Author: BigLake Blog

In this blog I will try to answer a question we have been asked countless times. Questions about how we manage the company of each other and being together in everything 24/7. I will also talk about what our everyday life looks like. Of course, there are variations depending on whether and if it’s summer or winter. And after we bought the house, our everyday life has also become a little different.

I will start with description of our everyday life. Like most other peoples ours is not much different. In the dark winter days, the sun rises between 9-10 a.m., so we can’t get out for a walk with the dogs before 10am. There is no bakery in the village and we bake our own bread every second day.

And the usual housekeeping routine as everyone has – cooking, washing and cleaning. In the winters we get up quite late – between 8-9 a.m. On the other hand, we work until late in the evenings almost every day. It is a luxury to be able to control your workday and enjoy the few bright hours. We spend the light hours as much as possible outdoors – taking photography, filming, skiing and walking with our dogs. And not to forget – removing snow. This winter is our first season with the new house. It is remotely located and the last 4 km of unpaved road to the house are not plowed by the municipal services, so it is us who has to clean it – and it is time-consuming duty.

Things generally take longer time, when you live the way as we do. It’s certainly not negatively mentioned, because I like and appreciates the slowness in daily routine. It’s impossible to hurry with anything here. If you are going to cook, firstly you have to get firewood; next the stove has to be warmed up. It takes around one hour for the wood stove is heated up to 200 degrees Celsius.

If we have to drive anywhere, we can’t just do it at the last minute, because there is a high chance that 20 cm of snow has fallen overnight and snow must be plowed off the road near house first. Additionally roads can be slippery and icy and you can’t drive faster than 50 km/h.  In some places the roads can even be closed due to heavy winds and snowfall.

Our waste container has to be placed 200 meters away from house along the unpaved road, when it has to be emptied every fortnight (every second week). You begin to appreciate that slowness and you have to slow down. And if somebody thinks this brings stress, but it has actually an opposite effect – it gives peace and you accept that fact that things take time.

Then I haven’t mentioned major shopping in supermarkets, which take most of a day. We decided to take it as an adventure – road trip with tea in the thermo cups.

Often we have longer to-do lists. For example it can be a meeting in the bank office, a vaccination at the vet or a visit to a “do it yourself” shop. Such a trip to the supermarket we do approx. once every month.

In the summertime we have 24 hours of daylight. Last spring we woke up earlier and earlier every day because of earlier sunrises and at the end it was so early, that we had to invest in black curtains on windows to get a good night sleep again. I was sure before, that it would never be necessary. We are still enjoying our first summer in our new house, but we got a taste of how long time it will take to mow grass on a 1.8 hectares of land: it took me 4 hours to mow 25% of the lawn.

In addition, a lot of things have to be done in the house. In the summertime we go often hiking with tent overnights in the mountains. It is both pleasure and work at the same time. Orest creates videos and I take photos for both our partners and our own accounts on social media.

Social media is something I spend a lot of time on. And like so many others, maybe too much time too. It is a difficult balance when this is also part of your job. But SoMe is also a great pleasure and a way to feel connected to your friends and the rest of the world, especially when you are so far away and isolated.

Living so isolated, just Orest, myself and our two dogs, sharing everything  24 hours a day has been amazingly smooth. I was never really worried about that part, but think that if anyone saw us from the outside, they probably would think we were talking too much to the dogs and saying weird things. Orest clearly has a greater need for being alone than I do. Actually, we had made an agreement that he would go on a day’s hike alone one day a week, but often it was postponed because we have too much to do together. But especially when we are a little under pressure and things don’t really go as expected, he needs to get out on his own for a long walk.

It works great for him and his mood balance, to go on a hike all alone with a single or two nights stay in tent. And it’s also nice for me to be alone for a while, and healthier for both of us than staying together in a depressed mood, because we only have each other in such situations and that’s our way of solving it.

One thing that has been causing pressure on Orest is that his family has not understood the choice we made. Orest was born in Ukraine and raised in both Ukraine and Russia and he has parents, who had struggled all their lives to get away from the poverty in province in Soviet times and to move to the city, get an education and good jobs. A permanent job was a key to safety and security in their lives. It has been anxiety provoking and incomprehensible that we had chosen to move to something they have struggled to get away from. First to quit our good and safe jobs and then to move out into the woods as far away from the city as possible and cook food on “open fire”. Even though he is an adult and feels independent, it does still hurt him when his mom posts a “crying” smileys at every post he posted on Facebook. It does mainly characterize differences in generations. The younger generation of Ukrainians understands our choice, but they have also grown with relatively good wealth and with the Internet. They have been able to travel and have food on the table every day. But now we have bought a house (as it means “investment in property”), and this was accepted by Orest’s mother greatly and as a wise decision. She has even turned to the positive and enthusiastic about our new property Lövnäset as it brings positive memories of her childhood. And we even have a motorboat – as she remembers, that only the richest family had one in the village in Siberia, where she was grown up. Such a choice as we made is an “Industrial and wealth-country” choice. That kind of choice you make, when you have never suffered or never been in need and when you have traveled the world and realized yourself in many aspects. It is not a choice you make when you have never been able to afford a pair of new shoes.

