Study Away: Sustainability in Sweden Blog

Tag: Sweden

Time in the forest

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a student stands with a short tube tool inserted in the ground in a forest that has been thinned, surrounded by green
Planting pine trees after a recent harvest.

(Post provided by Paige Harsevoort, Image by Tara Bal)

Today was full of adventure! We started off the morning by loading up the vans and traveling to the home of Örjan Grönlund, a family forest landowner and a Sustainability Coordinator for Mellanskog, a forest owners association. We learned so much about his life and how he manages and maintains his forest. The thing that stood out to me most was a quote from him, “I wish I had more time. If I had more time, I wouldn’t have to pay people to do the job for me.” It stuck out to me because it made me realize that there are so many things he could have said he wanted more of (such as more time to plant more trees), but he chose time. It reminded me that we need to appreciate and cherish what we have and take care of the things we care about.


After visiting, he gave us a tour of his family’s house (which was amazing), then we got back in the vans and drove toward the Baltic Sea for lunch. We ate on the cliffs, watching a gorgeous scene of laughing gulls and frothy waves. Although it was quite windy, it was nice to have such a good view for lunch!

Once lunch was over, we went back to the folkhogskola to sit with Simon Sjostrom, an artist that specializes in decomposing animals and radio waves. It was a very special experience to get to ask and answer questions and have good conversations with him. His works are unique pieces of life, death, and endless possibilities.


The day went by fast, and was full of good forest walks and conversations!

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Settling Into The Väddö Folkhögskola

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a view of a building with green space in front, a flagpole, streetlight, and a small statue of a ship
The Folkhögskola in Väddö has a lot of charm due to its rustic architecture and beautiful green spaces.

(Post and image provided by Reznor Kleber)

After disembarking from the Kolarbyn Eco-lodges our group took a 3 hour car ride to Väddö, a small village on the eastern side of Sweden. Sadly, it was quite a gloomy and rainy day so we were not able to go see the town, and instead settled into our rooms at the Folkhögskola (“Folk Highschool”, similar to a community college).


Each “dorm room” has two separate bed-rooms, equipped with a desk, TV, and, of course, a bed (a very comfy one I might add). After unloading bags and quickly freshening up from our couple days of wilderness-living, we met up for a group dinner of traditional Swedish meatballs. Following dinner was a short-but-sweet tour of the school and its facilities, before everyone, exhausted and full of food, headed back to the rooms for some much needed rest time.


The island of Väddö and this Folkhögskola are nice and homey and I can’t wait to see the town tomorrow!

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Enjoying Forest Learning

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students standing on a forest trail with a ecologist standing on plants in a pine forest
Students listening to our guest speaker, forest ecologist Sebastian Kirppu in the forest around Kolarbyn Eco-lodge.

(Post and Image provided by Courtney Hohnholt)

Michigan Tech students have a reputation for enjoying the outdoors and our time at Kolarbyn Eco-Lodge certainly proved that true. While we celebrated the many comforts and privileges provided by our hosts, there was a lot of old fashion labor that went into our adventure as well.  

Some of us were camping veterans and some had never slept outdooors in their lives, but every person tried their hand at wood chopping, building fires and tending them, and crafting meals with random ingredients, using odd tools, and cooking those meals over a campfire. All pitched in to carry wood, haul water from the stream-fed pump, heat water over the fire for washing dishes, chop the vegetables, stir the soup, innovate meals, sort the recycling, and tend fires while still finding time for high-quality art, forest exploration, lake and sauna enjoyment, and bonding in a peaceful setting.

We were visited by Sebastian Kirppu, a forest ecologist and nature educator, who described Sweden’s environmental past, current forest management policy, and the the threats Sweden faces in the onslaught of climate change.  He showed us an endangered species, the lesser rattlesnake plantain (Goodyera repens), the carnivorous plant, round-leaved sundew (Drosera rotundifolia), taught us about wood ants in Sweden, and described the ecology of the spruce and pine forest all around our camp.  We shared our lunch with him and invited him to come visit the Keweenaw. Kolarbyn Eco-Lodge is featured on the popular app, Calm, as a story about drifting off to sleep in the peace and beauty of the north woods.

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Camping at Kolarbyn

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Cooking over the fire with sleeping huts in the background in a forest.
Students warming water over the campfire at Kolarbyn.

(Post and image provided by Lauren Hemmeke)

We arrived at Kolarbyn on Sunday afternoon and met Malin, who was our host! Malin gave us a tour of the Kolarbyn Eco-lodge site and told us a little bit about the history, which you can also read more about at their website, https://kolarbyn.se/en/. Kolarbyn means “coal village” in Swedish, and the camp is based on an old charcoal burning village where men would go into the forest for months at a time to make charcoal. Malin showed us the huts where we would be sleeping, how to chop firewood, where to wash our dishes and get water from the steam, and how to ask the forest lady for permission to collect water from the spring! She emphasized the importance of treating the earth well in everything that we do here and being mindful of how our actions are impacting nature. 

