Study Away: Sustainability in Sweden Blog

Day: June 18, 2025

Walking as Practice

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Students walking through a forest clearing with a dog that went home at the end.

(Post and Image provided Evan Meyer)

This week we began our art project in the Singö Skola forest. I was part of a group working on using yarn to represent the mycelium networks that connect the roots of the trees together. We want to emphasize the community that the trees make up as well as the community that we make together as people. Other groups are working on various other projects such as signs made of bark and a bat house.

After lunch, we took a walk with an artist named Anna Viola Hallberg, from the not-for-profit Björkö Konstnod or BKN. At the beginning of the walk, we picked up a straggler: a chocolate lab named Dracul. He stuck with our group the entire way through. We walked though fields, forests, and animal trails, finally reaching the tip of the island’s peninsula. A few of us even decided to go swim in the Baltic Sea. It was very cold!

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Second day at Väddӧ Folkschool!

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various groceries and bags sitting on a kitchen island
Our Swedish grocery haul sitting on the community kitchen counter.

(Post and Image provided by Hope Frye)

Today was our first full day here at the Väddӧ Folkschool, and it was very chill! The weather was not great, as it was pretty cold and rainy in the afternoon, causing our meeting that was supposed to occur then with a local environmentalist wellness educator, Malin Ericksson, to be delayed until Friday. This gave us plenty of free time in the morning, until we met for class in the afternoon! My roommate, Olivia, and I spent that time going grocery shopping at the local ICA supermarket, which was just about 20 minutes away by walking. We used this opportunity to plan and buy enough food for all the meals and dinners we will have to make while we are here at the folkschool!

During class, we were focusing on doing our readings, but this time, we read for about 45 minutes, near each other, and focused on whatever we found interesting, whether from the class reading book, All We Can Save, or from one of the books in our “Sister Forest Library,” then after that time we came back and shared about what we had found interesting from our individual readings. I only read from All We Can Save, and I focused mostly on reading the poem “Dead Stars” from it, which I highly recommend. After that part of class, we then focused on brainstorming ideas for our community art project in Singӧ, in which, I was with a group that mainly focused on building bat houses to give to the local community.


Overall it was a very chill and relaxing day, especially after our really nice, but long experience camping; and I’m glad to be able to stay in some really nice dorms!

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The Free Weekend Experience

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nine students stand having conversations around a wooden kitchen island with various dishes and drink options
Smorgasbord dinner in Väddö.

Post and Image provided by Jack Summers)

Hello friends and families!
This weekend was our scheduled free-time away from classes to explore Sweden as much as we wanted! A few of us decided to go back to Stockholm for a day to see more of the city. We spent a lot of our time eating good food and exploring beautiful streets in Gamla Stan (the old city), while also searching up and down for a good thrift store (we found a few…). Additionally on our way to dinner we stumbled upon a pro-Palestine protest, featuring Greta Thunberg! After we saw that, we had dinner at a fantastic ramen place, and then returned home to Väddö.

On our second free day we opted for a more laid back day in and around the folk school. A few of us visited a local farm for lunch. Later, for dinner we gathered as a group to have a Smorgasbord (traditional Swedish meal consisting of a variety of hot
and cold meats, hors d’oeuvres, etc.) dinner, which ended up being a huge success!

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