Unfortunately, my parents are dead and I don’t know how they would have reacted to our choice.

Back to everyday life, many people ask what we spend the evenings on. That’s a pretty good question. We haven’t had TV in 15 years and I had actually told myself that I would start watching more TV. But that has not happened. We guess we watch TV approx. 10-20 hours a year. Now it’s  around 9 p.m. while I’m writing this blog and Orest is sitting opposite to me and editing a video.

Soon our dogs should go out for a walk. Maybe you should take a bath and do some yoga exercises before sleep. This is what an ordinary evening typically looks like here.

But not on Sundays … I am return to the first blog and high heel shoes now! Sunday night is dedicated to a good food and glass of red wine. And then we take our nice clothes, I put on makeup and jump in my high heels.

It was a deal we made with each other on the way up here, because we knew that we would be wearing the ugliest and most practical clothes all the time every day. As Orest said the other day “When we lived in Copenhagen, we had the basement filled with the hiking equipment of highest quality”. It is constantly used now and all our fine “city” clothes are packed far away.

Today is November 1st and exactly one year since we moved here. It’s autumn again and so many things have happened during that year. But nature is still the same. The same beautiful colors, birds on their way to warmer lands, bears preparing for winter hibernation, the first frost and the first snow. The reindeers who leave the forest and moving higher into the mountains. The hunting season that starts and the days that get shorter and shorter every day at a rapid pace. The forest is full of mushrooms and berries. And not to forget that the mosquitoes have finally left us.

This blog is dedicated to the fall. The most beautiful season and perhaps the season we love most. But we also want to make a small statement about two things that we have learned by living here. Things that we hadn’t thought they could impact our minds while we lived in Copenhagen, but thye are so omnipresent. And talk is about impact of material things. I had thought that I was completely unaffected by that, but I am far from that. And I discovered that when we visited Copenhagen this year. Maybe you think it is a very strange comparison that I suddenly talk about expensive cars, when we now have chosen to live the way we do. But I like nice cars. So when one day I was standing on one street in Copenhagen and saw a Maserati driving along the street, my first thought was “God, yes such type of cars exist too”. I had completely forgotten about that. It no longer existed in my consciousness. When you are not exposed to others vehicles than average half-old practical Volvo on winter tires, you don’t remember about existance of other types of cars. But if you see a Maserati every day, you unconsciously start to imagine driving in such a car. And that goes for many things. Slowly you lose grip on what is modern, and if once you used to buy clothes in the shops at the nice end of Strøget (shopping pedestrian street in Copenhagen), now you buy practical clothes in an average store chain. And you “go shopping” only when you really need one thing, and you become happy for pair of really warm boots or socks that hold their form and not make a mess in the rubber high boot.

Another thing is longing or desire. An longing or desire to experience other places and countries. We have always traveled a lot. 4-5 times a year was a common for us. To big cities and to exotic destinations, and every time we returned back home from another trip, the next trip was already planned. We constantly had desire to experience the world. That longing or desire has completely disappeared. Sure, we may miss our annual trips to Paris, but just the thought about travelling for one month to Bangladesh makes us both very tired. I believe that when you live so much in the and with nature, you get so much peace, that many basic needs are met. And then there is also a “little” detail that we will not leave our two dogs, Zarwoe and Láska.

We have trully become a little symbiosis after being together all 24 hours of the day for more than a whole year. Perhaps it may also be because our lives have been completely turned upside down. The fact that the last year we have experienced so many changes, so that having to relate to another country’s culture can be overwhelming for ones mind. I do not know, but I suppose that when you live such a simple life in the nature, you don’t desire something else. We just want to be here and go hiking in the mountains in neighbourhood.

Autumn begins September 1st and no – the local autumn is not an extension of summer.

In September you experience first night frosts and a single snowstorm is not that unusual. The leaves on trees turn yellow. And when you see the first yellow leaf, there are no many days will be before everything is in yellow, orange and red colors mixed with the green pinetrees. And it’s incredibly beautiful.

The large birds cranes gather in large flocks above in the sky before flying to the south. The reindeer, which have literally lived in our backyard during summer, look up into the mountains around October, when the mating season starts.

The moose seek away from the forest and into more open areas, where they find food during the autumn months. This is the best time to spot a moose. The bears go into winter hibernation around beginning of November, and then it feels more safe to walk in the woods and you do not get afraid the same way when your dogs hear a sound in the bushs.

It is also in September that we have to prepare firewood for winter season. It is still a little difficult for us to calculate how much we need. It seems when the shed is filled, there must be more than plenty, but you spend more than you think during entire winter, especially when our primary heat sources are the wood stove and fireplace. At Lövnäset it is our the only source of heat. We have become part of the forest when we bought our new house, so from next year we will have to cut and split our own firewood. It was not possible to cut and dry firewood this year, so it will be spring next year. Our neighbor has promised us a small course on how to prepare your own firewood. And then we must not forget our faithful helpers in getting firewood – the beavers. They cut as many trees around the lake as you can just pick up by boat.

