the demographic constellation of the coastal areas, especially during the summer holidays. Although spending time in a second home is a cherished way of consuming leisure time, it is not an option that is open to all Danish citizens. Because the landscape is commodified to such an extent that there is almost no space outside that of the market, second homes are accessible only through ownership or by renting them from owners whose purpose is to make a profit. Therefore, a stay at the seaside is an expensive enterprise.

According to the Danish real estate company EDC, the average price of a second home in Denmark in 2009 was 1,265,000 Danish kroner, that is, almost 170,000 euros (EDC, personal communication, 2009). In Denmark, investments in real estate are generally financed through loans from building societies and mortgages. This means that, in addition to the expenses related to their primary homes, second-home owners are bound to pay a substantial amount of money for installment payments and interest on a regular basis. As a consequence, the total income of a family owning a second home has to be above the Dan-ish average. While about half of the Danish families in 2008 had a total annual

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income lower than 300,000 Danish kroner (40,350 euros), this was true for only 22 percent of families owning a second home (Hjalager 2009: 34).9 As for the majority of the second-home owners, in comparison with the total Danish population, they tend to have (or to have retired from) relatively good jobs and relatively good salaries. In other words, it is not very likely that low-income or unemployed households own summer houses (Skifter Andersen 2008: 5). If this segment of the population wants to spend their holiday by the sea, their only option is to rent a second home or to stay at a campground.10 Renting a second home, however, is almost as expensive as going to, for instance, south-ern Europe on holiday. Also, since most of the second homes are located out-side of coastal towns, having access to a car, which in Denmark is an expensive and heavily taxed good, is crucial. This adds to the fact that low-income groups are only rarely to be found near second homes in Denmark.

Finally, this scarcity of low-income populations in coastal regions is the case not only with regard to holidays. In general, the welfare state is only very weakly present at the Danish seaside. As these areas are peripheral to urban centers, social housing and other institutions aimed at helping people in less fortunate positions are almost absent. A single exception is a refugee center for asylum seekers that is located near the center of the small coastal town of Blokhus, 15 kilometers south from Løkken. The choice of location led to massive protests staged by local residents, culminating in 1986 with an attack on the center, which was then set on fire. Regarding immigrants other than asylum seekers (including members of the middle class), there is a strong tendency to spend hol-idays in their country of origin or at tourist destinations outside of Denmark.11 As a consequence, the rural Danish seaside can be described as a filtered landscape, accessible to and consumable by only the Danish middle and upper classes.12

Everyday Life: The Fishermen’s Perspective

I am now turning my focus to the perception of the landscape in order to inves-tigate the impact of leisure time on space. First, however, I will give a descrip-tion, based on ethnographic accounts, of local fishermen’s ways of perceiving the seaside. These accounts from the late nineteenth century describe the west coast of Denmark before it turned into a holiday destination. As essentialist and stereotyping as it may seem to talk about a shared perception of large groups of people, such as fishermen and members of the Danish middle class on holiday, the intention, nevertheless, is to provide a basis for comparison that, I hope, will illustrate the spatial consequences of spending leisure time by the rural seaside.

Before the Danish coastline became a favorite destination of city dwellers on holiday, experiencing the seaside, the dunes, and the sandy beaches was, to a large extent, reserved for the people who lived there in small fishing villages. In 1886, C. M. C. Kvolsgaard, a local schoolteacher from a small village located on the west coast of Denmark, published a short book bearing the title Fiskerliv i Vesterhanherred, skildret i egnens mundart. In this book, written in the local

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dialect with a Danish translation, Kvolsgaard gives a rich ethnographic descrip-tion of the lives of fishing families from this part of the country.

The sea is described as a crowded place that is full of possibilities and danger. When one is at sea, Kvolsgaard (1886) states, “finding a thing hap-pens frequently and often—a floating rotten carcass of a stud, a boat, a piece of lumber, and sometimes even a dead ship” (ibid.: 19). “In the sky, seagulls and terns indicate where to catch gurnards [bottom-dwelling fish]” (ibid.: 28), and “looking down … from a boat will reveal the bottom of the sea and the many pretty animals like jellyfish” (ibid.: 31). The sea is almost like a treasure chest to the local fishermen. Walking along the beach after a storm can result in valuable findings, such as cargo or lumber from a wrecked ship. Although the sea is experienced as a rich resource open to all, this does not preclude competition. Kvolsgaard gives the example of a man who, after discovering a stranded ship, deliberately sends the entire village off in the wrong direction in order to gain time so that he can collect the most valuable items from the wreckage for himself (ibid.: 63).13 However, the sea is not only crowded and competitive—it is also violent. Kvolsgaard recounts several cases of sudden death and scenes of dead bodies washing ashore (ibid.: 83). Although the sub-ject of death at sea takes up a considerable part of his book, Kvolsgaard does not seem to exaggerate the dangerous consequences of being a fisherman or sailor over 125 years ago.

