This summer I visited the family farm in Stenbo, Sweden. A couple weeks prior, the farm had burned to the ground and my family and I planned to clean up the wreckage that remained.
![Fire damage at Stenbo](https://www.carl-olsson.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/stenbo_fire_damage-1024x678.jpg)
Video of the fire can be seen at http://www.svt.se/nyheter/regionalt/gavledala/en-villa-i-stenbo-i-forsa-brinner. Unfortunately, none of the house could be salvaged so the entire house will be torn down before a new building can be built in its place. Therefore, we had to clean out everything we wanted to keep before the building is razed.
![Bakstugan (the baking house)](https://www.carl-olsson.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/stuga-1024x678.jpg)
Besides the cleanup process, life on the farm was quite slow. During some of my spare time, I wandered around the old buildings on the farm, including the one pictured above.
![Dinner by the lake](https://www.carl-olsson.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/dinner-1024x620.jpg)
After the day’s work and if the weather permitted, we would eat our meals by the lake.
![Logging machine](https://www.carl-olsson.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/logging4-1024x678.jpg)
One of the more unusual things we did at the farm was watch logging. Funnily enough, the Swedish Forest Agency mandates that we cut down a percentage of our trees. The tree harvester (skördare in Swedish) is pictured above.
![Lax sandwich from Trollharen](https://www.carl-olsson.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/trollharen_lax_sandwich-1024x678.jpg)
After about a week of clean up, we headed down to Stockholm to visit some family. On the way we stopped in the tiny fishing village of Trollharen for a tasty snack from the sea.
![Boathouses in Trollharen](https://www.carl-olsson.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/trollharen_boathouses-1024x699.jpg)
Located in a remote region of Söderhamn, the village is known for it’s fishing. Here’s a picture I took of the boathouses at Trollharen.
![Viking festival](https://www.carl-olsson.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/viking_festival1-1024x707.jpg)
After meeting with our relatives in Stockholm we visited a Viking festival. People seem to take the festival quite seriously and the place was filled to the brim with new-age Vikings and their accompanying pelts, swords, and drinking horns.
Here’s a video I made of our trip to Sweden. The video includes footage from the farm as well as logging and tractor pulling.