Bagarmossen (i)

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Yesterday I led the last interview for my study with forest owners about place meanings. I focused on the Swedish idea of “hembygdskänsla”. It is a word that doesn’t have a good translation into English, it’s meaning is similar to sense of home, but more. “Bygd”, which makes up the middle part, is a loosely defined area, a district, a parish. Take your pick. “Hembygd”, then, is the general area where home is. And what I’ve realized throughout these interviews is that how people understand their sense of home, their “hembygdskänsla”, varies. More than I expected. The nuances will be challenging to capture in the square, restricted format of a scientific paper. I look forward to start digging into the data.

My “hembygdskänsla” right now is focused on Bagarmossen, the neighborhood that I moved back to a year ago. I grew up here. My dad still lives here, and my mom also lives close by. I know the trails in the neighboring forest like the back of my hand. But it has also changed a lot since my teens. In the early 2000s, it could be a bit rough. Now, community gardens have popped up between the apartment buildings, small shops around the newly renovated square, a bakery with amazing buns. A collective bike workshop. Is it contributing to gentrification if you move back to the place where you grew up? I don’t know. I just really like it in Bagarmossen.

One of these nice, atmosphere-creating things I like to stroll by is the tiny permaculture test garden outside the Bagarmossen Resilience Centre. The signs next to the plants inform about uses, making it a mini-format botanic garden. The center is an office collective and meeting place for resilience and innovation where they test different ideas for a more sustainable city, a hub for grassroots initiatives. As a resilience scholar, I love it. (Even though I myself haven’t contributed with anything. Yet.)

Bagarmossen, my home, a place full of kindred spirits.

Photo: Bagarmossen Resilience Centre, Stockholm, October 2020. Posted on Instagram October 29, 2020.