Aug 1, 2014 |
I’m getting a lot of fresh air at the moment. It’s helping a lot. Every now and then, you need a bit of scenery and oxygen. As you may have picked up, I’m in Sweden. Actually, I’m further north than most people think of when they think of Sweden. I’m just outside of Umeå, in the Västerbotten region.
But I’m not in Sweden for my health. I’m working here. I’ve been meeting with some fantastic people at the University of Umeå to bring Music Tech Fest to Scandinavia.
If you haven’t heard of it, Umeå is currently Europe’s ‘Capital of Culture‘. That means there’s a lot of investment, a lot of optimism and a lot of fascinating interdisciplinary projects – many of which take place at the intersection of design, music, technology and art.
In other words – my kind of thing.
There’s also a rather cool Guitars museum – with the largest collection of electric guitars on the planet. They have rare Fender and Gibson guitars from the 50s that Fender and Gibson themselves don’t have.
The university has a new facility opening up soon called Sliperiet. It houses a range of innovative projects and businesses making art installations, feature films, new types of interactions and products, and – interestingly – projects that bring together music and technology.
The facilities here are incredible. Make anything you want from digital video to large structures of wood and steel. They can 3D print a car, for goodness sake.
Sliperiet will be the home of Music Tech Fest Scandinavia 2015.
I don’t seem to have taken a lot of photos of the city centre here. Or any, actually. It’s very nice – and there are cafés, record stores, cinemas, supermarkets and all the other things you need to run a city. Traffic is no problem whatsoever. There are even cycle lanes.
But there’s also an awful lot of nature here in Sweden. Bears, moose, reindeer, frogs, squirrels, and birds of many shapes and sizes. And it tends to be those things that I’ve been pointing my camera at. After all, this is not the sort of thing you see every day in Kings Heath, Birmingham.
More noticeably, from a nature perspective, Sweden appears to be basically a series of lakes and fjords loosely held together by pine forests. A trip on the Wilderness Way is strongly recommended if you get over this way. In fact, make a point of it.
Hiking’s a big thing here. So is fishing. Cycling, golf and hunting also seem to feature heavily on the ‘going outside’ agenda.
Swedes appear to like being outside rather a lot. I thought it might have been something to do with the fact that up here near the Arctic Circle, any bit of sunshine would be welcomed as an opportunity to leave the house, but apparently the whole going out into nature thing is a year-round experience. Even when it’s minus 30 outside. Those activities that require the surrounding area to be entirely frozen are also very popular.
I heard that the year-round average temperature here is 3 degrees. That’s not very warm. And yet, my experience here has been sunshine and temperatures in the mid to high 20s. One day, it reached over 30. I’m okay with that.
And of course – from a sightseeing perspective, what you can see when the sun does come out is worth seeing.
Imagine, for instance, visiting Niagra falls, and being the only person there. That’s a bit what going to Hällsingsåfallet is like.
Imagine going swimming where the beach is in one country and the water in another. Did that a couple of days ago.
Imagine taking a stroll through a mature pine forest from the banks of a fjord to the edge of a lake just to get from your own house to have a cup of coffee at your friend’s house. That’s where I’m at right now. And I’m less than 15 minutes from the city centre.
Imagine sitting and writing a blog post at 10:30pm as the sun slowly starts to set outside. That’s what I’m doing.
I like it because it’s not what I’m used to. I like it because despite all of the work and the stress going on right now for all sorts of reasons – it feels like a holiday. I like the people and I like the place. I like the innovation, I like the optimism and I like the ambition here. I like the food, the attitude and just how damned civilised it all is here.
I love the forests and I love the lakes. Those are really special. I’m out of here after the weekend – but I’m definitely coming back. This is a magical place. Can’t wait to see it buried in snow.
Jul 31, 2014 |
I tried Swedish whisky for the first time last night.
I was in a place called Umedalen, just outside of Umeå, with the intention of visiting the sculpture park there. But rather than stop and admire the art, hunger led me on to find food.
