(birds tweeting) (sheep bleating) (ducks quacking) (rooster crowing) - [Eric] Long time ago, I tried to connect with society in a way, but I always been disconnected from it.

I needed a change, because it wasn't working out, and so I thought that I might look somewhere else, (falls rushing) so I found the woods.

I started to listen more and more to nature, and how nature maybe works in trying to find a more balanced life.

♪ When I was young ♪ ♪ I had a dream ♪ ♪ I wanted see it my own way ♪ ♪ And everyone said ♪ ♪ Go inside of my mind ♪ ♪ But I was inside to fly ♪ - My grandmother wove a lot.

I was always inspired by the things she had in her house, because her partner did Slöjd, woodworking.

So when I came to her house from Australia, it was incredibly inspiring for me.

Like, you made this out of bark?

You wove this, how?

So I decided to apply to Sätergläntan, and learn to weave.

I didn't realize how right it was for me until I was here, and I was actually getting to, you know, nerd on down into the subject, and really, really enjoy it.

(peaceful music) - My father has always had blacksmithing as an interest, so I was kind of conditioned into it in a way.

He's always had his own workshop, and I've been with him since I could reach up to the anvil.

(peaceful music) I always liked the thought of having an independent business, doing something that you are passionate about.

This is what I've wanted to do since it was little.

People have told me that it's not really possible, until I found out about this school.

♪ I'm gonna find a way to the sun ♪ ♪ To the sun ♪ ♪ To the sun ♪ (birds tweeting) - Sätergläntan is a weaving school, a blacksmithing school, woodworking, and also sewing, and then there's short courses over the summer as well, so there's a lot you can learn here from the ground up.

Sätergläntan was founded in 1923 by two sisters.

It started out as a weaving school, and a home economics school, so that the women who were looking for something to do could educate themselves, and sell what they wove and produced.

- It's a bubble.

It's not reality.

(chuckles) You can come here, and just do what you love, and to create, and just use hours, and be in this flow where you create, and discover new things.

(magical music) - It is a kind of a melting pot for all this Slöjd, and craft knowledge, and ideas.

(magical music) It's this place when when we can learn from each other to create something new out of something old.

(magical music) - Sätergläntan is all about the Swedish or Nordic traditional craft.

So we use traditional methods, techniques, and tools, and we kind of reenact these techniques, and learn how to use the tools to go back a step, I think, with industrial and learn how to go out to the woods, and maybe take down the tree, and make my cutlery, or everything I need for everyday use in the household.

(magical music) So when I'm looking for material for now, example, I'm looking for, to make kick style tools.

And so I'm looking for a straight, nice white birch with the no branches, and the straight fibers.

When I started, I kind of got hooked, 'cause it was a great feeling to work with your hands.

Your thought and intuition kind of comes together, and find a form of peace.

(birds tweeting) (chickens clucking) - Most people that are here for a reason.

They want to improve their skills in a certain craft.

It's so interesting to see the difference in the different philosophies from other parts of the world.

Last year, we had people from all over South America, and Germany, and Japan, and Denmark.

- And Denmark.

(chuckling) (speaking native language) - We have from Germany, Britain, and Scotland.

We used to have students from quite a distance, Japan just last year.

We had one from Chile, and Canada, and America, from the Minnesota region, we have students.

Sätergläntan has exchange program with North House Folk School, and we have had students from North House visiting us.

A lot of them are elderly.

Their previous occupation, they have left it, and want to do things with their hands.

Some of them have their third career they're starting here.

(indistinct conversation) - Some are very young, from school, and some wants to change the direction of their lives.

Actually, there are some has worked with the computers for a long time, and just want to use their hands.

They want to see that from the growing tree to a chair.

- You scraped it?

- Yeah.

- How'd you do that?

- [Beth] It's a special scraper for spoons.

I think we have one.

- [Student] Oh, so this was like a trick spoon?

- [Beth] A trick spoon, yeah.

- Sätergläntan for me is a kind of magic place, because traditional Swedish handcrafts meet people today, and make it goes forward, makes it kind of bloom, and makes it stay alive.

- It's a sort of little spot on this hill where people can gather, and they have almost the same interest to make craft, and to live with craft as a way of living.

(peaceful music) They are sharing the common background, the common ambition to be a part of change in the world with the craft.