According to ethnologist Kirsten Monrad Hansen, many of the foreigners appearing in local communities before they turned into holiday destinations were dead sailors. In her book on the history of tourism in the northwestern part of Jutland, Hansen (2002) gives a peculiar example of how death at sea influenced the fishing communities. Remembering the first time that summer guests rented a room in her home in the early 1900s, an elderly woman from Kandestæderne (a small fishing village on the west coast of Denmark) described meals as being an especially bizarre experience. As her father was the beach warden, her childhood home was where the dead bodies of foreign sailors and fishermen were brought after washing ashore. The bodies were placed on the dining table in the living room until they were picked up by relatives or buried at the local cemetery.14 Before the arrival of summer guests, most of the foreign-ers in her home had been either corpses or grieving relatives. To the old woman, the experience of observing tourists sitting happily around the very same table that was used to display drowned sailors was awkward, and she could not help feeling that the often cheerful atmosphere was to some extent improper (ibid.: 98–99). What this case indicates is a change not only in the nature of foreigners coming to the seaside but also their conditions for spending time there.

As illustrated above, the landscape/seascape, in the eyes of nineteenth-century fishermen, was rich with signs to be read and interpreted in order to exploit its resources successfully. This exploitation took place in competition with other locals, resulting in the appearance of complex models of social organization and interaction (cf. Andresen and Højrup 2008; Kvolsgaard 1886; Moustgaard and Damgaard 1974). Finally, the landscape was the location of bound, finite life-worlds. It was a place to handle life and death and to live and

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die (cf. Hansen 2002; Kvolsgaard 1886). For this reason, one can say that the local fishermen’s approach to space and the spatial took the form of involve-ment, navigation, and interaction in and with a rich semiotic field.

Encountering ‘Nature’

As already mentioned, for a vast majority of second-home owners, the dis-placement from everyday life is considered an important precondition for mak-ing full use of leisure time. This is made clear in the following extract from an interview with a 40-year-old man: “Just being able to get out in the car and leave everything. Just leaving all your troubles behind and not thinking about work and all that. That’s the good thing about the journey. After half an hour, I begin to relax, and when we are approaching the sommerhus [after a one-hour drive], I’m relieved and in a better mood.”15 Based on the comments of this second-home owner, the journey to the sommerhus can be understood as a dif-ferentiating displacement that creates a distance from everyday life that is far more than just spatial. It seems to have an almost cleansing effect, removing bodily tensions and bringing about a different state of mind. In this way, the journey institutes a liminal condition, which, I will argue, has a considerable impact on the perception of the environment.

This becomes very clear in relation to nature. According to the Norwegian anthropologist Marianne Gullestad (1992: 204), exposing oneself to nature is perceived by many Scandinavians as an almost spiritual experience. When interviewed about the relationship between the environment and their second home, owners frequently refer to ‘Nature’ as an external and overwhelming entity that they are conscious of.16 One can swim in the ocean, get blæst igen-nem (blown through) by the wind, get sand between one’s toes, get wet in the rain, or be shone upon by the sun. “Nature makes you feel small” is a very common statement. To put it in the words of Gullestad: “Some people experi-ence God in nature rather than in church on Sundays” (ibid.). On the other hand, when asked about ‘Nature’ in relation to everyday life, it is most likely to be described as being absent. This has nothing to do with a lack of vegeta-tion or with the fact of living away from the seaside. In fact, Copenhagen and Århus—the two major urban centers in Denmark—are coastal cities with many locations that afford open views to the sea.17

In everyday life, the body often serves as an instrument of labor. One sees, smells, listens, and touches in order to serve, organize, provide, or produce. In this process, the wind is likely to be too windy, the sun too hot, the rain too wet, and sounds too high or low. Sand is supposed to be found not between the toes but rather in mortar or as stabilizer beneath pavement.18 This aspect involving work highlights an often perceived opposition between ‘Nature’ and being human in everyday life. On holiday, the body has a completely different status: instead of being an instrument of labor, it is an aesthetic receiver of sen-sory impressions. In relation to this bodily condition, ‘Nature’ becomes some-thing one willingly exposes oneself to in order to see, smell, hear, and feel. In

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other words, it is similar to art being performed in front of an audience. The extent to which ‘Nature’ appears as an artist is experienced not only through sensuous impressions but through material expressions as well. Stones, pieces of wood, and seashells found on the beach are used as decoration in many second homes in Denmark.

