The Husalle Lindens

Kongens Have is Copenhagen's oldest public park, laid out from 1606 for King Christian IV beside his new Rosenborg Castle, and its formal linden avenues were planted soon after: Kavalergangen and Damegangen, the two clipped alleys nearest the castle, date to around 1664 and 1700. Almost none of those original trees survive; both avenues have been replanted more than once in the four centuries since. Husalle, a third avenue running parallel to the garden's main axis a little further north, has fared differently: its lindens are described by garden historians as among the oldest living trees in Denmark, having escaped the repeated replacements that emptied the more formal avenues nearer the castle of their original planting. The garden itself has survived far more than ordinary wear. It has hosted royal pleasure grounds, public promenades, and, in recent years, a summer sound installation that lets speakers hidden in ten of its trees tell stories to anyone who walks close enough to trigger them, a very modern use for trees old enough to have shaded Danish kings centuries before recorded sound existed. Husalle's lindens do their storytelling the old way, simply by having outlasted almost everything planted around them.