The moose hunt starts on the first Monday in November, which is a date many in the area look forward to. People here have been hunters for many generations and the meat is an important part of the life. Here the whole animal is used and those parts which are not suitable for human food, go to the dogs. We also got a package from our neighbor with moose legs for our dogs. More organic meat does not exist. It is also in the fall that you hunt birds and bears. People say that even the most experienced hunter can have difficulties with holding the rifle stable, when preparing to shoot a bear. That’s the instinct being actived, which I also noticed,  when my dogs respond to any sounds in the forest. Although even if the moose actually counts for more accidents than the bear, but you react by instinct differently to a predator.

The first two weeks of the moose hunt we must take some precautions. The dogs wear orange vests and they are on leash most of the time. Then you are happy for our 1.8 hectare garden so they can run free and stretch their muscles.

It is also towards the end of August that we get the evenings again after two months of light 24 hours of the day. And even the light gives a nice energy, it is also nice to experience the darkness again. The days are getting shorter and shorter. About 5 minutes shorter every day until December 21st. We know many people think it must be depressing to accept the fact that winter is coming, but we love the fall – its colors and evenings. And we enjoy the fact, that the mosquitoes are gone in the fall.  And so are the small insects – mites or knots, as they are called in Swedish. It is actually an incredible relief to be outside and completely undisturbed by insects.

The snow usually settles in November, but this year it came early. Already in mid-October we got snow, so it probably will be a long winter this year. Winter is something very special and requires a whole blog for itself and I will be happy to tell you about it later on.

Sitting here in front of fireplace in our new home. I’ve been always dreaming to live in the house with fireplace. And with the private access to a lake. A dream, I have never thought could become real, but it did. In this chapter you will find the story about our new house(s) with two (!) fireplaces at the exceptional location. 

After having been living in the Big Lake Village for a half of year, we have met many nice people and realised, that this region is one of the most beautiful places in Sweden. So we began to play with thought about staying here permanently. Though we wanted to live more apart and isolated away from the village, where we lived in the rented house. The last one is also beautifully located, but we have always been fascinated and tempted by the idea of living separately. We have never had a single desire to return back to the city. Of course, you can miss your friends, but the social media and digital communication helps a lot to keep you connected, especially when you decide to move far away. 

We had heard some talks about that a place named “Lövnäset” probably would be sold in the future, and our neighbours thought, that the place was exactly what we were dreaming about. So, when the snow was almost gone off the road in late spring, we took on a little trip on another side of the lake. The road is not maintained in wintertime and you can get there only by snowmobile. We didn’t remember the name of that place, so when we turned on the first sideway to one property. It was an old house with really nice location and we were sure it was the right place. There were though other country houses around, but still it was away from anything else. I sent a picture of the place to our neighbours to show that we found it and to confirm that they had right, when they told us about the place. But the answer was a surprise for us – it was a wrong place we found, and we had to drive further if we wanted to see the “Lövnäset”. So we got in the car and drove few extra kilometres, before we saw another sideway with a wooden sign at entrance. And it stood “Lövnäset” on that sign. It was a right one this time. We felt as criminals, because we were going on a private property, where it was a sign “private” on entrance. But when we were standing on the ground, we both were blown away by the view – an isolated peninsula with two houses on it. And nothing else nearby. Only endless nature and silence. A place, we had never seen before, – something you only could dream about. 

We went back home, but we were all the time thinking about the place we saw, and we both were convinced, that there is no any other similar place in the world. So, if it won’t be this one, than we never could be satisfied with any other places. And it was a strong feeling. We asked about the property’s owners, but nobody in the village knew them in person. Everyone could say, that owners were from Norway, but nobody could provide us with contact information. Somebody mentioned, that we could get help from the leader of one project “Move and live surrounded by nature”- a local initiative aimed at motivating families to move to the local villages. Help in getting in touch with owners of the property. And we wrote to the project leader and were excited to hear from her. But it was no answer. Neither after the second request we sent one month later. Fortunately we got help. Again from our neighbours. They managed to get an email address of the owners via their family members. We spent a few days, fighting with our feelings and trying to find out, what to write to unknown people. “Hi, we’ve heard, that you consider selling your property, and we would like to buy it…” We wrote a letter with a careful question, if they could rent the place out for us, or probably they considered selling it in the future. And we were waiting again… for only two days and they answered us. And it was even invitation to come and see the property. 

And the owners were so kind and intelligent people. They had had the property for the last 15 years, but they decided to sell it within next 5 years. They are getting older and nobody of their children would have time and possibility to take care of the place, which requires constant care. The property has 1.8 hectares of land; so just mowing grass takes almost the whole day. The house, or to be more correct – the houses (there are two houses), are in great shape for their age of 200 years. Both houses are from 19th century, with some extensions built in 1930-ties. But the houses are quite primitive. Diesel generator in combination with a little solar panel produces electricity, water is being taken directly from the lake and pumped into the 1000 litres tank. It means, that in the frost weather the water can freeze in the pipes and there is no water supply until the beginning of summer. 