The significance of natural objects was expressed by an elderly couple when explaining the occurrence of numerous fossilized sea urchins in their second home: “It’s our daughter. She has a gift for finding fossils. Every time she comes here, she says: ‘I can’t leave before I have found a fossil.’ Then she goes to the beach with her sons and they always manage to find some.” Objects like fossilized sea urchins are not only natural, they are also formed by ‘Nature’. Second-home owners value this double connection to ‘Nature’, and it is this attitude that sets them apart from the local residents. As mentioned by Kvolsgaard (1886), cargo and lumber were considered especially valuable findings by the fishermen in Vesterhanherred. Unlike stones, fossils, shells, and branches, these are formed by human beings and desired for their func-tional or commercial value. This is rarely the case with objects deriving from encounters with ‘Nature’. The values attached to these objects are first and foremost experience-oriented and aesthetic. For those on holiday, the thrill of finding a fossilized sea urchin, a branch shaped by water, a beautiful shell, or a piece of amber is a moment to treasure. As a consequence, the objects are, to a large degree, attached to a specific time and space. The values attributed to them are related not to using or exchanging the objects elsewhere but to the experience of connecting ‘here’ and ‘now’ in a significant moment. This explains not only why the daughter has to find a fossil before leaving, but also why the fossils are left in the second home rather than entering the circuit of everyday life. As manifestations of leisure time, fossils represent a value that is not transferable to everyday life.19

If the relationship between ‘Nature’ and people on holiday can be described as resembling that of an artist and her or his audience, what then constitutes the stage for this performance? The answer is this: wherever and whenever ‘Nature’ appears as spectacular. This can be the dune when the wind is strong, the beach when the sand is warm beneath one’s feet, the ocean when one swims in its water, or a shell or a piece of wood that one admires, sometimes even bringing it back to one’s second home. However, I argue that the most appreciated aspect of the Danish coastline is the horizon. One of the clearest statements of this can be found near a particular bench in the old part of Ska-gen, a coastal town in northern Jutland. This public bench, which overlooks the sea, is a very popular place to watch the sunset. Next to it is a signpost informing tourists that it is customary to applaud when the sun sinks beneath the horizon. The sun is thereby presented as an actor performing on a stage who should be applauded by the audience. Of course, this bench is special in that an explicit framing and interpretation of attributes is positioned right next to it. Typically, benches do not come with such a manual; nevertheless, most second homes have benches or chairs permanently placed outdoors and facing directions that, by their owners’ account, offer sensational views.

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The extent to which Danes appreciate this magnificent scenery, especially the horizon, becomes more evident if one takes a closer look at the architecture of their second homes. Unlike most Danish first homes, which are surrounded by cultivated gardens,20 the second home, facing the sea, is better understood as being stretched out between a small plot of land and the horizon. Through windows and transparent walls, the horizon is invited inside the house, open-ing up space between the house and the horizon.

The importance of open space was expressed to me during an interview with a couple who were in the process of building a second home. Their application for a construction permit had been turned down twice because they had delib-erately handed in plans that placed their future second home too high on their hilly plot of land. The couple explained: “We knew that it was too high, but it was worth taking the chance, since it would ensure a better view overlooking the sea. First, we tried to make them accept one meter, then 50 centimeters. Unfortunately, they turned down both applications. We have received ordinary permission, so we will build just a little higher, hoping that no one will notice.” Because of their efforts to gain a broader prospect of the sea and the horizon, the construction of their second home had been delayed for more than a year.

