Stockholm, Thursday – but always Norrland in the heart.
“In Sweden there is a rich province with an abundance of everything. With ore and forest and rapids and with mosquitoes and pitepalt. ”
The year was 1970 when Umesonen Hasse Burman recorded the Norrland hit song – “We moved int, we moved int, int even in the imagination. Here they are much better, so move here with the industry. ”
I was four years then and it would be an exaggeration to say that this was some kind of soundtrack to my upbringing in a Västerbotten mill.
But the message about how Norrland was depopulated at the same time as the region’s riches helped to build Sweden richly, it was a well-known melody. And the slogan We moved in, I even think that I – like many others – wore a green rock button for many years.
Now I became one who moved almost as fast as I could. First south in Sweden and then south in Europe.
But in my feeling of feeling at home anywhere there is still always somewhere and that is Norrland
(Or yes, there are more somewhere, but we can save them for another chronicle)
In recent times, this has become extra clear.
I think so began when Boden’s municipal council jubilantly presented the new initiative to build a steel plant in the city that will make fossil-free steel with the help of hydrogen. The municipal council said that this was the biggest thing that had happened since Boden’s fortress was built.
And I understand that.
Or maybe it started already when I was in Skellefteå a few years ago to talk to people about the new electric car battery factory that was planned.
Most people were healthily skeptical of the whole project, it was not certain that they would get the funding together – but if, yes, if it did, then the whole city would be transformed. “Maybe we will be the new electric city” some dreamed and admitted that there was already some kind of Klondike atmosphere in “shtaan”.
Lule, Kiruna and Gällivare will also get their fair share of industrial investments in the cluster that some have begun to call the green industrial revolution in the north.
Now, of course, legitimate questions are asked about where all the green electricity should come from? Another question is where should all people come from?
When investing on over 700 billion is planned in Norrbotten and Västerbotten and many thousands of new jobs are created, well then the workforce must partly come from the south according to the Swedish Public Employment Service.
“We have to work with our attractiveness,” an employment agent told P4 Västerbotten. “And maybe start a campaign”
Yes, but then I have a suggestion for a campaign song:
“We moved int, we moved int – no they e nothing to reason about – we moved int.”
Source: ICELAND NEWS