Cultural Icons of Wind Turbines

Modern wind turbines will become an accepted feature of landscapes around the world by a process of cultural assimilation. As wind turbines become a more prevalent feature of today's landscape, they begin to find their way into common artifacts as symbolic images.

This process is no different than that which led Rembrandt van Rijn to portray traditional European windmills as part of his landscape paintings. Rembrandt was personally familiar with windmills. His father operated a windmill near the Rhine River that was appropriately named de Rijn from which the family took its name.

The Dutch have built a powerful tourist industry around the image of traditional windmills. Many homes in western countries contain bric-a-brac of Delft pottery portraying bucolic images of Dutch windmills.

This process of assimilation is underway today and can be seen in beer coasters in Northern Germany, beer labels in Denmark, on the dust jacket of a compact disk, on postage stamps from India, on Dutch passports, and phonecards.