What is important to see in Arjeplog? When Olivia Karlberg meets a guest at the reception desk of Hotell Lyktan, she doesn’t have to ask.
“I can see it!” she says, describing how people enter, some pulling cabin wheeled cabin bags, others carrying backpacks.
“Everything depends on who the person is and not so much on what we have to offer. Arjeplog is fun because there is so much to show.”
Oliva Karlberg, 30 years old, grew up in Arjeplog and here she also went to three years of upper secondary school at Hornavanskolan, focusing on natural sciences. Her grades were sky high. Would she become a doctor? A biologist?
Olivia Karlberg followed her heart and long experience. Despite her young age, she had been an event organiser since childhood.
“We rented the sports hall for tournaments, held St Lucia events at the church and organised activities on town market days.”
Like the rest of her family, she was deeply involved with the local Pentecostal church. This meant, not least, a lot of song and music. When the time came to go somewhere else, she moved to Uppsala and worked for two years as a coordinator with New Generation, a Christian youth movement. They organised a wide variety of leisure activities for students, with one of the major events gathering 2,500 youngsters on a boat on the Gulf of Bothnia, for glamorous festivities. All without alcohol.
Then, she needed some sort of certification of her profession. Olivia Karlberg found her training in Landskrona. After training for two years to become an event coordinator, she received her diploma, which also covered training in project and production management for the experience industry.
And experiences would come; soon after, she led the Film Festival in Arjeplog and following that, one of the participants wanted her to work on a film project in Norrbotten. When the pandemic struck, Olivia Karlberg was able to find work at Hotell Lyktan.
“During that time, the Swedish public broadcaster, SVT, had a major project planned in Arjeplog.” “Blackwater” was a challenge in many ways. “After a while of waiting for the pandemic to subside, there were 92 recording days across the entire municipality, and then all the coordination work on top of that”, explains Olivia Karlberg, who has now landed in Arjeplog, with many beautiful memories.
“This is home!” she exclaims, not to say that she’s setting a limit for future projects. She lives in a nice three-room apartment on Lugnetvägen in the town centre and has her boyfriend 26 kilometres to the south.
But what do you mean by “home”?
“It’s probably the feeling of all the people I have here, that’s probably what I think about the most. It is also so beautiful and I enjoy all the seasons. Now that I’ve been to many other places, I appreciate Arjeplog even more.”
What are your tips for visitors?
“If they have limited time, I would recommend a visit to the Galtispuoda peak, 800 metres above sea level, where the view is stunning. If you can spare a day, I think that a hike on the Kungsleden trail in Pieljekaise National Park is a good idea, or you could hike to Jurun in the mountain tundra. For those wishing to remain closer to the town, there is the beautiful Vaukaleden trail. You can say that Arjeplog offers quite some breadth.”
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Text & Picture: Maria Söderberg