The owners showed us the property, paying attention to that fact, that the place requires a lot of work and maintenance all the time. And you could feel, that they loved this place and it meant a lot for them. And if they had to sell it, the price was not the most important, but what next owners could bring to the place and the local society. Important, that the property won’t be totally rebuilt, but kept with its beautiful original design and elements. Just as an example- the main entrance reminds a museum of the ancient farmer house. 

We returned home after a long introduction to the property, and we were even more excited about the place than before. But were aware, that a lot of things had to be done and repaired before we could live there all year round and use one of houses as artist refuge as it was planned. Even if they would sell it within next five years, we were not sure, if we could afford it. We agreed that all of us had to think about impressions we got, and that we could meet again after two weeks. 

Two weeks later we met again and we were surprised by their decision to sell the property to us, and if we could agree on price, we could get the property already this autumn. They were really honest people and we trusted in what they said, and they told in details about any existing and even possible issues the property had or could have in the future. They did everything in opposite to what a real estate agent would do – they wanted to be sure, that we were aware of any details and not just buying property because of the exceptional location. 

It feels like everything what happened in connection to this place is magic. What chances are to find a place, having a feeling “this is only the only place you want to live at”? And that this place can be for sale and for exact that price we could afford? It was exactly as they say: “meant to be “. And we got the whole package – the canoes, motorboat, tractor, furniture, and many other things. “All inclusive”. Actually so many things, that we felt a little bit embarrassed of how generous these people were to us. 

But, on September first the property became officially ours and we got a bundle with keys. 

The next step is to connect the property to the local electric grid and find a better solution for water supply, so we could be able to use houses all year round. At the moment we live in the new house and we drive to the “office” in the rented house, where there is electricity for working on computer. We will keep doing it as long as we can until real frosts and deep snow come and we no longer can keep us warm or reach the new place by car. And as mentioned before, the idea is to use one of the new houses as artist refuge, where creative people can live and work for shorter or longer periods. We hope that we can be ready with that concept next summer/ fall. At the moment we just enjoy every moment at the new place. Every morning you awake and watch the fog rising above the lake surface, while listening to the nature. Nature is the only thing you hear and see here.

“But, what are you going to do for living out there? …” It was the first question, we heard every time we told about our plans to move in the Swedish wilderness. Yes – it’s a good question, and we haven’t found a clear answer to it yet, and of course this is a strong uncertainty in our life. But we have some ideas and things we are doing and believing they will bring us to the answer soon. 

It’s not a secret that sometimes the uncertainty can give pain in stomach, but we moved to Sweden with great sum of money, we had on our bank account after our apartment was sold. We were lucky to buy the apartment at right time with lowest prices on market and sell it at the most right time for ourselves, when prices were highest. Money we got from the apartment could let us live for three years without any need for earnings and jobs. But for sure – nobody wants to sit and wait till the account is emptied – and we do our best to move things in the right direction – probably it moves too slowly at the moment.

When we moved to Sweden, I still had a solid collaboration with one Danish furniture design company ATBO. I worked on creating visual content, the company used for their catalogs and social media – they needed artistic nature photography of all four seasons. Unfortunately I only worked for a short period, because the company went bankrupt shortly after our collaboration started. When we moved, I was also participating in one art exhibition in one of the biggest art museums in central Denmark, where I got some honorary, so it was great. But as known, earnings are unstable for most of artists. The same it is in my case. Of course, you hope for better exhibition opportunities and earnings, but you can’t predict how it will go. By the way, recently I was contacted and invited to participate in one tender, where the biggest regional hospital wants to select one artist for decorating part of the interior in the hospital. I am really excited and I have applied for that tender – that chance could make myself more visible on the Swedish art scene as well as it could land a long-term contract with salary. So, crossing fingers and wishing so much to get this job. 

Another possibility to reduce the cost of living is our dogs’ Instagram profile @zarwoe.oligarch. A profile, we started as joke, because of Zarwoe’s real name given by the breeder. Orest was convinced, that the name “Oligarch” would attract many female users on Instagram, willing to have relation with a rich man – as known, “Oligarch” in Russia means “a new rich Russian man”. And Zarwoe’s official name, given by breeder, is Oligarcha. I was not a great user of Instagram, but I thought it was a funny idea to start a profile for dogs – at least it was a good place, where we could collect and archive dogs pictures during their life. In the beginning we took occasional pictures with mobile phones only and without any actual storytelling, but pictures were popular as well as the profile. And more followers it got, more fun for us it was in taking pictures and we started to focus more on content and quality of images. And of course we began to research, what actually that storytelling could be used for. Orest has an analytical mindset and he researches things and reads about how things in SoMe world work, while I’m only interested in a visual side of our work. Later Instagram introduced video functionality, and Orest works on creating video content. If somebody asked us for years ago if wanted to become “influencers”, we would have laughed on it, as we didn’t even know the meaning of the word. But at the moment the account has over 24K active followers and still growing organically. 

We have a permanent collaboration with two brands, and we contacted them by ourselves, because we already used their products and we were convinced in the high quality of products. And we wanted to be ambassadors for such brands with ethical values and great visions for their products. The first of them is Essential Foods, one of the world’s best producers of dogs meals, snacks and other ingredients, and at the same time one of the most ethical brands we’ve ever known.

