Duved i Helsingin Sanomat
Ta del av reportaget om Duved i Helsingin Sanomat den 15 januari.
Next stop: Åre. The train empties quickly as skiers, snowboarders and other winter enthusiasts grab their gear and head for Åre’s cottages, hotels and slopes.
The municipality of Åre is home to Sweden's most famous and largest ski resort, which attracts people from all over the Nordic countries.
However, the hustle and bustle of the village is left behind as the train continues its journey almost empty.
The next stop is Duved, a small village next door to Åre.
In Duved, there is also a large ski slope, but only a fraction of Åre's tourist population.
Not so many have even heard of the whole village, but perhaps they should, as Duved is preparing for a revolution.
The aim is to develop a new version of the core idea of Swedish culture and the welfare state.
A modern village where food, housing and work are organized in a new way.
Folkhemmet 2.0.
Det goda hemmet känner icke till några privilegierade eller tillbakasatta, inga kelgrisar och inga styvbarn.
Där ser icke den ene ner på den andre. Där försöker ingen skaffas sig fördel på andras bekostnad, den starke trycker icke ner och plundrar den svage,
I det goda hemmet råder likhet, omtanke, samarbete, hjälpsamhet.
This is how the core of folkhemmet was defined by the Swedish Social Democrat chairman and future prime minister, Per Albin Hansson, in his famous speech in 1928. The folkhemmet and the welfare state became the slogans of Swedish Social Democrat politics an ideas upon which Sweden was developed for decades.
The folkhemmet became synonymous with the Nordic welfare state. But does the folkhemmet still exist?
The train stops at Duved Station, where Helen Olausson and Jan Åman are standing wearing thick padded jackets.
The station pier is next to the village. In the background rises a beautiful slope with no skiers. Tourists also visit Duved, but at the beginning of December the season has not yet started, unlike in Åre.
Olausson and Åman are the main drivers behind Duved's new village project.
Helen Olausson and Jan Åman have been working to develop Duved for four years.
They believe that the countryside and small villages may be at the forefront of future development to address the most pressing issues in societies: environmental problems, inequality and housing.
Duved is a village of only about a thousand inhabitants in the municipality of Åre. The village of Åre, eight kilometers away, is larger and much busier, but there is one key difference between the villages. In Åre people spend their holidays, in Duved people live their lives.
“There is a great mix of people in Duved,” Åman says.
Åman has a home in both Stockholm and Duved, where he visits every other week. He mostly travels the 600 kilometers journey by night train.
Sweden is developing in a similar way to Finland: the countryside is withering and population is concentrated in large cities.
However, large cities are plagued by problems that the folkhemmet has not been able to solve: there is a shortage of housing and people are being shot in the suburbs. Sweden has prospered at a rapid pace, but there is also poverty. In Sweden, more than 23 percent of children grow up in relative poverty, according to a Save the Children report.
The gap between rural and urban areas is also widening, but that should not be the case, say developers in the village of Duved.
Duved i Helsingin Sanomat den 15 januari.
In rural areas, Duved is an exception, as the population of the village is growing. Helen Olausson is CEO for the municipal real estate company of Åre, and four years ago Olausson began to consider how the growing village should be developed. She called on the help of art curator Jan Åman and the Duved Village Association. More than a hundred villagers attended the first meeting, after which ambitious plans began to take shape.
Duved would be made a village with affordable housing and sense of village spirit, a village where food would come close by and a village which would be self-sufficient.
The housing company has already bought plots of land in the middle of Duved, on which low-cost rental housing will be built. The health center, run by a private company, has just opened its doors, and a new school of 800 pupils, built entirely of wood, is being built in the center of the village.
“We don’t want Duved to feel like Åre, where house prices have skyrocketed. We want people of all walks of life to live here, ”says Olausson.
The rise in rents will be kept in check by rent regulations.
A company with private investors has been set up to develop Duved, but also the village association will also have both ownership and voting rights in the project.
"The fact that the villagers themselves are involved as owners is the key," says Olausson.
With the company's financing, a restaurant, Trägårn, has been opened in the village. The restaurant sums up one of the goals of the future village.
All raw materials come from the village or nearby areas and the goal is zero waste in food production. The vegetables used in the restaurant are grown in Jan Åman’s backyard, and the meat comes from Olov Östling’s farm in the village, a stone’s throw away. The chefs and waiters in the restaurant can even tell you the name of the cow from which the meat is produced.
The village is crossed by a road with small shops, restaurants and residential houses. There’s an Ica supermarket in the middle of the village, which reveals one thing what’s wrong in today’s world, says Jan Åman.
“Every day, 10-12 trucks are driving here in full load, bringing stuff to the store. Three cars only carry bread, it's crazy. In the future, we want the store's selection to consist of nearby products, so that it may be enough to have only one load a day, ”he says.
Self-sufficiency is planned to be built, among other things, with a new greenhouse designed by star architect Shigeru Ban. The construction of the greenhouse was one of the wishes of the villagers.
Jan Åman has called the village concept the new folkhemmet. In the folkhemmet, citizens are given power, but responsibility is also required. A communal village will only work if everyone is able to participate.
He sees that the concept could be replicated elsewhere. Many municipalities in Sweden are already interested, and Åman would like to take the concept abroad also. For example to Finland.
“It is important to consider alternatives to industrial-scale societies. We need to consider how we can make the best use of the resources we have. Does it make sense to transport food and goods from China to Stockholm or could we develop the economy locally? In this way, we create work, skills and improve the environment. ”
There is still a lot to be made in Duved and plans are big. There are plans with universities, digital distance learning courses, transport solutions, common cellars, new circular economy solutions. It is not yet known how everything will be implemented.
“But this is not just a vision. We do this, ”says Åman.
Åman and Olausson aim to present the Duved model to the general public in 2025, when they will host the Duved exhibition, which they compare to the 1930 Stockholm exhibition.
The 1930 exhibition has been regarded as one of the breakthroughs in functionalist architecture and the modern Swedish social model. Society had to be strong and guarantee security, work and education for all.
The starting point of the folkhemmet.
“Despite Abba, Spotify and Björn Borg, the folkhemmet is still considered by many to be the biggest Swedish brand,” says Jan Åman.
As the new version of the folkhemmet is now being built in Duved, there is a lot of work, as was the case in the 1920s. Indeed, the nature of folkhemmet is that it is never finished.