About me
"THE GIRL WITH THE TENT"
I'M A SWEDISH ADVENTURER, EXPEDITION GUIDE, PRODUCT DEVELOPER, CO-FOUNDER OF ADVENTURE STORIES AB, SENIOR UX DESIGN CONSULTANT, CONTENT CREATOR, PROJECT MANAGER AND LIVSNJUTARE LIVING IN ÅRE AND PART TIME IN A TENT AND MY SELF-BUILT DIGITAL NOMAD-VAN CALLED iVAN (DUH).
Simply put: I'm all about passion - for being outside, to create things, to inspire and get inspired and to be holistically present! I'm a woman of great curiosity. From the outside it might seem as though I have a super split personality. But in reality it all comes down to 3 things: mindfulness, curiosity and doing things that make me naturally high every day - preferably outside!
This has lead to a multi-combo kind of lifestyle all about creativity, adventures and the outdoors.
Growing up my life was all about elite sports and physical activities, psychology, designing my own things, watching Animal Planet and Discovery Channel, dreaming of exotic, rough, insecure, challenging, ice-cold places and wanting to become a pro street dancer. Two weeks after high school and fullfilling all those promising great dreams of mine, life took a completely different turn and gave me physical trauma.
Since then people around me have been fascinated. "How is she bedbound, kidnapped from her greatest passions and physically hurting yet so happy and driven all the time?" Adventure was all about attitude already then, but to be honest I was fascinated too. I saw my body (as I see life) as a super fun experiment to find the perfect formula to solve all those problems and struggles every day that would make me come back, maybe even better than ever, and I learnt and practiced everything I could come across about the human body and nature. The timing was perfect to study, so I studied a lot, long, hard, loved it and finished off an engineering master, some psychology, innovation and extra design courses, started my first company Coclou and designed an innovative design protected and supported product.
Since then I've not only done a physical comeback and picked up snowboarding, surfing, wakeboarding, kitesurfing, skateboarding longboarding, marathon, trail running, street dance, yoga and heaps of adventure training. But I've also become a senior UX design consultant, been blogging for Outside Magazine and Rawness, been collabing as an influencer with different outdoor brands, become a certified adventurer and Swedish mountain guide (fjälledare), worked as an expedition guide at Expeditionsresor, started my own company Adventure Stories (previously with Malin and Lisa), travelled the world for snowboarding, surfing and most of all for long adventures, slept in a tent 50-200 nights every year, rebuilt a van (iVan) for my long-lived digital nomading lifestyle, and I parked it in the Swedish mountains Åre where I'm based today.
You could say I'm always on workation! Or always on vacation? I'm not sure hehe! But I do know that I only do things I love doing.
I've learnt a lot over the years. However, my greatest challenges were never the physical ones. But about how I've worked mentally to stay high despite those physical challenges and adventures has functioned as my greatest tool to design the lifestyle of my dreams - and to be able to live it. My greatest mission is to make it contagious, to inspire others to become their better selves and better friends/partners/teamplayers/workers, to open eyes and minds to try out some dreams, to inspire people to see that the outside does matter too (hehe), to inspire for more spontaneity and adventure (of course), to be that lifestyle coach who plants a seed that hopefully starts to grow, and to do it environmentally friendly too. My secret? Just doing something. It doesn't matter what I do or if I have a plan, but I'm completely sure of one thing - that if I don't do anything, then, well, nothing will obviously happen. Nothing.
Adventure isn’t hanging on a rope off the side of a mountain (well, maybe sometimes hehe). Adventure is an attitude that we must apply to the day to day obstacles of life – facing new challenges, seizing new opportunities, testing our resources against the unknown and in the process, discovering our own unique potential.
Move your ass and your mind will follow.
Useless facts and talents
I was born restless in Uppsala, Sweden into a family of five.
Since then I've...
* moved 22 times
* been homeless "by choice"
* have lived as a nomad and still do 8 months each year
* traveled to 57 countries
* lived outside Philly for 2 years in my early teens
* lived outside for 220 nights last year without even "knowing"
* stopped eating animals (plant based) when I was 18
* got into yoga, meditation and personal development when I was 18 (2003)
* dreamt of surf, adventure, dance, design, Nat Geo and Antarctica when I grew up
* inheriting most things as a child made me gather shit and things that I found to build my own toys, sew my own clothes, make my own games, create my own interior and just being generally creative
* when I was 5 I started practicing track and field, and growing up I also had dance, soccer, floorball, basketball, tennis, and piano simultaneously and on high or elite level as my greatest interests
* today I do functional training, stoic and adventure training, touring, yoga, cross training, trail running, street dance, snowboarding, surfing, longboarding, marathon, spontaneous adventures, planned adventures and everything else I come across
* reached beep test level 14 when I was 18
* have my medals and trophies saved in a crammed IKEA-bag
* honored with MVP in soccer in USA
* first woman in the world to travel around Iceland on a longboard (skate, unsupported)
* won Salve's obstacle race on TV -97
* 5th best woman in the world on minesweeper (expert level)
* ran my first marathon solo on a cold and windy January morning after drinking wine and eating popcorn a week before ACL surgery (knee)
* won my first snowboard comp (park) I ever entered
* won my first wave SUP comp I ever entered
* paddled from Nordkap to Lofoten in a sea kayak with a tent (5 weeks, 1300 km)
* bicycled solo from Nordkap to Lofoten for rehab 5 weeks after ACL surgery with a tent (3 weeks, 1400 km)
* been part of developing a product that won red dot design award
* made my first own clothing line when I was 20
* own a patent to a self-developed product
* my first company was handmade sustainable bow ties and got articles in King Magazine i.a.
* been an inspirational speaker for economic student at the uni, at business events and on misc sports and adventure occasions
* was a blogger for Outside Magazine for 5 years
* have a master in mechanical engineering with technical design, 4 other educations and a countless amount of courses
* when I started studying engineering I didn't even know what it was, I just loved the studies
* studied psychology and physiology on my summer vacays and free time since middle school, so much that it's equivalent to a theoretical master in both
* worked in an innovation incubator for a year while finishing my uni studies
* have an IQ at 136
* have had 7 jobs simultaneously, just to enable a living in the mountains
* can roll my stomach
* can shake my eyeballs without blinking
* every year I give parts of my savings to better causes driven by companies, friends, local heroes or my own charity projects
* today I work with integration
* my happiest period in life was when I was physically bedbound for 5 years (and will probably never be as happy again
* have never felt rooted
* have always been driven by passion
* everything I ever did was made by passion