This goal of establishing a clear and unobstructed view is not only a ques-tion of building high enough. It also organizes the outside, where the surround-ing landscape is often uncultivated (or, rather, cultivated in way that makes it appear uncultivated) in order not to detract from or impede the openness established by the remote horizon. Despite the fact that much of the land sur-rounding second homes is labeled Naturgrund (nature ground), it is regularly maintained to prevent it from springe i skov (lit., jumping into the forest). This is because trees blocking the horizon are perceived as obstructing one’s view to the ultimate stage of performance art by ‘Nature’.

Even if second homes do not have an actual view of the sea (which is most often the case), access to the seaside and a view of the horizon are included in descriptions of the properties.21 The experience of walking up into the dunes, finding a spot overlooking the sea, and watching the sunset while sharing a bottle of chilled white wine is frequently mentioned as one of the most cher-ished pleasures of owning a second home along the west coast of Denmark. The performance theme can be seen here, too, with the dunes representing not only part of a cherished landscape but also a bench or row of seats facing the stage in a theatre of overwhelming dimensions.

The Importance of Open Space to Second-Home Owners

In order to analyze this obsession with open space, we can refer to the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. In the introduction to part 1 in Phenomenology of Per-ception, Merleau-Ponty ([1945] 2009) examines the relationship between gaze, object, and horizon. An object and its horizon, he claims, are not two distinct features but rather a mutual and simultaneous constitution that is established by a gaze. He explains that “in one movement I close up the landscape and

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open the object” (ibid.: 78). In other words, it is by putting its surroundings in abeyance that the object is differentiated from the total (open) landscape of pos-sible appearances and thus gains identity as something particular. This closing up, or freezing, of the landscape is what constitutes Merleau-Ponty’s notion of horizon. The horizon as a closed surrounding is literally all around the object, and because it is surrounded by horizon, the object is, so to speak, dragged into the center of the landscape. Consequently, the horizon as a surrounding repre-sents a multitude of other possible perspectives on the object. As Merleau-Ponty expresses it: “I already perceive from various angles the central object of my present vision. Thus every object is the mirror of all others” (ibid.: 79).

How objects, in fact, mirror each other can be seen in the above-mentioned examples of the local population’s approach to the sea. For the fishermen, searching for fish would most likely include seeing the sea as it is seen by other fishermen or by seagulls—or even from the point of view of a codfish in the changing current (cf. Kvolsgaard 1886). Similarly, growing up as the daughter of a beach warden in a fishing community at the turn of the nineteenth century would involve seeing the living room through the eyes of corpses and their grieving relatives. What these Others (fishermen, seagulls, codfish, corpses, relatives) do is to constitute a context—or, using Merleau-Ponty’s concept, a horizon—that allows objects and events to become centers of attention. In the case of the elderly beach warden’s daughter, the drowned sailors become the mirroring context for her observation of the visiting tourists. This mirroring is the premise for reading, interpreting, navigating in, and interacting with the landscape, the sea, and other people. The more eyes one is able to see through, the more mirrors one can use to reflect objects and events and the more signs one will able to read, understand, follow, and take into account.22

While Merleau-Ponty’s aim is to explore and explain the perception of objects, explaining the importance of the horizon to second-home owners is somehow the inverse. What happens when the focus of attention, instead of being an object, is the thin line that divides the sea from the sky? It is in the mirrors of the surrounding horizon that an object gains substance and identity as an object, yet the thin line of the horizon itself cannot be surrounded. There is no beside or behind and no mirrors, except for, perhaps, the sun, which sinks from above to below the horizon without creating any spatial differentia-tion.23 As for the thin line, there is only one possible perspective—that of the gazing subject.

What can be drawn from Merleau-Ponty’s statements about gaze, object, and horizon is that, by gazing at the horizon, no objects are constituted, no differences are established, and no alternative perspectives are articulated. His point about closing up landscapes in order to open objects is thus turned upside down, resulting in an uncontested landscape that is free of challenges, duties, and expectations. This, I suggest, is the fundamental quality of the hori-zon that is cherished by second-home owners of the Danish middle class. Com-ing from a competitive everyday life that is related to the production of objects and services, the experience of open horizons and suspended objects allows for leisure and relaxation, thus ensuring that leisure time is radically different

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from everyday life and that it is consumed rather than wasted.24 Returning to the second-home owner who expresses his relief at getting away from everyday life, one can say that if the journey is an escape from the unpleasant nitty-gritty of details and commitments, then the scenes of ‘Nature’, culminating in the sunset behind the horizon, come to represent the absolute opposite—namely, the absence of worries.