The quality is the highest priority for them, and it’s above the profit. In addition they donate a lot of money to the pets charity programs as well as the owner is personally active in those programs. And we are absolutely proud to be their ambassadors. Another brand is Non-Stop Dogwear and their new subdivision, Non-Stop Polar (clothes for humans).

A Norwegian brand, which produces high quality accessories for outdoor activities for both dogs and their owners – vests, leashes, winter clothes- you name it. Products, which are used for hiking, running, skiing and more. Almost every week we receive collaboration offers from diverse brands via Instagram, but we made a simple rule for ourselves- say yes only to those products, which we would have bought by ourselves. So, we refuse many offers. When we are curious and have an interest for a specific product, we take an initiative and contact the brand. In most cases we get a positive response and we get possibility to test a product. But it’s still so much to learn and it is a long way to real earnings, we don’t have any agents, who probably could bring the whole thing on a professional level. And some of our “learning by doing” experiences were confusing. For example, once we were contacted by an American brand, producer of pet toys. They offered collaboration- they would send us couple of toy samples exchanged on 5 posts on our dogs’ Instagram profile. Our proposal was approx. 90% of what they expected, and we were sure, that they wouldn’t go for that deal. But surprisingly they said “yes” to our conditions and, afterwards we could see, that we fulled ourselves. It basically meant, that the company sent us two toys for pets, and we had to take pictures of our dogs playing with toys. Not just post or advertising, but the company got pictures of their toys for a small cost of approx. 30 Euros. It was learning for us.

Obviously, there is still much to learn and to get to the real profit-making tool, but that is not our priority in this case. We move ahead, so far our followers and we have fun with this profile, until Instagram keeps following their original principles of the community they created for years ago.  

Back to our collaboration with Non-Stop Polar. They have designed their dawn jacket Jakka in collaboration with professional sports people, living in extreme winter conditions in the northern parts of Scandinavia. We had an opportunity to purchase them with 70% discount promo price and we used them during our first winter. They are just amazing and and absolutely must to have in our region. And of experimental quality. If it was a product of a famous brand, it could have costed twice as much of their normal price. They are not cheap, but we have an affiliate agreement with producer and if you are interested, you can visit their website and if you want to purchase it online, you can use our “code” word “zarwoe” and get 10% discount. Website www.non-stoppolar.no

Orest invested in drone just after our move and it was not only for fun. He creates videos, which we post on the dogs’ Instagram. He has also started creating small commercials – among others he made a little promo video for the recently opened local RV camping. He did it as a free of charge favour, which could be seen by others, and there is some interest from small local businesses, willing to make commercials for their products or services. This can probably become another way of earning money in the future. Making videos is his passion and he has been doing them for a long time. He can also find out to work with simple web design and can help people to start their websites, help with SEO and other website related details, as well as get other Social Media channels established. This is also possibility to get orders, and offering much lower prices, than it usually costs. We are going to launch a separate website for our services and hopefully there will be orders. 

Another way of earning, I relied on before moving here, was a commercial photography like portraits, but even though my offers were much below a half price, there still was no interest for that. It seems, like getting a portrait is not the first priority, on which people would spend money. And if you want to find customers in bigger towns, then you would spend all earnings on fuel for your car – distances are really big in our region. This was another example on, how we were thinking things should work here, while we still were in Copenhagen. Instead we have a collection of selected images, placed here on site under Gallery, and any of those images can be purchased by sending request. This is not an art, but images as digital products and they can be used for any purpose. And for the future we have also another concrete project. We have just bought one property, which has an exceptional location. The property consists of two houses- one of them will be used as an artist refuge, and any artist can rent it for a period and live and work in it. Much more about our dream home in the next chapter – we are looking forward to telling you about it.

Can you imagine that feeling when you don’t own any keys? Well, we did have the key to our car, but it was the only one we had. And no other keys to anybody’s property – neither neighbors nor family. Indeed we had only the car key, when we were sitting in the car, parked on the street nearby our just sold apartment. It was a special feeling and we never before thought that the keys could have such a big meaning – a key symbolizes a relation to some place. Not having a key means you don’t have a physical relation to any property. 

It was a plan to start this blog from day one after we reached Big Lake Village. But in reality our minds were exposed to so many new things around us and it was no chance to have a clear feelings about what was happening during the first period. So it is actually first now, one year after our arrival, our minds have used to a new situation, it is possible to see the whole picture from aside, and so we can start telling this story. And one year after we went through that huge change we can understand today, how big that change was. 

The first period on new place was filled with many practical things, sometimes frustrating and ridiculously complicated. Such simple things like opening a bank account and paying bills were not that simple as you can imagine. But it was also time of great experiences. 

