The every day life of a Swedish adventurer, expedition guide, founder of Adventure Stories, founder of Nordinary, Senior UX designer, content creator, product developer and livsnjutare living in Åre and part-time in a tent (50-200 nights/year).
Updated: Mar 20, 2019
For the second time I'm in Veckans Affärer. Me, Emma Svensson and Johanna Nygård were interviewed separately about out full-time adventure lifestyles. I honestly haven't read it myself since I've been out, well, adventuring and guiding since it got published haha. But still, Ulf (who was one of our guests up in Lofoten last summer) is a great man and inspiration himself so we had great fun as usual. Such an honor!
I remember when I spontaneously bought myself my first bday gift, a really memorable one, probably the most life changing one - a trip to Svalbard, alone, super excited, with no plans and no place to live. My sister surprised me with joining, we managed to find the perfect ”couch” at a guide’s house and headed out into the amazing glacier caves and white desert mountains with him. When I came back home I instantly left my destructive 9-5 routine to focus on the other squeezed adventurer part of my life that had taken up all my free time, got a phone call the next day and was asked to do some expedition guiding, and so I’d landed in a great opportunity to work with my passion and move back up to the mountains. And here I am living my dream.
But birthdays has also been my up and down day. One year I bought a van. Another year I went splitboarding on pow for the first time. Another I experienced a one year long terrible burnout. I’ve also been fully bedbound, been snowboarding with my dad with a strained foot, been sitting in a five hour traffic jam detour back home from work, five of them I’ve been studying for exams, and quite many of my birthdays I also realized how lonely I once was.
Today I feel awesome. Me and my bday-colleague baked a vegan cake for our team, and my gift to myself has been doing fun work at work, seeing friends, been sung to and doing functional fitness training and yoga. On this day I very often think of the lonely ones and I rather give back to the world than receive presents, but I’m overwhelmed by all the love and thankful that I don’t have to feel so alone anymore. I used to not appreciate this day one inch, but today I only feel joy. Thanks life for all the ups and downs, for that which makes us humble and grounded, for that which makes us appreciate our changes to the better so much. I love you all who fulfill my life in some way, who exist even though it’s on a distance, or who call me every now and then or on my birthday - with you in my life I could sit on an ice sheet up on the top of the earth all alone for days, months, years, but without ever feeling lonely. Thank you 💕
Updated: Mar 20, 2019
For Adventure Stories we've started a paid partnership with Everest (Stadiums brand and the biggest in Europe). It all started last summer when we "spontaneously" mashed together a pitch of a content idea we had from Lofoten with two American guys (@chandler_borries and @alex_s_heil) who we met on Sri Lanka a few months earlier. Stadium liked the idea and we brought two moving boxes filled with clothes and gear up to Lofoten to create content (photo and film) with clothes from Everest when we were up there for our two trips with Adventure Stories. It's been told that our content went viral internally within the company and we've seen our stuff published in display windows, counters, news letters and as internal presentation material within the organisation etc. So fun!! But most of all we're having great fun when working for and with them so our collab has turned into a bigger ambassadorship for 2019 within outdoor/adventure between Adventure Stories and Everest. We want to lift their brand as great product for more people, equalize them with other outdoor brands on the market for the universal adventure person, help them create better sustainability/environmental thinking in their product development process and inspire to a design that which men and above all women like, want and need today. They in turn want to support our work with getting more people out in nature and influencing them to an active lifestyle, and spread good and honest communication, marketing and product placement through us.
We've planned out quite a bit of different gigs for this next coming half year and last week I was down in Stockholm for a few days to shoot spring clothes for Everest together with Agnes Maltesdotter (@undanflykter) as photographer/filmmaker and me, Malin and Petter Ahldén as models. It's probably something I'll never do again - modelling all dressed in spring clothes in winter-freezing temperatures with my cold body made me look like I'd eaten a batch of blueberries for the weekend. It might not create great trust wither to shoot functional outdoor clothes with blue lips and a stiff body hahaha! Well, Agnes usually makes magic out of her work so I believe she will catch this as a pro as well! Here are some teaser snaps, I'll show you the result later!
(Frames from film by Agnes Maltesdotter)