- The knowledge of hand, and the knowledge of making things is if we want to improve and find new ways of doing some things, I think we can have a lot of knowledge to learn from the past.

And as a craftsman, one of my most important tools, it's my hands.

So a student in weaving we can take, since I'm a weaving teacher.

Yeah, here is Petina.

They got, that have workshop in Sätergläntan, every student in the end of the year, making a project, and then they're making analysis of all techniques, and they're making testers, and they're doing weaving, and then they're making a report about it, and here you can also see test weave from it, and it should be some picture of the product afterwards.

So here we have a lot of knowledge, and they always leave one report for the school, and that's the only thing nearly we have left from the student, because otherwise, they're making things for themselves.

But I'm really happy with all this knowledge, and our librarian told me it's more than thousands work.

(peaceful music) - Slöjd is like handcraft, so things that you make with your hands like woodworking, or carving, or hand sewing, or weaving, it's like creating things with your hands.

Slöjd has a very important role in the world today, because as students learning these subjects, we are the ones who have to carry it into the next generations as well, and somebody has to have this knowledge.

Somebody has to know how to weave a towel.

Think about all the clothes to wear, the textiles in your house.

Somebody has to have that knowledge of how to produce them.

So Slöjd is a very important part of society.

Even if it is a minority group, we all use it every day.

Slöjd is even relevant in the industry today, so a lot of designers start working in hand loom, and then upgrade their products to work in industrial looms.

(hammer tapping) (peaceful music) - It's an ancient craft.

It's been practiced for over thousands of years in ancient tradition as well.

Basically, you form hot metal.

It's like clay when you heat it up.

It moves in the same way.

- You can often use clay to kind of predict how it's gonna bend when you're working with it, and try to make the form you're trying to make in clay first to see how it will work.

(hammer tapping) (peaceful music) - [Karl] When you work in blacksmith, you don't lose any material.

You just manipulate the material, shape it.

(peaceful music) - It happens with something in your body when you work with hand tools, and of course, you learn the wood much better.

So even if you want to work with power tools later on, you can understand the wood much better if you've started with the hand tools.

(peaceful music) (birds tweeting) (ducks quacking) (rooster crowing) - Very important for these students is a resilient society.

A lot of these students like to have now the kind of society where sustainability is where the basic for the society.

So we are working more direct to see what is the sustainability in woodworking, in blacksmith, and in sewing and weaving.

So we are starting with the material.

We have the sheep outside here.

We can cut the wool.

They are preparing the linen.

They're cutting trees in the wood, and we are making coal for the blacksmith.

We're preparing the material from the very beginning.

(hammer tapping) - It does take a full week at least to burn this one.

We are thinking about ways to make more charcoal, and there are, well, faster ways.

The good thing with this is that you, well, basically, just need an ax and a shovel.

(peaceful music) - As I want the straight one with no branches or burls, or anything, I look for these white patches, and I see there's plenty of them all up there.

It is a lot of branches as well, but it looks good here, and this is where I need the cleanest fibers from this proportion of the tree, so I think this one is a good one.

And then I need to see if I can take it down, so I have to look at the trees around me.

This is straight up, so this is good, but if it would lean, I would have to consider if it would lean to the left from here, I would have to consider that it will fall to this direction, and I can't do that, because it'll cut down and break other trees, so then I wouldn't take it, but now we have like a nice clearing this way, so this is the direction I want it to fall.

(peaceful music) - During the year, we have different sort of courses, and this course is very much about the craftsman skills, and for knowing a lot of new techniques.

For the first year student, they are working with the flax as a material, learning how to prepare it, and then learning how to spin.

And that's for getting the knowledge of first making a thread, and then after making a thread is how do I make a good thread?

(Marie speaking native language) Flax are one of the fibers that we had a lot of in Sweden, and for the student to have the knowledge of how a good thread is going to be, we are growing our own flax.

So we have made 64 square meters of flax, and now it's been growing, so it's just like one meter.

We are going to take it up, and then it will be dry.

Here's the flax straw, and it's inside here we will find the flax, and to be able to take out the fiber, we can't cut it.

We have to take it up with the root.

And this is a very good straw.

It's a long one, and it's very straight.

And just up here, we have three or four when it divides to smaller parts, and here it's starting to make the seed.

And this straw, I would say, is taken from the green period.