We arrived to Big Lake Village on November 1st, in our car with trailer, filled with things- only those of the first priority. Including 10 pairs of my high heels shoes… They were brought all way up north just because I forgot to deliver them to the temporary storage of our things and furniture In Denmark. But later on those shoes got their positive role. The first thing we did on our arrival was to start the fire wood oven and prepare big portion of cheese fondue as well as to open a bottle of red wine. It was a long 13 hours drive and we were really tired. We were sitting in front of each other, euphoric and exhausted, and no doubt we both were thinking: “what the hell are we doing here? What have we done?”… But at the same time we were excited about the future. By the way, the house was kindly prepared for our arrival- the owner took a long way from where he lives in southern Sweden to make the house ready for rental. For us it was easier to have an overview of the property. 

Next couple of days we moved all unneeded furniture and things from the living space we wanted to use. We decided to live on ground floor, and moved a lot of things on first floor. Living on ground floor was in our opinion more practical and could help us reduce costs spent on heating during cold winter months. Here there is a beautiful old firewood oven in the kitchen and electric heaters in small rooms. And in such old and energy inefficient house you can end up with high bill for electricity in a cold winter with temperatures below -40 degrees Celsius. In addition, our dogs don’t like stairs. Lastly, I love living in small space. The first floor we use for our things and for drying washed clothes, as well as there is a room for guests. We live basically on 50 square meters as well as we have a garden of approximately 2.000 square meters. 

We decided to let us be “free” the first month – just to have time to acclimatize on a new place and observe surroundings, not being disturbed by any other activities. And of course to have time for the basic practical things – for example to find out where we could buy fire woods for winter season, which already had been started.

We landed at new place in November, where local people were already prepared for winter, but we were absolutely not ready for that. Basic thing like opening a bank account took a lot of time and efforts. Before you apply for bank account in Swedish bank you have to have a Swedish Identity card, and the Identity card can be issued only after you have got a Personal number from tax authorities. To get your Personal Number you have to wait some period after your application is registered. So, when you have your Personal Number issued, you can apply for the Identity Card, and after two weeks you can be lucky to get it and, after that you have to visit a bank office in person and apply for the smart thing, called the Bank ID (your digital identity). We chose our bank just because their office was closest to Big Lake Village – 165 km. We had to meet with bank guys couple of times, before the whole setup was ready to be used. So in practice it can take up to two months before you can optimally function as “digital citizen” with digital signature in the “digital society”, so you can order mobile broadband and basic things like to pay your bills. Thanks to my cousin during that long period – she paid all our bills, while we transferred money on her account. Maybe it is the same process in Denmark and elsewhere, when you are a new in country, but it feels complicated and unneeded bureaucracy, especially when we talk about digitalization of public services.  

Many of you probably wonder if we have Internet connection. Yes, we do have it. We were actually impressed by the fact that Sweden has done great job for cohesion in the society, so nobody feels isolated. Even the smallest villages have good mobile network coverage. Of course, we had to purchase an external antenna for better signal, and it works fine so far. Though we don’t stream TV, but it’s not relevant for us – we have never watched TV. I actually was thinking, that I would watch TV after moving here, but it was only an idea.  

We have to admire, that we had some prejudice about local people in the region, before we arrived, and we were convinced, that it was the same way back. There were for sure rumors about two Danes’ arrival to the village. Approx. 90 people live in the village, so everybody knows each other. Most of inhabitants are born here and most of them are hunters, and suddenly we together with our two dogs are moving here directly from Copenhagen. I was grown up in the countryside in northern part of Denmark, where people can be really unsocial, so my prejudice was based on that, and I expected that it would be the same here – even more extreme. But in reality it was absolutely opposite. We were welcome here from day one and almost everybody was open and curious to know more about us. And we could feel so much helpfulness  – it is something you almost have forgotten it did exists after many years of life in Copenhagen. Here in Big Lake Village you don’t ask about help – here you think about what you could do for others to help them. As example – your neighbor comes and asks you, when you are back after a short trip, so he can get the snow off from the entrance to your house and you can get drive in late in the darkness when you arrive. Or in summertime you come back home and you know that flowers in the garden were taken care of, because neighbors took initiative to help you. This is a gesture, you value really much. We did also things in order to be open. One evening in the middle of December and 6 weeks after we moved in, we invited three closest neighbor families to our house to have some Danish typical before Christmas drinks and cookies. It was nice “ice-breaker” and cozy evening. And our fridge was quickly filled up with moose meat – invited guests here don’t bring flowers to hosts, but 1 kg of meat. I am vegetarian, but Otis was really happy as he before our move dropped his attempt to become vegetarian. 

Another episode, which was important for us, happened the Christmas evening. We did choose to stay here for Christmas against of traditions. We have a small family – my parents are not alive anymore, and Otis has only his mom far away in Ukraine. So we were sitting alone, but suddenly somebody knocked on the door. It was one of our neighbors, who came to us with a little present for us. He excused because presents were not wrapped in, but we were so impressed by the thoughts of care about us, especially when you are new here, sitting alone Christmas Eve. 