The focus on the horizon adds a further dimension to my point about the filtered landscape. While the people spending holidays along the coast of Den-mark are a relatively homogeneous segment of the Danish population, in look-ing at the horizon, they come to share the same perspective, regardless of the differences and distinctions through which they might otherwise differentiate and categorize each other.

The Virtues of Leisure Time

What I have shown above is how, in some parts of Denmark, relatively similar groups of people are occupied by looking at the same phenomenon. When this phenomenon includes a sunset, gazes will not only be in the same direction (in this case, to the west) but also take place at the same moment in time. Finally, this phenomenon, unlike objects or actions, reveals only one single perspec-tive—an open, horizontal, and incontestable space.25 When considered in this way, the Danish rural seaside has much in common with a movie theatre. Not only is there a clearly defined screen showing an unforgettable performance within a defined genre, but also the people present are, to a great extent, behav-ing in accordance with an audience watching a film. Sitting in their individual seats or on benches or in the dunes, often next to friends and relatives, they are prepared to witness a gratifying experience, framed in a particular time and space. This is why they show up and why they pay attention.

According to the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard (1970), the aspect of sameness (same direction, same time, same object of attention) evokes a certain valorization of time. In the case of leisure time, he argues, the result is, to a metaphysical degree, a mythical belief in the equality of Man (ibid.: 238): “What used to be expressed by the statement ‘all Men are equal before time and death’ has survived today in the carefully maintained myth that we all find ourselves to be equal in leisure” (ibid.: 239). In this way, he argues, people on holiday are thought of as equally relieved of obligations and constraints. They are free men and women, enjoying and consuming time and space. In this understanding, however, time and space cannot—as in Appadurai’s (1996: 79) definition of leisure time as “time left over from work, produced by work, and justified by work”—be thought of as scarce resources. They have to be transcendent, absolute, and eternal dimensions. If not, they would face the risk of being unequally distributed, thereby undermining the myth about equality, freedom, and leisure time as free time.

What the juxtaposition between myth and sociological definition shows is that leisure time, including its virtues in terms of freedom, equality, eternity,

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and infinity, has to be spatially framed—that is, there has to be a place of free-dom, a place of infinite time and space. If we submit to work, pay attention to duties and obligations, and accept being caught up in the here and now with the ambition of gaining more than unproductive time, then we have to believe that the virtues of leisure time unfold and take place somewhere else.

This is exactly the message that is communicated in Danish movies about the rural coastline. At the seaside, the neighbor from home turns out to be a hand-some man or woman on holiday, just like us—sharing our moments, our sun-sets, and maybe even our dreams. What our neighbor from home does not share is our everyday worries. This is a version of the myth that we want to believe in, in order to ensure a meaningful consumption of leisure time. If not, leisure time, according to Baudrillard (1970: 249) “is nothing but the consumption of unproductive time.” It would be equivalent to watching a movie while keeping in mind that the events taking place are nothing but acting and illusion.

The specific location for living out the myth of leisure time may, of course, vary between individuals, and it may not necessarily be a second home. How-ever, for the Danish middle class, it often is. This explains not only the urge to leave everything behind (as expressed in interviews with second-home own-ers) and the fact that an increasing number of Danish citizens, upon retiring from the workforce, choose to move into their second homes on a permanent basis.26 It also explains why many Danes have come to share an experience of an uncontested landscape.

Conclusion

The Danish seaside may always have been picturesque, but it did not become a commodity until a segment of the population with leisure time, money to spend, and means of transportation began searching for places and ways to spend time. At that point, it changed rapidly from a local landscape with a local population living in local social hierarchies into a fetishized landscape of mythical virtues, consumed by members of the Danish middle class, who, through their consumption, became imbued with the aura of the seascape as a commodity (cf. Baudrillard 1970). As a result, the landscape turned into what Benedict Anderson ([1983] 1992: 30) has labeled “a sociological landscape of fixity” where “the horizon is clearly bounded.”

In this process, local inhabitants have been transformed into stereotypes, providing an exotic background in movies and at holiday destinations. The Danish middle class, for their part, have experienced freedom and equality in their second homes, watching the sun set and sharing with other, similar people the openness of the same horizon. Due to its spatial nature, this bubble, established by leisure time, has to burst the very moment that the middle-class city dwellers resume their everyday lives.27 Nevertheless, it leaves a strong memory of homogeneous time, space, and people, which lives on as a desire that makes everyday struggle worth enduring until the next trip to the land-scape of horizons and sensational sunsets.

