Laeso, Denmark, 2003
Photograph by Darlyne A. Murawski

A mounded seaweed roof creeps down the walls of the main building in Laeso, Denmark's Museumsgården.

Parts of this building date to the 1600s. Like many older structures on Laeso, it is constructed in part using timber salvaged from ships stranded in the island's shallow waters. Laeso residents turned to seaweed to thatch their roofs after most of the island's trees and reeds were harvested and burned by the salt industry.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Killer Caterpillars," June 2003, National Geographic magazine)