You can take it when the straw is green, or when it's yellow, or when it's brown, and you get different sort of flax.

So before we can get the fiber out of this, we need to take all the seed away, and then we will put it on the ground, and doing the wrecking, and then the glue that's in the straw will get away, and so it'll be easy to take the fiber from the straw.

Here, it's the fibers that we will get.

(bright music) We will break the hard parts of the fiber, tackle it so the fibers that are left aren't coming away, and after that, we have the fiber that we can spin.

And the student will also spin threads, so they can weave, to have it in their weave, like in a towel.

(bright music) (speaking native language) (conversing in native language) - The Industrial Revolution came here to Sweden about in the middle of the 1800s, and of course, people wanted to buy the new things, the new stuff, but here in Dalarna, the people, the farmers kept their old things, and wanted to preserve how to do things, because they were so proud about how they lived.

(bright music) - I like the satisfaction of knowing that I've made this garment all on my own, to know that every single seam is made by me, and the pattern is made by me.

So this is my blazer that I made.

For this part, this detail, I took an inspiration from a traditional Swedish jacket, and applied this to this more modern blazer.

(lively music) - I believe that like, the creating part and to solve your own problems are a really human thing to do.

And people feel good when they can solve a problem with their own hands, and the tools and materials they have.

(lively music) - For me to learn an old craft like this, it's the sense that it's something real, that you're making something with your mind and your hands.

(lively music) (hammer tapping) It's really not dependent on big industry and infrastructure.

It's something you can make on a small budget, and on a small scale.

(lively music) - It brings a lot of life.

It brings more color to anything around you, because nowadays, everything is machine made, and everything's square, and everything has the same shapes wherever you look, so it's getting a bit more monotone.

(hammers tapping) - I think it's important to spread the knowledge on, 'cause we've got so much knowledge about this, about this craft, and I want to see what we can do with it.

Our teachers say that you don't only sell to your customers.

You have to educate them as well.

(Johan speaking native language) (Ida speaking native language) - I think it's important to pass the knowledge further, otherwise, the knowledge is gone, and then you have to create the wheel again, and that's very difficult.

(ax chopping) - All the knowledge about these forests or nature that we have here, you can learn everything from it, from this traditional craft.

(saw scraping) It's really nice.

- People need their roots.

People need to relate to old days, to perhaps explain now why it is like it is today.

(peaceful music) - When I was starting traveling around in the world, I saw textiles you can find everywhere.

It was a way of me to understand other countries, but also to understand history.

- For me, textiles in Sweden are a big part of the culture.

Weaving knowledge has been passed down through generations to finally land in my lap.

It's not just 100 years ago, that's current now that we're interested in.

It's Viking finds, it's even older.

- I think what is special is that we have a long tradition that's been living, because what we are doing here we can also find in other countries, but if we compare with the European countries, we don't have the living tradition of having people weaving at home, or the knowledge in the home.

It's, the knowledge was just left for the industry, and for the craftsmen.

Here, we have it like in, for very long time, it has been a knowledge for everyone.

(peaceful music) I think weaving still is a living tradition, and for me, tradition is change.

And maybe that's also that we are tolerant, and accept that it' also, the tradition is always changing.

It makes it interesting, I think.

There are always different parts from the past time that you can pick up, and there are always new things that you can pick up and work with.

(compelling music) - The journey of Sätergläntan for me has been a quite deep journey, and finding myself in craft, and finding other people, and learning how to connect better with everything we have around us, and how I can use that to keep on going on my journey.

(upbeat music) - My dream is to become a seamstress, to make my own clothes here in Sweden, and maybe open a shop maybe, or make quilts from idea to finished product.

(upbeat music) - I'm thinking about maybe teaching Slöjd for kids or adults in smaller groups.

And I would love to just continue and explore different kinds of Slöjd, and different kinds of creating, and using wood as a material, but also other kinds of more natural materials.

(upbeat music) - Try to start my own business, start my own shop, do my own thing, 'cause my goal about this is to be able to work with this, 'cause this is what I've always wanted to do since I was a child.

I want to pass it on.

I would like to be a teacher in the future if I'm skilled enough.

- Yeah, in the future, being a guest teacher here.

- Yeah, for example, or having courses in the future.

There's a lot of opportunities.

You have to make them yourself, though.

(chuckles) (happy music)