Rebecca Eriksson

Spatial Story

I was born in Halmstad, a town on Sweden’s west coast. But if you asked me where my spatial story began, I would answer Småland in a heartbeat. For many generations, my family lived in a couple of tiny villages near Kalmar. Back when my grandfather grew up, people didn’t travel far, except perhaps to Öland, where my great-grandfather tamed wild horses roaming free in Alvaret, horses that were then used on the farm or traded. When I ask my grandfather, he loved them most for the freedom of riding bareback through the woods.

I never learned to ride a horse. Instead, growing up in Halmstad, my equivalent of that freedom was cycling along the endless beaches of Tylösand, Ringenäs, or Västra stranden, surrounded by the smell of seaweed and screams of seagulls. Yet, as much as I enjoyed Halmstad, it quickly began to feel too small. So after high school, like many of my peers, I set off to Southeast Asia, eager to experience new cultures and perspectives. But six weeks later, in a hostel in Da Nang, Vietnam, we booked our tickets back to Europe as news of a new virus outbreak spread.

Back in Sweden, amid the pandemic and with mobility restricted, I moved to Småland, to what had always felt like home, to study at Jönköping University. A degree richer and an exchange semester in Lisbon, a handful of friends, and countless anecdotes later, I had become fascinated by the relationship between people and place. Inspired by this realization and no longer constrained by the pandemic, I began my master’s degree in Ísafjörður, a fjord-side village in northwest Iceland, just a few kilometers from the Arctic Circle. There, I shifted my focus to regional development and the marine environment, learning how the environments we inhabit shape how we live, work, and interact, and how our behaviors, decisions, and cultures in turn shape the landscapes around us.

The lessons gained in Ísafjörður, about resilience, resourcefulness, and how closely identity is tied to place, have stayed with me. Just like my roots in Småland, these experiences keep reminding me that who we are is shaped by the environments we move through. Now, I am excited to continue my journey with Nordregio, building on the experiences that have shaped me and deepening my understanding of the Nordic region and its people.