Because River Västerdalälven Is There
After forty years of leaving home to show people the world, I am building a basecamp in the place my mother came from
The Night in the Teepee
Years ago, when I lived in Särna, I tried a version of this without really knowing it was a version of this. I took executive groups out into the mountains and let them sleep in a kåta, a reindeer herder’s tent. We had a local chef who came out and cooked proper food from the area, really good food, the sort of food that makes sense in that landscape, and then night came, smoke, cold, darkness, snow maybe, and suddenly all the titles and money and business language were not much help. They had brought the wrong gear, of course. Too thin sleeping bags, wrong clothes, no real understanding of what cold does during a long night. So they froze their butts off.
For me it was as usual. I have slept more than five thousand nights in a tent. I know the sounds, the small discomforts, the way cold finds its way in at four in the morning, the way you wait for light. But for them it was something else. In the morning some of them looked as if they had been away for a week, not one night. More than one said it had changed something. Not because suffering is noble, because most of the time it is just suffering, but because one night outside their ordinary lives had given them a different view of those lives. That interested me. I liked hosting them. I liked taking people out and showing them that another way of living exists, even if only for a night. Then that stopped. Divorce. Life does that.
Forty Years of Leaving
I have spent most of my adult life going away. That is what people know me for. I disappear somewhere, sometimes for months, and if things go well I come back with a film, a lecture, a story, maybe a book, often tired eyes, sometimes frostbite, always new friends and another country sitting somewhere inside me. Siberia, Yemen, Patagonia, Greenland, the Kolyma, the icecap, deserts, rivers, villages, tents, borders, mistakes. I have spent forty years trying to show people the world by leaving home.
Lima Basecamp is a strange reversal of that. I am still travelling, I am writing this while on the road toward Greece, and I have no intention of stopping. This is not a final chapter. I hate that idea. But it is different. Instead of always asking people to follow a story out into the world, I am building a place where they can come into mine.
Not Lima in Peru
Lima is not random. Not Lima in Peru, but Lima in Dalarna, along Västerdalälven, where my mother grew up. The house belonged to my aunt. When she was in care, I started coming back there with the girls, and we skied, walked, spent time there in winter and summer, and slowly I realised the place had begun to matter again. My brother asked if I wanted to take it over, and by then I already knew the answer. My mother came from there. My aunt lived there. My daughters had started making their own memories there. It was not just a house anymore.
DALARNA
Every time I pass Västerdalälven, something happens. I grew up along that river, and I suppose people who have grown up along a river understand this without needing a long explanation. Once, on the way up, I sent a photo of Västerdalälven to Johan, a friend of mine, former professional footballer and now Dana’s trainer. He answered in capital letters: DALARNA. That was it. That was the whole explanation.
Three Nights, At Least
So now I am building Lima Basecamp. I still do not fully know how to run it, and I will need someone good to manage it when I am away, because I am away a lot. The girls have school. Life is complicated, money is complicated, old houses are complicated. But I know what I do not want. I do not want a one-night stopover because everything closer to Sälen was full. I do not want people arriving late, sleeping, leaving early and never noticing where they were. I think three nights is the minimum. Otherwise you have not arrived.
I want people to come in and feel warmth first. Then the view. The kitchen. The balcony. The windows open. The stone island. The wood. The sauna. The beds. The sense that somebody has thought about how it feels to come back after a day outside. It should be comfortable, even a bit luxurious, but not in a silly way. You should be able to hang wet clothes, cook properly, sleep well, sit down, breathe out, wake up and want to go outside again.
Not a Museum
There will be traces of my life there, of course. Yemen, Patagonia, Siberia, Greenland. A room, a photograph, a detail, maybe a map, something from the places that shaped me. But not a museum. I do not want guests walking around as if they have entered a shrine to my expeditions. That would be awful. I want them to feel they have entered a good house made by someone who has been cold, tired, hungry, amazed, lost, helped and happy in many parts of the world.
The guests I imagine are not only one kind of people. Couples, yes. A love nest, why not. Small families. People who want to ski, downhill or cross-country. People training for Vasaloppet. People who want to walk, cycle, sit by the river, write, film, think, or disappear from their ordinary routines for a while. Creative people. Tired people. People who have enough money to choose a place because they actually want to be there, not because it was the cheapest bed left. People who want comfort, but not emptiness. People who want a house with a bit of soul.
Taking People Out
And for some of them, the house can be the beginning. I can take people out. That is the part I understand best. A forest walk around Lima. Bullberget for the view. A winter day on the mountain. Cross-country skiing. Downhill skiing nearby. Dog sledding if it can be arranged. Snowmobile tours for those who want that. Or something longer, three, four, five, six days of expedition training toward the mountains, summer or winter. Not as a fake adventure package. Not as me standing there playing the great explorer. Just going out, letting the weather and the place decide some of it, telling stories when they belong, sharing what I know when it is useful.
I have been to over 120 countries, I think, though I still need to sit down and count properly. Forty years of expeditions gives a person plenty of stories, but also plenty of mistakes. And mistakes are often more useful than success. I want people to feel more comfortable outside. In forest, snow, wind, on skis, in a tent, on a mountain.
For Eva and Dana
The house is also for Eva and Dana, whether they understand that fully now or not. Their grandmother grew up here. Their great-aunt lived here. They have skied here, laughed here, slept here, complained here, probably been bored here too, which is also part of it. Maybe they can learn something from the business. How to host. How to take responsibility. How money comes in and disappears again. How much work there is behind something that looks simple from the outside.
What If Nobody Cares?
Of course I am afraid. What if nobody cares? What if I have run my course? What if people no longer want what I have to offer? What if the house stands there, beautiful and empty, while I am somewhere else pretending I am not worried? That is possible. It would be stupid to pretend otherwise.
But I would rather try to build something that means something than create another anonymous rental house with nice photos, white sheets, ten adjectives and no soul. Airbnb may be the platform. The house has to be something else. It has to be a house near Västerdalälven where people arrive and stay long enough to notice where they are.
A Canoe, Or a Boat
And as soon as possible I need to get a canoe. Or a boat. Because Västerdalälven is there.
Reading about it just makes me feel that it’s a wonderful place to be…to just ‘be’.