Permit me to go full nostalgia on you. But it's been fun for me to find some pics from that 1974 apartment and see how much I remember from my own home and those of my family. And they so nailed it!
In fact it's a house with apartments furnished by various people. Like a normal working class apartment with a couple of children and that's of course what I can relate to.
There is also a hippie apartment, because Aarhus was and still is a university city and as such also a very young city, as a large segment of the population is 20-30 years old. But the 70's was also a time when the first immigrant workers came to DK, mainly Turks and they too shared apartments.
But I'll mainly focus on the working class apartment.
First from the outside. A perfectly ordinary inner-city street anno 1974, complete with the modest cars of the period. Few families actually had a car at the time and if they did they were invariable small. Yet, it was possible to cram an entire family inside each of these cars. There were of course no seatbelts, so children were placed there was room. And being a time where supermarkets were still a relatively new phenomenon and where the very first shopping centers were being build, there were lots of small shops everywhere.
The inner yard of an apartment square or (karre) not to be confused with a city block, with the very popular VW Beetle, less reverently referred to a "pregnant rollerskate." The bicycles were simple and sturdy and a pain to tread uphill! Grafitti was chalked not painted - yet.
The windows were one pane glass only and very draughty! During winters we used to tape plastic up in front of the windows. Very little isolation in the walls either, but heating was cheap, so the radiators were red-hot!
Six of the residents in the house. We have the elderly retired women living in the ground floor apartment, complete with a very typical patterned dress of the time. And of course she wouldn't dream of venturing outside without a scarf tied around her hair. Middle class women and up wore hats, but working class wore scarves, and so did my mother, until she died actually.
We have the couple in their 30s with their daughter. The man of course sporting a beard and wearing a denim set, as everybody did back then. It was practically a uniform for school children. So did King Frederik and Joachim too BTW.
The mother is wearing a weirdly patterned dress and 1974 was just before the spoilsports in the fashion industry decided that short dresses were out and maxi was in. It didn't exactly help that plucked eyebrows became fashionable as well... White framed sunglasses were the thing as well. The daughter is dressed in a typical teenage summer dress with lapels the size of dinner tables! Also for men.
Then we have the hippie couple, probably students from the university. The man of course sporting a beard and hair that would be the envy of every Neanderthal. The knitted sweater - an Icelander - was a must for all under 40. Lilac was for whatever incongruous reason an extremely popular color. So were the borders with odd patterns. The headband was a must for women and girls who sported this hairstyle called a "buttocks hairstyle."
All six of them could and would be stuffed inside the car on occasion.
Notice the phone number. Only six digits back then.
But let's go inside. Most apartments were small 55-65 square meters with two or three rooms plus kitchen and usually, but not always, a very small toilet. Showering was done in the basement. Otherwise you washed in the kitchen.
This is the hippie apartment. They have a small child. They have furnished their apartment with whatever they could salvage here and there, money was tight being students. But the children's chair was everywhere! Very solid, very practical and it worked. It was also next to impossible to wear out. They are still in use in some families.
A cheap paper-lamp provided plenty of light and some horror they must have gotten as a present by aunt Oda in the window. The Christmas calendar candle in the window. Along with the omnipresent kitchen-roll holder, that today is sought after and fat nostalgia.
The chairs are practical, simple, cheap and durable. The radiator can still be seen in many older houses. A nightmare to keep clean and paint and even worse to carry away!
A handy baby-carrier up against the wall. And last the new grey plastic sockets on the wall.
From there let's go into the apartment of the retirees.
There style of furniture is more 50's style, unsurprisingly.
Let's go for the top photo first.
A Christmas beer on the table, white cap. A typical deck of cards from the period. Christmas hearts on the plates, they are still popular but way too sweet for my taste. The cups are typical post WWII pattern. Confetti-sweets in the glass-bowl. The gilded and IMO pretty depressing picture frames were very common, depicting something dark. The home made advent wreath on the table, here for once with red candles. The chairs were typical for the post WWII era. Looking simple they were honestly not particularly comfortable, but incredibly sturdy!
