THE THOUGHTS PER

It's the flaws that make her perfect

I was once asked to write a text on the theme "Why I love Skellefteå". As if it was something obvious. For me it was absolutely not. In fact, I spent much of my upper teenage years in the late 1990s wishing I was from here.

There were no jobs and it felt like the only thing that existed in people's heads was hockey. There were still bands playing live occasionally, and that was fine, but a sense of a dying city slowly starving to death was palpable. One of several pieces of evidence was the newly built apartment building on Morö Backe, which we had moved into a few years earlier and which had been sealed after the bankruptcy of the housing association. It would take time before anyone lived there again, and even longer before the city's population decline slowed and then actually reversed. But in the years around the turn of the millennium and throughout the 2000s, it felt like we were suffering from a collective depression and total paralysis.

Seeing a crane was almost an exotic experience. You could count the number of fine dining restaurants (i.e. anything above hamburger chains and pizzerias) on one hand, if that hand was on a person who had accidentally cut off most of their fingers on a band saw. And if you did go out for dinner on a Tuesday night, you were guaranteed to be asked "Oh, who are you celebrating with?". I didn't have any money anyway, so it was out of the question.

I got fed up and left. And came back, more by chance than desire. But now I had a job and a Wayne's Coffee had opened, which felt slightly dizzying. It slowly started to feel like ice cream. I bought a house and appreciated living in a place where basically anyone has the opportunity to do so, but I may not have held that as the main reason to love Skellefteå.

"Why I love Skellefteå." The title of the otherwise empty Word document almost mocked me. Obviously, I had chosen to live here and as far as I could tell, most things indicated that I liked it. When I thought about it, there was nowhere I would rather be - apart from the occasional trip to bigger cities or warmer beaches. But why? Nice people and café chains can be found everywhere and many cities have more to offer than Skellefteå. There was no shortage of holes to fill here.

Then it hit me. That's just it! Skellefteå has flaws and that makes her perfect. It's not a finished city yet, it's a place that we can shape just as we want - if we want to. If you're just a person who can put up with the fact that everything isn't finished yet, you have all the prerequisites to be part of an incredible journey. And if you are the kind of person who wants to contribute and improve, you are free to do so. What might be seen as everyday phenomena in many other places has an impact here. And conversely, many things that would be impossible elsewhere - precisely because there is no margin to develop - are perfectly feasible here. We would see several proofs of that in the following years, "En flotte", which attracted Sweden's artist elite to do concerts on a makeshift float in the Skellefte River, is a great little example.

It struck me that Skellefteå and spring winter - my favorite of seasons - have one thing in common to love:

“What we long for most is ahead of us. It sprouts and grows, it grows and we get to be part of it - either as supporters or doers”

Think about this: Is it more fun to build the hut or just to sit in it when it is finished?

Text: Per Strömbro

Photo: Tilda Olofsgård