For my February recap, I am sharing pictures of horse-drawn sleighs again. It might even be the same horses I featured a year ago. A lot in my life seems to go in circles at the moment. I also included a picture from Mölndal and one new book.
I’ve been rereading part of the application for the hydrogen valley project in order to be able to write texts about what is going to happen in the different geographical nodes. And I got so fascinated, especially by the activities in the High Coast hub. If everything goes according to plans, this project will make a real impact. Not just on European resilience and climate, as I mentioned in my January recap, but physically for the community. We are talking about new employers and job numbers large enough to change the demographics of Ånge municipality.
This grabbed my attention. Change, why some places and industries start growing while others decline, has fascinated me for years. I have spent a lot of time identifying the causes afterwards. Now I’m very well placed to study the transformation as it happens.
I have touched on this subject in several of my books as well. Pictures of these horses appear in some of them because this is how goods were transported when the mining town Røros was built in the middle of nowhere. Today, volunteers keep history alive. I’ve been taking pictures of them for many years now and posted on social media. This year, perhaps because an anniversary caused a stir in media I ended up getting 200,000 views. Good fun, but answering all the questions took a lot of time.
These particular pictures are from when the caravan reached Ljusnedal. This was once Härjedalen’s only industry. Because mining around Røros was such a success — at one point the largest employer in all of Norway — the Swedish king wanted to replicate that success on the Swedish side of the border. But the geology differed, and the venture never became equally profitable.
I am not just interested in how and why places change but also how people end up in places. This month an interview was published where I encourage retired people to write their autobiography. I promised to give away a couple of copies of motivational handbook I wrote six years ago with a couple of colleagues. This promise ended up with me editing and re-publishing it since it was sold out. As usual, I put in more work improving it than was maybe strictly necessary, but on the other hand I am proud of the result. And we put my grandparents on the cover.
Republishing a book – that’s cause for celebration, isn’t it? And I do have a non-resolution about champagne this year. Yet somehow February passed without a single bottle. Clearly, March needs to make up for February’s oversight. 🥂
If you want to check what I have been up to other months you can find my archive here.
Science communicator and project manager based in Sweden, working internationally. Montly recaps in English.
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