""Yes, we were really convinced that we could do everything," Lotte confirms. "And we clearly could," adds Else Marie. "If we wanted a building, we took it, and if we were missing something, we made it ourselves." "It was like jumping from one tuft of boggy grass to another," Vibeke recalls. "The ground underfoot was really shaky, but once we'd got far enough out, we stopped looking back.""
"Hanne contacted the Slum-Stormers (the group she was already involved with) to ask if they might help the Redstockings find a suitable building. "We just couldn't imagine going back to the life we'd been living before," says Hanne. "We needed a building immediately." After listening to remarks both for and against a building intended solely for women, the Slum-Stormers decided to help the Redstockings. They suggested three old and largely empty buildings on Åbenrå that had been constructed after the big Copenhagen fire in 1728."
Women prepared themselves to live without men by learning practical and construction skills. They carried heavy items, swept and washed, tore down and built walls, painted, made coffee, installed electrical wiring, repaired toilets, and slept very little. Confidence and self-reliance grew so that when a building was wanted they took it and improvised missing materials. The path forward felt precarious but progressive, moving them away from previous lives. Allies were enlisted to locate empty properties, and identified eighteenth-century buildings were suggested. Hanne and companions executed bold entries into courtyards and accessed properties through missing back doors to occupy them.
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