58 | Mark Vacher

Returning to my grandmother, who, as a child, would stare at the horizon from a dune outside Løkken, I will end this article by articulating the nature of the sunset. To her, the sunset marked the end of her father’s working day at sea and his return to his family and their home behind the dunes. To a second-home owner on holiday, the sunset is of a completely different nature. It is most likely to be an event in itself, without reference to the return or location of any specific person or thing. It is the compression of boundless time and space into a single moment—a moment of infinity.

Mark Vacher is an Assistant Professor at the SAXO Institute, University of Copen-hagen. An anthropologist specializing in housing issues and urban anthropology, his work is inspired by phenomenological theories on the perception of time and space and by post-structuralist theories on consumption. He has conducted field-work on various types of housing in Denmark, including middle-class homes, social housing, and second homes.

Notes

1. Portraying the Danish landscape as spectacular had been done by painters for more than a century. Their paintings, however, were accessible to a rather limited audience, unlike movies, which, in the words of Walter Benjamin (1998: 134), have the quality of being easy to reproduce technically.

2. One exception to the unexplored coastal areas was the island of Bornholm, which had been discovered by German tourists before World War I. Danes, however, did not start visiting the island for recreational purposes until the 1930s. Another exception was the small fishing villages on the north coast of Zealand. They had been attached to the railway system in 1924 and could be reached on a day trip from Copenhagen. The most noteworthy exception was the town of Skagen, located on the northernmost tip of Jutland. Due to its dramatic history of disasters and rescues, and not least its unique lighting, the area had been visited by artists, royalty, and cultural elites as early as the last quarter of the nineteenth century (Hansen 2002: 107).

3. To mention an example, in 1927 manufacturer Frederik Obel bought a large piece of land south of Løkken from a local schoolteacher, where, in 1933, he erected a modern, functionalistic cottage overlooking the sea.

4. When introduced in 1938, the Ferieloven (Holiday Law) guaranteed all employees two weeks of holiday per year. The holiday was extended to three weeks in 1953, four weeks in 1974, and finally five weeks in 1979.

5. The journey itself is not visually present in the movie but merely indicated through departures and arrivals. Nevertheless, the indication of a journey between these two defined locations is nothing less than an establishment of a connection.

6. In this regard, the island of Bornholm has been especially promoted as a holiday desti-nation through films such as Far til fire på Bornholm (O’Fredericks 1959) and Sonja på Bornholm (Hauch-Fausbøll 1969) and, more recently, through a trilogy titled Tempelrid-dernes skat (Barfod 2006, 2007, 2008), released in English as The Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar.

Consuming Leisure Time | 59

7. According to Marx ([1867–1894] 1970: 2:271), the exchange value of a commodity (which is what makes it a commodity) is inseparable from time in the sense that it is by nature an investment in a future realization of the commodity’s use value.

8. To put it another way, one can say that whereas the substance of a wasted object can be understood as a loss of inherent qualities leading to a state of dischargeable waste, wasted time might not even reach the point of acquiring any content to discharge before it vanishes into nothingness.

9. It should be kept in mind that 1,265,000 Danish kroner was the average price of a second home in 2009, which means that it would have been possible to find a cheaper house (below the average). Also, before the turn of the millennium (i.e., before the economic boom and the rising prices on real estate), many houses were available at a price much lower than they would be sold today. Finally, many of the second-home owners whose total income is below the Danish average are retired senior citizens who have owned their second homes for many years and, in many instances, have repaid their debts and mortgages.

10. Regarding the campgrounds, a protest movement in 2005, led by local citizens in the sea-side town of Løkken on the west coast of Denmark, was successful in forcing the owners of two major campgrounds to close down their facilities. The reason for the protests was that Løkken had become a favorite destination for young people who wanted to spend their holidays pub-crawling the bars and discos. Interestingly enough, the protest move-ment directed more anger toward the camping sites than the facilities selling alcohol, which indicates that the principal goal was to prevent unwanted people from staying in the town rather than to prevent the consumption of alcohol. After the successful action against the ‘unwanted’ people, the town’s tourism association has, according to its president, put a lot of effort into re-establishing Løkken “as it was in the good old days” (http://www.dansk-costablanca.com/article.212.html, accessed 15 January 2010).