After we finished our tour, it was time to make dinner. We had to chop our own firewood for the fire. We were provided with a variety of vegetables and ingredients for dinner, and we cooked our dinner over the fire that we made ourselves. 

After dinner, some of us headed to the sauna, which was floating on the lake. Some people went in the lake, but the water was really cold. After the sauna, we had a campfire down by the lake. Sunset was at about 10pm, but it never got very dark out. 

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Learning from Linnaeus

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a view of a botanical garden exhibit in Uppsala, Sweden with green plants, grass, trees, and gravel in the foreground
A unique part of the garden shaped like a tree, with the branches made of pea stone and the leaves made of plant specimens.

(Post and image provided by Grace Moeggenborg)

Today we had the amazing opportunity to explore the Uppsala University Botanical Garden (Linnaean Garden), a special piece of botanical and Swedish history! Founded in 1655 by a professor at Uppsala University, this garden was the first of its kind and was later redesigned and curated by Carl Linnaeus, an 18th century biologist and scientist who created the taxonomy system we now know. Each species was originally cultivated by Linnaeus and organized according to his logic. There are currently over 1,300 plant species in the garden!


We had plenty of time to meander through the garden, seeing peonies in bloom, a host of succulents, and a burgundy-leaved beech tree. We visited the Orangeri, where warm-weather plants are kept inside for the winter and even got to see still-thriving laurel trees in pots, planted by Linnaeus himself! Afterwards, we visited the greenhouse, which was filled with a variety of tropical and desert plants, including a few breathtaking species of carnivorous plants.


Due to the chilly weather, we decided to use the afternoon for exploration of Uppsala or time for homework in between our field trips!

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Trees and Landscapes in Gamla Uppsala

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a group of smiling students and teachers sitting in front of a large grassy mound with a wooden fence right behind them
Our group photo in front of the king’s mounds at Gamla Uppsala, Sweden

(Post provided by Madison Olar, Image by Maddie Green)


Hej family and friends! Today was actually Sweden National Day and it was exciting to see all of the pride that Swedes have in their country. To start off the day we went to the Uppsala Common Garden site where we were met by rows of paper birch trees. These trees were lined up in order with trees taken from the north to the south of Sweden and were part of an experiment. The purpose of this experiment was to see first hand the effects of our changing climate and it was a good use of science communication.

Later we moved on to Gamla Uppsala where we ate our snacks that we picked up at a grocery store on the way there. First we looked through the museum which had a lot of information about the mounds located on the land and the people who built them. The area was an important religious site for the Swedes and it was later discovered that the mounds were graves of the rulers and those of the ruling class. This was found out after an archaeological dig in 1846. After looking through the museum we had a snack break at a small cafe and had our first Friday Fika before walking through the mounds. We walked around the mounds and were stunned by how beautiful they were with the long grass blowing through the wind and all of the wild flowers that dotted the mounds. Then we attempted to take the picture shown above, but the somewhat strong winds were not behaving, so we asked someone to take our picture.

After we got back to the hotel we had a group dinner where we got to talk about our day and have some time to connect with each other.

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Kungshamn-Morga Nature Preserve

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a class photo of teachers and students posed smiling in front of oak trees
Our group photo in front of the ancient oaks at Kungshamn-Morga

(Post provided by Chloe Hnilica, Image by Maddie Green)

Hej! Today, the group left Stockholm and traveled to Uppsala! After eating one last delicious breakfast from the Clarion Amaranten Hotel in Stockholm, we then travelled to the Kungshamn-Morga nature preserve. With boxed lunches and backpacks on, we ventured into the forest.

Immediately, I was stunned by the beautiful landscape full of large trees and stunning water views. Wandering through the forests of Sweden brought me back to Houghton, as the ecology and wildlife is very similar. As we travelled through the nature preserve, we were able to practice our “forest forensics” to identify different aspects of the forest and what happened to make them that way. We also practice our field sketching skills along the way.


My favorite part of the day had to be the surprise we got on the way into the forest. About a half mile in, we started noticing some lovely “cow pies”, as one would say. Mentioned beforehand, Tara said there might be some cows on the property because they are let free to roam throughout the day, but I really had no idea what to expect. We continued on until we turned a corner to see about 20 cows just relaxing on the beach!! Bathing in the sun, the cows were purely unbothered by the pack of us that wandered past. It was one of the most incredible sights I have ever seen.