A friend had suggested the nearby Bistro le Garage – a good call. It was on the pricey side, though to be fair, this is Scandinavia, and it was no worse than some of the nicer London gastropubs. Good food – some of it superb – in a relaxing, family-friendly environment with outdoor seating against a backdrop of pine trees. I’d definitely go back.
The place was a little busy – and while waiting for a table, I noticed a selection of whiskies I’d never seen before: Mackmyra.
It’s a young company, as whiskies go. A bunch of friends got together at a winter resort in 1998, and each of them had brought a single malt. The shared interest led to a conversation over drinks, which led to a decision, which ultimately led to the establishment of a Swedish distillery. Their first release in 2006 sold out in 20 minutes.
After nosing all three available expressions straight from the bottle, I selected the Special: 10 – since it seemed to have the most going on. The others seemed a bit light and floral for my tastes. I ordered a 4cl glass and decided to do a tasting between my main course and dessert. It was the right choice, especially since I’d gone for the crème brulée.
The Mackmyra Special 10 is smooth and on the sweet side, matured in casks that have previously stored whisky spiced with coffee beans. It was a good way to finish a meal.
The nose was light and fruity with honeycomb, pear, vanilla and freshly sanded wood. There are fudge notes to the palate with a touch of citrus and apple. A slightly sharp baking soda overtone was less welcome, but that disappears with a drop of water, replaced by more of a vanilla cream. The finish is medium to long – and that’s where those coffee beans really come through, along with a hint of lemon and a little saltiness.
The dessert made sense of it. Or vice versa. It was a great match.
I hadn’t paid proper attention to whisky in a long time. The whisky blog I ran with Clutch came to a natural end a couple of years back. I’ve had the odd glass with friends from time to time, but not made a point of doing a tasting.
Finding something new like the Mackmyra was a good excuse to give the whisky tasting thing another try. And while it didn’t blow my mind, it was lovely – and just right.
The rewarding bit is in paying attention when confronted with new things: new tastes, new smells, new experiences. I need to stop and do that more often. Not just whisky. Life always seems richer, more nuanced and brighter when I make myself slow down and attempt to articulate the experience. It’s why I write.
Jul 27, 2014 |
To the untrained eye, Floda 31 appears to be a series of about half a dozen old farmhouses and barns on a large plot of land overlooking a forest. In reality, it’s a multidisciplinary design research facility.
Birmingham-born Rich Holland and his Dutch partner Marije de Haas established it (and are still building it) in the last remaining wilderness of Europe, on the site of a farm in northern Sweden surrounded by incredible views of ancient spruce forests, just south of the arctic circle.
I’m staying here for a couple of days, relaxing, taking in some scenery and getting my head around the kind of innovation that can happen in a place like this – and it’s on a scale that’s much larger than anything I’ve come across.
Pretty much anything that can be made, can be made here. The workshop contains everything you might need to build anything from a website to a skate park – from a feature film to an observatory to chart the transit of Venus.
The residencies held here bring together science, art, architecture, design and technology to explore ideas and themes – primarily around the concept of sustainability. All of the ideas and innovations created at Floda 31 are made available to the public under a Creative Commons licence.
The people here are smart, fun and interesting -and the scenery here is breathtaking. It’s a place I’d love to spend a bit more time.
We’ve been talking about putting together an event of some kind. Something that grows out of the Music Tech Fest, but extends it to bring together music and technology, art and architecture, design and innovation. It’d be great to hold some kind of residential event in this really beautiful part of the world.
We’re just kicking around concepts at this point – but something interesting could come of this. Watch this space.
In the meantime, it’s an amazing place to be – and so incredibly quiet. Except, that is, for the constant bouncing around of ideas, the sounds of cooking, laughing and the toddler playing in the corner.
Just had a lunch of freshly-caught pike from the adjacent river – followed by a swim in an enormous, pristine, and beautifully warm lake entirely surrounded by forest. I could get used to this sort of thing.
Not entirely sure I could get used to the other half of the year when it’s 20-odd degrees below zero and you could walk across this lake, but that’s another story.
