Mrs Tsk *

In between giving a guided tour at the Museum of Sketches in Lund and playing a concert in Malmo, I had time for a swift visit to the neo-medieval village of Hansaby.



It’s a bizarre place. In the middle of windswept rural fields punctuated by wind turbines there’s suddenly — behind a sort of roofed stockade designed, it seems, to keep Tartars, Huns and other barbarians out — a dense Hanseatic village. It’s like something from SimCity or Disneyland.



As you enter, you get a pleasant feeling from the cobbled streets and steeply-roofed “old” buildings. The density and the emphasis on pedestrian scale makes this a much more pleasant development than, say, a British Barratt home estate. Then again, architect Robin Manger has achieved something worryingly Poundbury-esque. One wouldn’t want to endorse Prince Charles, hmm?



My guide, architectural student David Pal, told me that almost all the units have been sold. Since it was a Sunday the shops — chic deli charcutiers, trendy furniture stores — were shut, and I had the impression that living here you’d be at the mercy of pretty phlegmatic opening hours, a bit like living in a docklands area whose sandwich bars close down as soon as the office workers commute home.



Because although there’s the appearance of density here, there aren’t enough people in a village this size (about 8000 people) to support proper services.



I couldn’t see any immigrant-run late-night corner shops, or any immigrants at all, for that matter. What people mostly seemed to be buying, based on what could be seen through shop windows, was 1970s-style retro furniture and accessories: funky lamps, rugs, curtains, chairs. Which made Hansaby feel like an airport terminal where you could buy all the luxury perfume you wanted but search in vain for a loaf of bread.



I pictured the residents coming home by train from work in Malmo, entering one time warp which transported them into a Brothers Grimm tale, then immediately transitioning to a 1970s porn film. Little Red Ridinghood featuring Sylvia Krystel, perhaps.