Away from the City
Before we moved to Värmland we were living in a small town here in Sweden.
Our house was close to both the big road and the railway. All these cars and trains that constantly passed made us dream about a life in a calm surrounding more in harmony with nature.
I also had a couple of dogs and I wanted them to be able to feel more free.
While we were living there I gradually got more and more sick and two of my children had become hyper-allergic to almost everything. We just had to do something about it.
When I had been asking myself about the problem for quite a time I got a strong inspiration that told me to search for a house in the mountains near the river Klarälven.
A clean forest
For one year we kept searching for a good place in this region and then we found this house deep in the forest close to a narrow road with almost no traffic. Maybe we saw one car in a week.
As we had no electricity in this place the only light that we had in the house in winter came from wax-candles.
We made analysis of both water and soil and it was very clean in the sense of not being contaminated by chemical pollution. They even said that it was one of the cleanest places in Sweden.
Today this “forest” is a pine-plantage with huge machines working day and night. But at that time, in 1986, it was still a real forest.
I have seen wolves walk over our yard between the sheep and lamb without attacking them. It was because they had a natural forest to live in where they more easily could find their prey. Then they respected our territory and our sheep.
There were also much berries and mushrooms that we could collect.
I had bought ”ecological carrots” but when we had eaten them both I and the children got sick. I did not trust the normal market any more so we now started to cultivate our own vegetables.
When we moved to this house, some months after the Tjernobyl accident, we were Per and me, together with five children.
The accident had contaminated the air with radiation and exactly at that time my daughter had been out in the rain. She got big ”blood-marks” on the body and at first the doctors didn't know what it was. Then one said ”This is not allergy - this is from radiation”.
Living in a natural way in a clean forest I quickly felt more healthy again, and so did the children. Their allergic problems gradually went away. Now I was convinced about the importance of a more natural life-style in all aspects.
Telephones
The phone-company Telia did not want to provide us with a normal telephone because the long way would make the cable too expensive for them. So they made a cheaper solution using their new technology. They gave us a mobile phone, which looked exactly like an old phone, but it was functioning with an antenna that they put up on our house.
After this installation I got sick again. I often got very, very dizzy and I believed that I had got some horrible disease, but the doctors could not find anything.
I got an extremely strong head-ache and I felt as if I had been on a ship in full storm and I often fell to the ground vomiting. I believed I was dying. It was horrible, especially as I had children to take care of.
After some time I discovered that I got extra dizzy every time that I had been using the phone.
I understood that there was a connection between my sickness and this ”stationary mobile phone” so I asked Telia to remove it and then I got well again. The problem was solved. For a time.
We had many visitors and now they started to come with mobile phones in their pockets. When they used them I got sick again!
We were forced to make a rule that said that nobody was allowed to use a mobile phone at the place.
I got in contact with other people that had the same experience and I learned more about micro-waves and em-fields. Earlier I had never heard anything about ”effects of electrical things”. I did not even know that em-fields existed.
Later I have learned that certain frequencies can have the same effect on the body as certain chemicals. Chemical pollution can make you react on certain frequences.
A “jordkällare” made from timber.
People who were electro-sensitive started to visit us. Here they could have meetings in a natural surrounding. In the city there was, because of radiation, no place where they could meet. People were using mobile phones everywhere.
Many of them were searching for new homes. They were escaping from modern society without really wanting to escape, forced to do it against their will, like people who flee from wars.
But many felt sick also here in the forest because there was now a big antenna on another mountain not too far away from here.
Together with a friend, Per had just built a big traditional “jordkällare”, but with the difference that it was built with timber and not with stones.
Such a “jordkällare” never gets too warm in summer and never too cold in winter. Here we stored our vegetables, potatoes, carrots, jam and fruit-syrup.
This is the old way of storing food when you don't have any fridge.
Fortunately this “jordkällare” was very big so it could now be used for having meetings, especially with people who got sick from radiation.
It was also a nice and calm place for any kind of meditation.
In summertime we used to have a midsummer-feast in the old Nordic or country-style tradition and also parties with guitars, drums and violins in the big barn, where many people could eat, drink, play and dance.
The stove
The rumors have claimed that we were a “hippie collective”, but we were an ecological association, formed and registered around 1995, and not at all a collective.
We often had many visitors, especially in summer, but the visitors were not living here. They were coming and going.
It was people with long hair and with short hair. It was young people and old people. It was people of all kinds and many musicians and artists..
People who wanted to stay for a while could do so.
The big house was mainly for visitors and Per and I were sleeping in a little cabin, a small wooden house 700 meters from the big house.
In this little house we had a small iron stove, which I have now given away to another family who wants to try to live in the old way in an old cottage, “fäbod” or timber house, deep in the forest.
The stove is the center of the house when you live in this way. It keeps you warm and alive during the long winter when the whole country is covered with deep snow.
-25 to -30 degrees Celsius is not unusual. Sometimes even more.
Ecological networking
Our intent with this ecological association was to build a network between all the people who were living in the forest, wanting to have a simple but natural life on a safe distance from ordinary society with it's stress, fanatic money-chasing and pollution.
A network for sharing knowledge but also for buying food like rice, flour, soya, salt, oil, nuts, honey etc.
We met and we talked and we discussed problems that arose and we shared our knowledge and experiences from our old-fashioned life.
Many visitors wanted to study our life as they were planning to change life-style in the same way, often without knowing too much about how to do.
We had school classes visiting and the children could learn how to make timber-constructions. Being a carpenter, my husband was the teacher.
Free animals
Yes, we also had animals. We got milk from our sheep and I made my own cheese. We got eggs from the chicken-run. We had a few horses, cows and ducks.
Instead of using a plough we let the pig do the job with the earth. The pig had to remain at his place but the other animals were free to go where they wanted.
We did not want freedom only for ourselves but also for the animals.
I am grown up in this way and it means that I am familiar with all those ways of making food in the traditional way. We even made our own sausages.
So when we moved to this place fortunately I already knew how to do such things.
The first and most important job, that we focused on, was to get woods for the winter, as we didn't have any electricity to warm up the house. Wood means fire in the stove.
We got clean water from a spring higher up on the mountain, so the natural pressure made it possible for us to have a water tap in the house, without any pump.
Present
My children have grown up now, so I am just an old grandmother, living here in the forest with my hens, chickens, dogs and cats - and friends and relatives who are visiting.
They help with the wood-cutting or we just sit here talking over a cup of tea or coffee.
In winter I am making my paintings and my writings, which I do not publish on the net. I store everything in the attic.
Or as we say in Sweden “på vinden”, on the wind!
Every now and then I take my little drum with me and I go out to a special place in the forest where I sing a song to Mother Earth, to fire, earth, water and wind and then I can almost hear my ancestors talking to me through the whispering of the moving leaves around me.
Here I am “Skogsmor”, embracing all plants and animals of the forest, wanting to take care of everything around me, wanting to protect it against profanation as pollution, radiation and the huge forest machines.
Future
I do not believe that our “civilized world” is the best way of living. That becomes more and more clear every day.
I hope that more people will be interested in “jumping off the train” by at least trying to live a more natural life.
EU regulations have made it too difficult to live a free life. But maybe that can change, if we just want it to. Nothing lasts for ever.
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