On the other hand we had a naïve idea about, how fantastic it would be – to just open the door and let our dogs run free around the house. When you have lived most of your life in apartment, and finally you got your garden, it was really exciting to think about that freedom for dogs. But there was no fence around garden, and it took about just one week for our dogs to find out, that there were parts of moose (bones, head etc.) hang up in the trees by neighbor in order to attract wild foxes closer, so he could shoot them. Of course, no way, that our dogs can run and eat that old meat, as they also get sick of it. And as it became obvious later on, there were many old rests of moose bones around in the area in the forest. Every time our dogs came proud with new found bone, we had to take it from the and place up in the tress, which was not easy, as our dogs are tall enough to reach bones up in the trees. 

We know, that many wonder about the financial side of our adventure. What do we do for living in this place? We will touch that side of our life in the next blog.

The road from the first house in Dalsland to the second one in Jämtland was unusually long. Those 700 km took almost 12 hours and as longer we drove up north, the longer distance between populated areas became. It was a feeling, that we were slowly leaving the civilization.

Reindeers were standing just on the road, while moose could be seen along the way, and the road itself became unpaved, before we reached the last destination. It was a long trip through endless forests, and during that trip you could feel, how far away you got. After many hours of driving we see streetlights and we understand, that we have arrived to Storsjö Kapell or Big Lake village. A little village, surrounded by almost endless forests and with mountain views in all directions. It was easy enough to find the house, because we saw couple of pictures, but we were a little bit surprised because the house was located relatively close to another house. And there was another surprise, when we went inside the house. We were offered to stay for one night in that house and we were told where to find the keys. “To be surprised” in this context doesn’t mean, that we got the keys to the cozy and beautiful house with unique location. It was almost the opposite meaning. Inside there was a strong smell of old house, unused for a long time. At the same time it was almost impossible to move around in the house, as it was filled up with old furniture and tones of books everywhere. Obviously the house had a function of a warehouse, where one family collected and stored things from several generations. In any case it was not a cozy country house, as we imagined. 

Furniture of any kind, huge floor standing sound speakers from 80’th, kitchen equipment, cloths, panels from the old shower cabin and, again, tones of books. Water in the house had a brownish color and taste of iron, because nobody used the house for long time. The larder room and kitchen were filled with old food; bottles and many other things with suspect fluids inside them, so we were afraid even to touch them. But, on the positive side, there was an old beautiful wood-burning stove in the kitchen, and it turned to be very efficient, as we discovered later on. 

We made some space for our sleeping pads between furniture and when we woke up in the morning, we knew both, that we will choose this house, despite all those less positive feelings about it. Partly because of that real wild, untouched and tough nature you can find in Jämtland region. That type of nature, you obviously won’t find many other places in Europe anymore. Maybe in Finland. And partly because we wanted to face some challenges in our life, both physical and mental. If you choose to make such an extreme move in your life, as we did, than it’s worth to get as far away from your “comfort zone” with well known surroundings and habits, so you can experience everything in a new way – with widely opened eyes and all senses activated. There are long distances to anything from this location. Very long distances. It’s challenge to realize, that the closest bigger supermarket is located 70 km away and the road to it can be closed due to extreme weather conditions in wintertime. The other “closest” supermarket is about 164 km away. Though there is a little food store nearby offering the basic food for survival. Forget organic food and fresh milk and be prepared to cook something with canned corn and tomatoes instead of fresh vegetables. You learn how to ferment and how to plan a huge shopping lists for your trips to supermarkets and these “skills” will be described later on. The closest veterinarian is also far away – this was also taken in consideration before our move. In some critical cases and hard injuries the only solution would be to find a local hunter to shoot your dog. But on the opposite and positive side you won’t find in neighborhoods wired fences, which can be dangerous for a dog running with speed up to 60 km/h. Here there is no traffic on roads and most of the time our dogs live close to the nature and what reminds about their original natural environment in Russia. These factors were also important in our considerations. Another positive side of this location is winter season.  Yes – it can be really cold here, but in our opinion you will find the perfect winter here. Even with very low temperature the air is dry here and this makes you feel better and warmer in your cloths than in a humid air. Winters are long here and lakes are covered with strong ice. Wintertime is a separate chapter in this blog and will be covered later on. 

All those things were prioritized in our considerations and there was not doubt for us in saying yes to this place. Bad smell in the house will disappear as well as taste of iron the water, and all old furniture will be moved into the separate room, so we could get some space for living. And of course now we could have a reason to buy a bigger SUV car – our little city car wouldn’t be efficient enough here. 