In the background is a buro, in DK often called a skuffedarium = a drawerdarium. With a home made winter-scene. With very treasured (and today most sought after) Bing and Grøndahl figurines. Notice the black bakelite sockets on the walls. They were now being replaced by the modern grey ones. But you can still find them in many older apartments.
In the background is the kitchen with a small gas-stove and oven. The handles on the kitchen drawers are worth a minor fortune now if you can find them. The drain from the kitchen sinks in the apartments above were always on the inside.
The second photo:
Features an advent wreath, probably bought this time, people got more money to spend during the 70s. And so is the table cloth it is placed on. Notice the home-made winter scenes in the background. A giant radio in the background, probably from the 50s. with a 50s style telephone besides it. The cords on these phones were not twisted, that came with the phones in the 70s. It was only during the 70s that telephones became common in most homes, and prior to that they were pretty unusual.
Second part in the next post.
Second part.
It's time to move into a a couple of working class apartments.
Let's take the more affluent first, probably a skilled worker. Possible the wife was working as well, that also became normal at that time.
Bright but not too weird curtains. Some copper-whatever on the walls and the piping for the radiators in upstair-apartments inside.
The Christmas tree is decorated in a style that is still very typical. Here with electric candles, we are after all in the 1970s. Notice the songbird perched on the tree, made from paper.
The less said about the re-upholstered sofa the better... Probably bought in the 60s. And so is the matching sofa-table, complete with a very practical shelve for magazines and papers. The sofa is flanked by two lamps in 50s style, perhaps an heirloom. There is a more modern lamp standing next to the window. Under the table is the ever-present rya-carpet. That had to vacuumed or beaten very regularly. The lamp above the table is also common for the era, and emitted a surprising amount of light.
The by painters very hated hessian-wallpaper.
And dad has got a chair for himself. For the time it would still be unusual for the wife to sit in the best chair.
Let's now go to the more modest working class home.
We will start with the common lamp over the table, it was and still is pretty horrible! Emitting a very poor light.
The TV is fairly modern, but placed inside a very practical cabinet with wheels and of course a shelve for the magazines that at this time began to print what was on the TV that week. As there was only one TV-channel at the time, everybody watched the same thing. Some could watch Swedish, German or even Norwegian TV as well - the atmospheric conditions permitting...
The flower-box on legs were also very common. I used the one we had to play with my Airfix soldiers. A weird mismatch of colors on the sofa and chair but they worked.
The painting of the fisherman on the wall with a sou-west and a pipe was so common that I dare claim it hung in at least 80 % of all working class homes at the time. I even had one in my first home, when moving out. I needed something, anything, for my walls.
And now with a more modern lamp in the corner.
The sofa was not particularly comfortable but it was affordable. The pillow to the right was very common, often home-embroidered.
Nowadays it's mandatory to have an electrical socket for every tree meters IIRC, but in the 70s it was common with three sockets in a living room. One for general use at the door. One for a lamp and one for the radio.
Now in Christmas mode. A pretty modest Christmas tree, we had the exact same star on our tree. The rug for the tree was decorated with home made embroidery. Even working class families now brought fairly modest advent wreaths. To the far left is a Christmas calendar for the children, with 24 lids to be opened as a countdown to Christmas. And the show on the TV is a children Christmas-TV-calendar, with 24 short episodes, also as a countdown.
Notice the copper-watercan on the floor.
Let's end this odyssey by go shopping:
Color TV sets were getting common and affordable. Some of them 22 inch screes or even 24 inch screens! Stereo sets were also becoming common, at least among the younger generations. And were there any teenagers who didn't dream about a record player? Even small portable TVs for your caravan or more likely your allotment garden were available. And so of course were film projectors, used to bore guests out of your house with homemade films of your visit to Harzen in Germany.