When we began producing firewood at Granberget, the ambition seemed fairly simple. We had forest and raw material, machines and a place to work. If we could cut, split, dry and pack the firewood, perhaps we could build a business around it—and create a few jobs in a place where employment had declined for many years.
Of course, it turned out to be much more work than that.
The birch logs had to be sourced. Machines had to be run and maintained. Bags of firewood had to be filled, moved and dried. Something broke, something jammed, and something did not quite work as we had imagined. The weather could shift between glorious spring sunshine, rain, cold and snow.
Above all, we needed people.
That was how a rather mixed team began to gather at Granberget. There was no carefully designed recruitment strategy. One person knew another, someone could work a few days, someone else had experience with machines, and someone simply wanted to join in.
Over time, I realised just how unlikely the group was.
Christer Söderberg had spent his career as an air force officer and had, among other things, worked on surface rescues from a Super Puma helicopter. Svante Domeij was a certified welder with long experience in various industries. Håkan Modin had been head of operations in the police force in Jämtland County and had also served as county police commissioner. Paavo Piitulainen had been managing director of an industrial company in Västerås and had worked around the world in the paper industry.
Rok Sinkovec came from Slovenia. He was a graduate engineer and also a conservatory-trained orchestral musician, having studied in Ljubljana—and considerably younger than most of us. I had known of Allan Bohlin almost all my life. Our families have been intertwined for generations, and as a young man he was nicknamed Hulk because he trained for strength and was as strong as an ox. His working life had included power lines.
The air force, industry, policing, international paper mills, music and power lines.
And now we stood together producing birch firewood deep in northern Jämtland.
It was hardly the staffing profile you would draw up if asked to recruit a firewood factory team from scratch.
But perhaps that was precisely why it worked so well.
Everyone brought something. Someone immediately saw how a machine could be improved. Someone could weld or build what was missing. Someone found a smarter way to keep material moving. Those who knew how showed those who did not.
Nor was anyone too important for the work. Whatever needed doing got done.
The work could be heavy and fairly monotonous. Birch logs went through the firewood processor, the split wood into large bags, and the bags on to drying and storage. When everything worked, production kept rolling. But wood is not an industrially uniform raw material. Logs are bent, knotty and variable in diameter. A piece gets stuck, a machine needs adjusting or a bag ends up in the wrong place.
Then we had to solve it.
And we did. Most of the time.
Yet when I think back to the firewood factory, it is not the machines I remember most clearly.
It is the coffee table.
I have often thought that SVT, Sweden’s public broadcaster, missed a documentary series by never putting a camera at our coffee and lunch table at Granberget.
An ordinary lunch might begin with a discussion about repairing a machine and, minutes later, turn to a moose hunt thirty years ago, an eccentric relative in Tåsjödalen, a helicopter rescue, a paper mill on the other side of the world, police work, power lines or something that had happened locally that very morning.
Facts mingled with memories, humour and tall tales, where accuracy sometimes mattered less as the story got better.
There were plenty of opinions, too. These were intelligent, curious people who had seen a great deal, and almost nothing was accepted simply because “that is how we have always done it”. Machines, working methods and my own ideas could all be debated quite vigorously.
But above all, there was a great deal of humour.
If SVT had come, the series might naturally have been called Gubbarna på Granberget—The Old Boys of Granberget.
There would have been enough material for more than one season.
Behind the stories and laughter was a work ethic that mattered greatly to the business. These were people who worked hard, saw what needed doing and took responsibility for getting it done.
They taught us a great deal.
We learned about raw materials, production, logistics and machines. We learned that a small improvement in one place can make a big difference further along the process. We learned that the best solution often comes from the person standing at the machine and seeing the problem every day.
Above all, we learned something about people.
A business is built through more than machines and processes. It is built by people with different experiences who together see what needs doing and find a way to do it.
As Scandinavian Domes gradually took shape, almost everything changed. Step by step, firewood processors gave way to woodworking machines, digital measuring equipment, CAD and eventually a five-axis CNC machine. Birch firewood was replaced by pine heartwood, polycarbonate and geometric timber components. The tolerances tightened and the product became far more complex.
But one thing did not change at all.
Rok is perhaps the clearest link between the two worlds. He worked among the birch logs and firewood processors and is now central to the CAD, CNC and digital production of our domes. In many ways, his journey from the firewood factory to the digital workshop mirrors our own.
The firewood factory was never the final destination. Yet looking back, it does not feel like a detour either.
It was where we first tried to make our ambition of creating work at Granberget a reality. There we learned to bring people, materials and machines together. And there a working culture emerged that we have carried forward: work hard, solve problems together, challenge what can be improved and enjoy the journey at the same time.
SVT never came. There was no television series about Gubbarna på Granberget.
But the people, stories and everything we learned around the machines and coffee table became part of our journey towards the Perfect Dome.
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.