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The source term “neighborhood” (Latin vicinitas; from OE  neahgebur/ nehebur, “neighbor”; cf. OHG  nagiburo, MHG  nahgebure, nakebur, German Nachbar, Nachbarschaft, “neighbor,” “neighborhood”) in the early modern period strictly meant those living in the vicinity of a peasant farmstead, or in a broader sense the variously informal or formal organizational forms (sometimes furnished with legal powers) of a sociality or a town or village social space encompassing several houses or streets or an entire district. In …

The idea of the Land of Cockaigne (French  p​ays de Cocagne, Spanish país de Cucaña, Italian paese della Cuccagna, Dutch lant van Cockaengen; German  Schlaraffenland from late medieval  slûraffen lant,  Schlauraffenlant, from  slûraffe, “lazybones,” “idler”) as a land of plenty and idleness is found in most European traditions, and emerged in the first phase of the early modern period. Except in Sweden, however, the Cockaigne motif has not yet been shown to have appeared in Scandinavian or Eastern European narrative traditions [1. 803].Utopian depictions of lovely pl…