Back in Copenhagen we had one month for packing everything down, find a place for storage of main part of our things and to decide, what we could bring with us for winter. At that time we were still thinking about living in motorhome during summertime, so we had to really be careful with amount of things, we should take with us. We had to find some place to store our things in Denmark. Obviously there is high demand on storage space in Denmark and you can find plenty of self-storage hotels around Copenhagen. But in rapidly growing market prices were too high, while storage conditions were far away from our expectations. So it was not an easy task to find something safe and affordable. Fortunately one of my former colleagues had an empty room in the basement, dry and safe. And ready for use. We were really lucky to have that chance coming at the right moment. It was naïve of us to believe that we could “pack all our life” in the roof box of our car. My cousin and her husband live in Swedish city Gothenburg and they did so much for us during the whole relocation phase. We could officially register our Swedish address with them, so we could purchase our “Swedish” car and the huge 500 liters roof box mounted on top of it. Despite of that volume we had to drive between Copenhagen and Gothenburg many times. The evening before the last night in our apartment we realized, that we couldn’t have rest of our belongings in the car, so we had to drive an extra tour to Gothenburg and back again early next morning. Next day we had to clean the apartment and pack the car for the last time. And at that last moment I found out, that I had 10 pairs of high heel shoes left in the wardrobe. The last thing you really need in the wilderness is high heel shoes. But there was no choice – they had to go with us in the car, filled with lots of other things. It was a really comic situation – after the apartment was officially handed over to new owners we were running around the car, pressing our socks and underwear in the empty spaces under seats and dogs’ bed.  The new owner of apartment ran down on the street, saying that I forgot something. It was Orest’s hunting cap – the man put cap on Orest’s head and said: “Good luck”.  We were laughing on it afterwards, but we looked like a gypsy family, who packed their camp in a rush and were on the way to a new location – without any idea what the future will bring us. And basically it was in real.

Our little family consists of my husband (Otis), myself (Lykke) and our two dogs. Last year we chose to make a “jump” and move far away from central Copenhagen and find a place to live somewhere in the northern Sweden. That decision was a real surprise for many, but our closer friends knew it well that we talked about moving into the nature for many years. Probably for the last 10 years we had talked many times about making a decision, but we were always stopped by questions like “how?”, “where?” and “how will we earn for living?”. The answers / thoughts about the last question will be touched in the separate blog. 

But one day it was absolutely clear for us, that if we shall do it, it has to be now. My husband quitted his job as geophysicist at Maersk Oil without having any other alternatives. It was naive to think that it should be easy to find another job in growing sustainable energy industry after 8 years of work in one of the best and respectful Danish companies, but the reality turned to be different. And after every refuse of job applications the dream about making decision and moving into the wild became stronger and stronger. About myself – I am a visual artist graduated from the Danish Royal Academy of fine arts in Copenhagen. And as it is well known, artists don’t have guaranteed and stabile earnings. So I had to work more and more at that period, and suddenly my flexible job at Danish Design museum became full time job. Our two dogs, Russian sight hounds (borzoi) – not an easiest breed – generally they had it fine, but no doubts that they would love to have more of outdoors life than we could give them. 

Basically, we were 4 individuals, who actually didn’t have much fun in that situation, but it was not the feeling of sadness and life failures as one could expect, but rather feeling of being thankful to be able to clearly feel and see, what we want and don’t want in our life. And a great feeling of satisfaction because of taking the situation in your hands and acting according to that taken decision. 

And one day, while I was cycling home after job, I got a such clear view of the situation, that I “flew” into the apartment and said, that we put our apartment on sale and we are going to move. At that time Otis started at one job, which was far away from the dream job, but still with time it could have become an interesting one. But the decision was taken and in a short time the apartment was officially put on sale. It was hard to keep feelings for the moment after the contract with real estate agency was signed, because we loved that apartment and it was really beautiful one and only one of its kind. A light Copenhagen apartment, with high cellings in the middle of the cozy Østerbro district. Even if it was hard to leave it, there were no hesitations about the taken decision, but of course we had strong fears of becoming homeless and without any guarantees – only money in bank and shaky plan for the future. The sale of apartment took only 12 days. And we got 2 months to find a new place to move to. 

The fact that we ended up so far north was actually a coincidence. We travelled a lot in Sweden for years, hiking and canoeing, and we had a clear idea about, where we preferred to live. We were in love with Dalsland region, with its numerous lakes and channels system connecting those lakes. We travelled in the region only in summer time and we had many positive memories from there. The first thing we had to do, it was to make a search for a place via our network and social media. I participated in several art exhibitions in Sweden as well I have family, living in Sweden, so we had a hope, that via those channels we could reach opportunities to rent a summerhouse or country house for a shorter period. I mentioned a “shorter” period, because we had a naive and unclear idea to travel in RV Camper during summer months. An idea that died shortly after its birth, because it was just unreal in our case, as we realized that later on. Back to the network – we got really great response on our request via Facebook and obviously there are many out there, who have country houses, which are not used in wintertime. We chose two houses, which seemed to be something for us, and which we wanted to visit and see in real. One house was in Dalsland (mid Sweden), and another in the northern Sweden, in Jämtland region. The “Dalsland” house was really what we wished (in our fantasy). Beautiful classic old Swedish house, located in the forest, but, when we came to the place, we hardly could imagine ourselves living in it. It was end of September, and we were afraid of winter without snow in that relatively southern region, what could make winter days even darker and with lots of mud. In addition the house was located 12 km from the midsize province town Åmål. Northing wrong with that town, but both of us got the felling of lacking some real challenges, because of having “civilization” just around the corner. It was the feeling that with the same success we could just had moved to some island in Denmark. Unsatisfied with that, we drove further up north to Jämtland region, where the second house was waiting for us. And where we chose to stay. In the next blogs I will describe the house far away and in the region, known as the coldest place in Sweden, about little village and people living there. Also about our move from Copenhagen, which can be compared with gypsy relocation.