Amparo and Pérennès are now working on a book called Living in the Nordics, which will be published by Thames & Hudson next year. For this coffee table-style project, they’ve been interviewing people who live in the sorts of far-away villages they regularly feature on their grid.
“ It’s hard in the beginning (to live in these small villages), but they talk about community and being able to actually go and talk to your neighbors,” Pérennès says. You can actually go ask them for half a dozen eggs, he adds.
“I would never ask that to my neighbors in the city. But they can. The shop is not nearby. There’s this sense of community that I don’t think you can find in many places.”
My neighborhood in London has a WhatsApp group where people ask for recommendations for window cleaners, request to borrow lawn chairs, and circulate petitions or opinions against new e-bike hangars. But I’ve never heard of anyone asking for half a dozen eggs. When I was locked out of my house and trapped in my garden a couple of years ago, all I could think was “don’t disturb the neighbors!”
When I imagine life in a Cheap Nordic House, I envision a life where I let my neighbors in a lot more than I try to maintain walls for privacy. And to get all that—baked-in community, homemade jam-swapping, and help when you need it—for less than USD$100,000?
I can’t imagine a better bargain.