About The Charcoal Experience

The Charcoal Experience offers the purest form of luxury. You will enjoy a recreational stay in the wilderness while learning the traditional art of charcoal burning. You will grow as a person and develop new skills that will help you enjoy primitive life in the deep forest. You will not only learn the ancient handcraft for producing high quality charcoal, but also how to cook on a fire, how to fish and how to behave in the wild to get the most out of your time.

The stay is a combination of physical work and refreshing outdoor spare-time. Sometimes you will get really dirty and exhausted, but you will also experience a revitalizing feeling from a dinner prepared on an open fire after getting thoroughly clean. You will have a lot of time to spend freely in the outdoors where everyday stress is completely absent.

What you will experience depends on which season you choose and for how long you stay. Throughout the one-week Experience you will learn to build the kiln and burn the charcoal, and you will also have a large portion of recreation. During the four-day Experience you will only burn the kiln, but you will still develop your talent for outdoor life. In spring you will experience the magnificent Nordic light and you will enjoy delicate fresh herbs. You will also find active wildlife during this season. In autumn, which is the traditional charcoal burning season, you will meet the dark mystic and yet colourful forest full of tasty berries and mushrooms.

The Experience takes place in the dramatic landscape around lake Dellen in the province of Hälsingland in Sweden, about 1 hour’s drive from the city of Hudiksvall. This area, created by a meteor at about a 100 millions years ago, provides great views and wildlife.

Hälsingland has a rich cultural heritage. There are many large estates showing the former wealth of the province due to the good climate and geography for forestry and also for farming. An old woman, who is from the neighbouring province of Dalecarlia, tells us that when she was young they used to say that the farmers in Hälsingland were so wealthy that they could have carpets on the barn floors!

Since wood was (and still is) an important product of the province, the burning of charcoal was commonly performed in Hälsingland. Wherever you go you find traces of the charcoal burning, and each and every person has a (often now dead) relative who used to work as a wood collier. The technique is dying away with these people, so nowadays there are only a few who know how to produce charcoal in this traditional way.