We ended the night by traveling the rest of the way to Uppsala and starting our stay at the Scandic Uplandia hotel!

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Museum Day in Stockholm

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Aft of the SS Sankt Erik boat with the Swedish flag flying next to the pier
One of the boats from the National Maritime Museum that students toured today with their choice of museums to visit.

(Post and Image provided by Carter Debruyn)

Today our group got to check out many of the museums in Stockholm. We started off the day by spending our morning in the Swedish history museum as a full group. The museum walked us through the history of Sweden as well as about the lives of Vikings. From there the group split up for lunch, and we then went to various museums as smaller groups. I went to the Viking Museum, the Spirit Museum, and the museum pier of the National Maritime Museum.

At the museum pier there were three ships that we could learn about. The largest boat to tour was the Sankt Erik icebreaker, Sweden’s first icebreaker. It was launched in 1915, then converted from burning coal to burning oil in 1958. It has been a museum ship since 1980, but is still floating and is taken out to sea once a year. My favorite ship that we toured was the lightship Finngrundet. It serves as a lighthouse for places where it is too deep for a conventional lighthouse but still shallow or dangerous enough to warrant a lighthouse being there. In the case of the Finngrund, it was stationed above shallow sand banks where ships used to frequently run aground. It was very cool to see the inside of these big ships and to be able to go up the lighthouse tower in Finngrundet. The third ship was the Minesweeper M20. It was a minesweeping ship built in Stockholm and launched in 1941 for World War II. We were not able to tour this ship as much because it was being prepared to be taken on its yearly trip out to sea. It was nice to have time to check out any museum we wanted and very cool to be able to go aboard these ships!

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Välkommen till Skansen

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Two seals are on a wooden platform above water looking at a man feeding them fish
The grey seals at Skansen eat a lot of fish each day! They are the largest seal found in Swedish waters.

(Post and Image provided by Ian Wolney)

Hej hej! Our group took a tour around the gardens of Skansen, an open-air museum located in Stockholm. Our tour guide, Bosse, was dressed in 18th century attire and took us on a wonderful tour. He gave us insights into the sustainability and cultural importance of gardening in the life of Swedish folk throughout history by showing us different gardens and buildings from different eras of Swedish history. I learned a lot about Swedish history and gardening, but more importantly, it made me really want to start a garden!

After our tour we were able to choose to do glassblowing or paper making. I chose to do glass blowing, and with my group we decided to make a blue and green vase with the opening looking like flower petals to sort of resemble the earth. Each person in my group took turns heating, rolling, shaping, pinching, and cutting the glass. We added baking soda in it to make bubbles in the glass too. Surprisingly, our vase turned out great!


During the afternoon we were able to spend the day exploring Skansen, which has everything from historical viking runes to Nordic animal zoos (like the seals above). Skansen had so much to see and do that I felt like it was impossible to experience everything, but after we were done I felt very satisfied with what I got to do.

Later in the evening, I went with a small group to go shopping in central Stockholm and get coffee. During the whole day we traveled using the subway and trams to get across the city, which was an exciting and new experience for me as I’ve never used public transportation at home. I noticed there’s not a lot of cars because they have so many public transportation options, reducing the country’s carbon impact. I hope one day we decide to create the same infrastructure at home so that we can reduce our impact on the environment and improve the walkability of our cities.

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The Nobel Prize Museum

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Students and faculty standing in front of Nobel Prize Museum
Michigan Tech students and faculty standing on the steps in front of the Nobel Prize Museum.

We had a slow start this morning, letting students acclimate to the time change, and met up in the afternoon to take a short ride on the Metro and walk together to Gamla Stan!  There we had a guided group tour at the Nobel Prize Museum. Tucked into the old city’s historic Börshuset (formerly the Stock Exchange building), the museum felt both modern and timeless. It’s not huge, but it was packed with inspiring stories that make you think about what it means to change the world.

What many students expressed surprise at was how personal everything felt. Laureates have dedicated their lives to their work, but there were handwritten notes and personal items from other aspects of their lives, allowing visitors to relate to people they’ve only ever read about in textbooks. The museum does an excellent job of making complex ideas feel accessible.  Many students wrapped up their visit with a fika (coffee break) at the café in the museum and then posed for pictures with some of the medals – pretty surreal!

The Nobel Prize Museum was 100% worth a stop. It was a wonderful reminder of the incredible things people can accomplish. Afterwards, the students got to explore the shops and have dinner in Gamla Stan.  Later, we met up again in the evening to do a small painting project in a park surrounded by large oak and beech trees.   Overall, a perfect start for our first official day in class in Sweden 😊

(Post by Tara Bal)

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