The forests of Sweden

When I first came to Sweden from Britain I was amazed by how much forest and wilderness was left. I read in the tourist pamphlets that 50% of the country was covered in forest and that around 9 million people live on 450,000 km2 of land (every person could have 5 hectares to themselves if land was distributed equally). I loved that I could camp almost anywhere under Allemansrätten for a few days and was in awe at all of the wild animals and plants.

Sweden is so different to Britain, which has become one large industrialised agricultural monoculture. Very little forest remains (around 10% is covered in forest) and what is left has mostly been turned into a museum by conservation organisations with nobody allowed to live or camp on it. There is so little forest that protest camps, such as Titnore Woods, try to defend only a few hundreds trees against further “development”.

As I spent more time in Sweden’s nature I realised the dark side of its forests. Clearcuts (kalhyggen) are everywhere. The land is being raped in almost every area that I’ve been in. Leaf trees, such as oak, are few and far between because they do not grow quickly and straight and are therefore not profitable enough. The ones that are allowed to grow, such as Aspen, are cut down to make matchsticks. There are very few ancient forests and they are decreasing in size. The forests of Sweden increasingly feel like one large Spruce (gran) and Pine (tall) plantation, where trees are seen as “resources” to be exploited by humans to make throwaway furniture for corporations like IKEA.

We have to ask ourselves: do we want to live in a world which exploits its forests in this way and what can we do about it? I know that I can better defend the forest if I am living in it, loving it, am dependent on it. My senses become heightened in the forest, I feel part of my surroundings (rather than having to close off from my surroundings in the city), it becomes part of me. As Derrick Jensen puts it:

“If your experience is that your food comes from the grocery store and your water comes from the tap, you’ll defend to the death the system that brings those to you because your life depends on it. If, on the other hand, your food comes from a landbase and your water comes from a river, then you’ll defend to the death that landbase and that river, because your life depends on them.”

We will defend the forests much more forcefully if we live there and are dependent on them instead of just thinking that they are beautiful or have conservative ideas of conservation and want them be preserved and kept separate from humans.

I think it is impossible to even try and live in some kind of harmony with the earth if we live in the city, no matter how much we hitchhike, cycle, help on allotments, recycle, go wwoofing or don’t fly!

Cities, as Jensen defines them, are: “people living more or less permanently in one place in densities high enough to require the routine importation of food and other necessities of life.”

Or, in other words, people living beyond their means in that area. Living unsustainably.

Cities have always needed to control and exploit areas around them to exist. They colonise the areas that surround them, and with globalisation and trade, the whole planet. They depend on wars to ensue that “resources” reach them and sweatshops (låglönefabriker) so that cheap products can be bought inside of them. Britain was once covered in forest, but with the expansion of cities and the empire that needs to go with it, much of it was chopped down for ship building, iron smelting and many other things. Nowadays it depends on forests being cut down across the globe to provide its wood supply.

To meaningfully adapt our lives to the climate crisis and impending resource shortages, especially oil, we need to move out of the cities and learn to live from – and defend – the land. We need to learn to live and work together again in community, building our own houses out of local materials for next to nothing. We need to practice a form of agriculture, like permaculture or forest gardening, that works in some kind of harmony with the earth and the forest rather than merely cutting it down, planting monocultures on it and covering it in chemicals. We need to combine growing and gathering, farming and fishing.

There is so much potential for people in Sweden to do this. It is so much cheaper than in Britain, there is so much more land, the planning regulations seem much more relaxed. If you don’t have money – and it is difficult to live a simple life while paying rent or a mortage – forests and summer/winter houses can be squatted, abandoned villages in the North could be occupied.

I know so many people in Britain who are desperate to live on the land and build their own house but can’t because of the cost of the land and the very repressive planning system which exists. Some have fought for years, even decades, with the planning authorities and many have been evicted or had their houses torn down when they didn’t spend thousands and thousands of pounds (or hours) on the process or on a house seen as acceptable by the authorities.

People in Sweden don’t seem to know how lucky they have it, how much potential there is and what they could lose.

Some say that it is too late to go back to nature, that we have come too far, that we have too much technology, that there are too many people. However, we only have one earth.

We will have to go back to living in some kind of harmony with nature at some point or face collapse. There are limits which we are already coming up against with our growth and profit based economy and we will come up against many more.

Further reading:

Building a Low Impact Roundhouse – Tony Wrench

Endgame: The Problem of Civilisation – Derrick Jensen

The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power - Joel Bakan

The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming - Masanobu Fukuoka

What are the planning barriers to low impact developments in rural areas in Britain and how might they be overcome? - Lisa Lewinsohn

Utopia Britannica - British Utopian Experiments: 1325-1945 - Chris Coates

~ av iamhampus den 06 september 2009.