A real-life hobbit village will soon be nestled in the lush forests of a Swedish island, a whimsical housing scheme billed as the first of its kind — but behind the fantasy gimmick lies a genuine interest for sustainable development.
The hobbits, small characters with hairy feet in novelist JRR Tolkien’s fantasy classics, are a model of environmentally friendly living, British hobbit-house architect Simon Dale said.
“Hobbits portray people living a peaceful life in harmony with nature,” Dale, 35, said during a recent visit to Stockholm.
Photo: AFP
He was in town to plan for the cluster of 30 houses on Muskoe, an island about 40km from the city center amid Stockholm’s picturesque archipelago.
The island’s first hobbit house is scheduled to be ready in the middle of next year, with the village completed within a few years.
At first sight, the huts resemble Bilbo Baggins’ dwellings in Tolkien’s 1937 novel The Hobbit.
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit,” Tolkien’s tale begins. “It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle.”
In Tolkien’s idyllic agrarian setting, the hobbits live in tune with nature — in stark contrast to the author’s era of mature industrialization.
The Swedish hobbit village will keep the notion of natural materials and soft, round shapes: the windows, doors and walls will all be curved.
Yet the houses will be slightly more up-to-date, built for city-dwellers longing to retreat to nature on weekends and holidays.
An induction hob, beside a wood-burning range, will be the “most high-tech thing integrated,” said Dale, whose design promises airy ceilings up to 3.5m high.
Energy efficiency will be a primary goal, so heating will come from solar power and wood-burning.
Natural building materials from the area will also be used, such as timber, stone, sand, clay and grass.
Dale himself has lived in a hobbit house for the past decade with his wife and two kids.
The family now resides in the West Wales community of Lammas, the first British low-impact eco-village of its kind. Building the earth houses has become a passion, said Dale, who was originally a photographer.
The village is not targeted at fans of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings — rather, it is intended to appeal to those who care about the environment and want to live close to nature.
“It’s a transition in lifestyle and values,” said Dale, who bears a faint resemblance to Bilbo as played by Martin Freeman in the new Hobbit film trilogy.
A French-Algerian man went on trial in France on Monday for burning to death his wife in 2021, a case that shocked the public and sparked heavy criticism of police for failing to take adequate measures to protect her. Mounir Boutaa, now 48, stalked his Algerian-born wife Chahinez Daoud following their separation, and even bought a van he parked outside her house near Bordeaux in southwestern France, which he used to watch her without being detected. On May 4, 2021, he attacked her in the street, shot her in both legs, poured gasoline on her and set her on fire. A neighbor hearing
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ¥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this