A place for living, creating, culture & healing, situated in the heart of Sweden
BluesberryWoods
When mind, body and nature connect, we thrive
During the summer months, our little place in the heart of Värmland, Sweden that we call Bluesberry Woods, gets a steady flow of visitors from anywhere in the world. They spent one or a few days and nights in our small natural houses, which we built with natural, local and recycled materials. We also invite volunteers who live with us for longer times, to help us with our garden and natural houses. By moving away from a consumer-orientated life, we embrace simplicity in harmony with nature. When we create, we look at everything twice, to see how we can use something and for what purpose. We take care in making our own natural wine, jam and juice from the local berries. We make time for our guests, volunteers, friends and ourselves. We sometimes organize small international cultural events. And you can find us often around the fire, discussing all aspects of life.
Dennis & Ayet, artists and residents at Bluesberry Woods
“When you walk through the forest, you never say “Oh, how beautiful is it here, but that branch should be a bit lower and that shade of green a little darker”. Yet in modern living, people are obsessed with so-called perfection in their own homes, resulting in an endless effort to consume new items purchased from stores all over the world.
Also in the construction of modern homes, the obsession for perfection requires too many resources and leaves a incredible amount of waste.
We look foremost what nature offers – for free – and use it intuititively in our buildings. If it feels good, it’s good. Just like that walk through a beautiful forest.”
We encourage like-minded people, artists & craftsmen, alternative people and visionaries from anywhere to move into the region (between the towns Kil and Sunne in Värmland, Sweden) and be part of a growing community where people share cultural activities and knowledge how to create and maintain a living that values sustainable solutions. Much like a village but then spread out in the country side. We believe that diversity creates richness. We like to see more permaculture gardens, a practical center for sustainability and education, inspiring workshops and lectures.
Do you like to know more? Contact us at info@bluesberrywoods.com
"There'll be these pockets of light springing up in different parts of the world, and that these will be, in a way, invisible planets on this planet, and that as we, or the world, grow colder, we can take invisible space journeys to these different planets, refuel for what it is we need to do on the planet itself, and come back. And it's their feeling that there have to be centers now where people can come and reconstruct a new future for the world. These are all attempts at creating a new kind of school or a new kind of monastery. The concept of "reserves", islands of safety where history can be remembered and the human being can continue to function in order to maintain the species through a dark age. In other words, we're talking about an underground, which did exist in a different way during the Dark Ages among the mystical orders of the church. And the purpose of this underground is to find out how to preserve the light, life, the culture, how to keep things living. What we need is a new language, a language of the heart."
- From the movie "My Dinner With Andre" (1981)
Our Natural Houses
People ask me sometimes where I learned to build natural houses and structures. I tell them: in Kindergarten, when the table in front of me was full of small things to build with, things we found in the garbage or from nature. It was the playfulness that I can still remember, how much joy that gave me. This is the main approach when I build natural houses, intuitively but with enough common sense. I like to share the experience of building and living in a natural house, as it makes such a difference in how we experience life. In the last eight years we had the pleasure to have more than a thousand guests and almost a hundred volunteers whose eyes and senses were opened. - Dennis
The Art of Craft
Somewhere along the way I came to believe that “crafts” was something to look down upon, it didn’t have the same status as “art”. As if it was something you could only do as a hobby, in your spare time, or it was just something for older women. Somehow it felt like it had no value. As if it is too "primitive" and slow for the society we live in.
But what if crafts are something so inherently human. Something that connects humans through time and space, and the land that we live on. Something so grounding, so simple and so real. It feels like something ancient, something that is deep within my bones.
- Ayet
Healing by Living
It's hard to escape the importance of healthy food in our society. Normal healthy food doesn't seem to be good enough anymore, and the term "super healthy" has appeared as a label on many different foods. The association that people make is that if they eat healthy food, they become healthy, or at least healthier. Is there such a thing as healthy food? Let's look at spinach. If you would only eat spinach for months, you would not be healthier or healthy. You would most likely be in worse condition. What does that say about healthy food? That nothing can be healthy on its own. What makes our bodies healthy is the biodiversity of the food we eat. The more variety, the better.
It's the same with people. No human being can be healthy on its own. It's the healthy connections in a healthy environment that lays down the conditions to be healthy.
A lot of attention is given to the individual. Anything from mindfulness, meditation and yoga, to therapies, education and a various assortment of medical treatments. All have a goal to make you feel better, to make you feel happy, healthy and content. Imagine a person who has worked on himself the most, gaining this full level of health, physically and emotionally. Now put this person for three months in a group of very negative people, without the ability to leave. What do you think has happened to this person afterwards? He surely is doing worse, most likely much worse. What does that say about the environment? Everything! There’s no point of working on yourself, while living in an unhealthy and unnatural environment. Unfortunately people have become unaware of their toxic surroundings, because it’s everywhere. It’s not that people ignore the elephant in the room. The elephant IS the room.
Also the opposite is true: put a struggling person for three months in a group of caring, encouraging, compassionate people, and this person will feel more balanced afterwards, more whole, just like that, without effort.- Dennis