When the pandemic arrived, my life changed quite dramatically. For much of my career, I had travelled extensively—at times more than 200 days a year, across every continent. I had worked with international technology companies and helped build businesses in many markets. For the five years before the pandemic, I commuted weekly to Utrecht in the Netherlands for work.
Suddenly, the travel stopped.
My wife Cornelia and I began spending more and more time at Granberget in northern Jämtland. We could both work remotely, and it offered a change of scene. For me, it was also a return to the place where I have my roots. I had always come back to fish, work in the forest and see family and friends, many of whom had only a vague idea of what I did for a living.
After a while, a thought began to take hold. What if we could do something here that would actually create jobs in the Tåsjö area?
The first concrete step was firewood. We set up a small firewood factory. Production could get under way quickly, and the work did not require extensive specialist training. We produced the firewood at Granberget and transported it to the Stockholm region, where it was sold through our webshop eldringen.se and delivered to customers in central Sweden.
It worked, but firewood is essentially a seasonal product. The best period for production and drying is limited. Before long, a new question emerged: what could we make that would provide work throughout the year and also have room to grow?
At first, we looked at custom-sawn timber—products you cannot buy at an ordinary builders’ merchant. Extra-long beams, boards for tall façades or special profiles to match the mouldings in older houses. But the problem soon became clear. Production runs were often small, set-up times long and customers’ willingness to pay limited. It was hard to see this becoming the business we were looking for.
Around that time, I thought of geodesic domes.
I had seen them in North America and had always been fascinated by their shape. They were technical and mathematical, yet organic and somehow at home in the landscape. When I began reading more, I discovered that they could be built in timber. Another piece of the puzzle fell into place.
Timber gave the project a natural connection to the place. Forests have shaped this part of northern Jämtland for generations, and many people in my own family have worked in and around forestry. The idea of using a local, traditional material in a structure with an entirely different geometry was exciting.
I asked my colleague Rok, with whom I was already working, what he thought. He liked the shape and the idea too. We decided quite early that, if we were going to do this, we would not buy a ready-made set of plans or copy someone else’s solution. We wanted to understand the structure from first principles and develop our own model.
That suited us well. I have a master’s degree in engineering physics, and Rok has a master’s degree in mechanical engineering. We soon discovered that we approached problems in much the same way: understand the principles first, question the details, then build a solution we can explain.
So Rok’s first task was not to cut timber.
He immersed himself in the mathematics behind geodesic domes and then walked me through it. In a way, it was also a test. If we were going to take this on, we needed to understand why every length, angle and point of connection was exactly as it was.
He did it brilliantly.
That was when the journey towards Scandinavian Domes really began. There was no finished product, no marketing plan and not even a workshop full of advanced machinery.
We started with the mathematics.
We calculated. Then calculated some more. And then a little more.
That is how the work began on what would eventually become Scandinavian Domes.
During the summer of 2026, we selected three pilot partners from almost 100 applications from Sweden and abroad. The pilot year has now begun with installations in Hemavan, Åre and Borgafjäll.
Under sommaren 2026 valde vi ut tre pilotkunder bland närmare 100 intresseanmälningar från Sverige och andra länder. Pilotåret har nu inletts med installationer i Hemavan, Åre och Borgafjäll.
Tillsammans med våra pilotkunder kommer vi under det kommande året att vidareutveckla varje del av Scandinavian Domes – från materialval och hantverk till logistik, installation och långsiktig hållbarhet – inför den bredare marknadslanseringen 2027.