11. To my knowledge, there is no present research being consistently conducted in Denmark on how immigrants spend their holidays. However, qualitative interviews with immi-grants concerning their relationship with their country of origin indicate that this is their favorite and most frequent choice of destination (Rytter 2006; Vacher 2005).

12. According to paragraph 22 of Denmark’s Lov om naturbeskyttelse (Law for Protection of the Environment), the public has the right to access all beaches regardless of private ownership. However, all access must take place by means of public paths/roads or private paths/roads that are open to public traffic (Miljøministeriet 2007). So, in theory, the public can use any beach it likes, but in order to do so it has to traverse a highly privatized landscape with no public parking, facilities or public paths.

13. The struggle for limited resources was not just a nineteenth-century phenomenon. In their book Garnfiskere, ethnologists Poul Moustgaard and Ellen Damgaard (1974: 96) describe the social organization of fishing communities on the Danish west coast in the 1970s as being a competition between colleagues. This distinction is also made in a recent study by the Danish ethnologists Jesper Andresen and Thomas Højrup (2008) of a specific local share system that is based on membership in the local community. In this system, members of the local communities are ensured the right to fish, but the distribu-tion of profit is determined by an open competition among the members.

14. Placing corpses on the dining table was not uncommon. In his famous painting Den druknede (The Drowned) from 1896, the Danish artist Michael Ancher used the corpse of a drowned fisherman on a dining table as the central motif.

15. All interviews cited in this article were carried out in relation to the project “The Second Home.” The research took place in 2008 and 2009 and was funded by the Centre for Housing and Welfare, Copenhagen University, and the Realdania Foundation, a Danish strategic foundation formed in 2000, whose goal is to improve the quality of life through the built environment.

16. In order to express this idea of an external and almost spiritual entity, the word ‘Nature’ is capitalized.

60 | Mark Vacher

17. Some locales in Århus, which is situated on a bay, share the same view as many second homes that are located on the opposite side.

18. This everyday perception of wind, sun, rain, and sand is similar to the fishermen’s approach to their local environment, as presented above. For them, seeing a flock of div-ing seagulls is not bird watching, nor is observing the sky and listening to the forecast a means of experiencing the weather. Rather, these are indications of where and when one should go fishing.

19. The connection of ‘here’ and ‘now’ in a significant moment is also analyzed by Krøijer and Sjørslev in their article in this issue.

20. The typical Danish middle-class home is known as the ‘parcel house’. Among its vari-ous qualities, it is praised by many Danes for being a building that one can walk around (Sjørslev 2008).

21. In all real estate advertisements concerning second homes, a property’s distance to the sea is key information, and it has a considerable impact on the asking price. The highest prices include an ocean view and the sound of waves, while an inland location generally means a lower price.

22. According to Merleau-Ponty (1969), the eyes of the Other constitute a mirror through which one can see oneself as an object, an identity, and a body in the world.

23. There seems to be no distance other than vertical between the sun and the horizon. In fact, at sunset it looks as if the sun is being swallowed or absorbed by the horizon rather than sinking behind it.

24. This is not to say that the middle class on holiday is unaware of differences. On the con-trary, as described by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1984), it is obsessed with distinctions. Thus, comparisons of second homes and the locations of famous people’s second homes are frequent topics of conversation among middle-class second-home owners. However, when watching the horizon, the sunset, and the open space created by the sea, differences and distinctions disappear, allowing for an ultimate experience that is diametrically opposite to that of work and everyday life.

25. The fact that nobody can own the horizon does not mean that people do not argue about views. On the contrary, according to the local highway department in Løkken, many of the complaints received by the municipality are about neighbors who are obstructing views by not maintaining vegetation or expanding their second homes or trespassing too close to a private terrace. These complaints, however, are related to the point of view rather than what is being viewed.

26. According to Danish law, buildings registered as second homes cannot be used as per-manent dwellings. However, since 1999, an exception has been made that grants senior citizens the right to live in their second homes. As a result, more than 17,000 Danish sommerhuse are used as primary dwellings (Vacher 2009).

27. This bubble bursting may also apply to love stories like the one told in Far til fire på landet. Developing within the framework of leisure time, a relationship that seems to be one of eternal love might, after the resumption of everyday life, be remembered as noth-ing more than a sweet summer romance.

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