The light shines within all people

Sometimes I try to explain to the children what Skellefteå looked like when I was a child. How you had to scratch the car window from the inside, how there were two TV channels and how you had to go to the library to "google". They look at me like I'm telling them about the Stone Age.

"But Dad," says one of them, "everything is here now. Things happen all the time."
And I realize they're right.

They are growing up in a city that feels like it's going somewhere. A place that seems to be stretching itself a little.

Sure, sometimes you hear that it's tough up here, that maybe the future is somewhere else?

But you don't realize that when you walk through town on a winter evening and see the lights in the windows. Behind them, people are writing, building, dreaming, planning the next thing. There is talking, testing, dreaming and fixing everywhere. It's as if the whole town has decided not to wait for the future, but just get started. It's as if the whole of Skellefteå is developing together - just a little quieter than the big cities.

I love that. That mix of northern stubbornness and curiosity. The low-key, safe. That thing that doesn't make much of a fuss, but always finds a way forward. That we sort of lean forward, despite waiting darkness, snowdrifts and ice.

I see it in the curiosity of small businesses, in the neighbor's stubborn belief in the next hockey season, in the young people who are already planning their lives here.

My children say they want to stay here. I believe them. And I believe they will be even better off than we were. Because the light here - it's not just in the windows. It's in the people.

Text: Mats Bergqvist

Photo: Patrick Degerman