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The Forest Festival takes place on July 18-20
The Forest Festival is an inspiring meeting place for forest enthusiasts, forest garden enthusiasts and those committed to the environment. The festival is the Nordic region’s largest meeting place for forest enthusiasts. A manifestation for the protection and restoration of the forest, and for a reform of forestry to a close-to-nature multi-use. The event has been held on several occasions since 2003.
The festival offers concerts, lectures, workshops, guided tours, cinema blitz, talks, a mini-market with exhibitors and children’s activities.
Participants include: Mullin Mallin Band, Izhav, Anders Norudde, Mockla, Kieli, Kamilla Sol, Gylleboverket, Göran Englund, Andris Fågelviskare, Annevi Sjöberg, Stephen Barstow, Martin Jentzen, Sara Antell, Jon Andersson, Karolina Carlsson, Sofia Olsson, Erik Westholm, Hanna Jönsson, Elin Götmark and Toni Berglund.
This year’s themes: the forest and climate, biodiversity, forest gardens, humanity’s environmental challenges, close-to-nature forestry and forest ecology, etc.
Date: Friday-Sunday 18 – 20 July 2025
Place: Takes place in Åfallet Forest Garden, 9 km from Hjortkvarn in southern Närke (see address below!)
Tickets:
NB! No tickets at the entrance, only pre-purchase!
Ticket price for the entire festival: 400 SEK
One-day ticket: SEK 200
Deposit the amount and write BSF (Ticket Forest Festival), as well as full name, so we can see that it is a ticket purchase and who bought! When purchasing multiple tickets, enter the number. Children under 15 years old enter for free when accompanied by adults.
Plusgiro Protect the forest: 504609-9
Swish number: 123 112 68 38
Tickets / international payments
Ticket price for the entire festival: 400 SEK
One-day ticket: 200 SEK
IBAN: SE24 9500 0099 6018 0504 6099
BIC: NDEASESS
Programme:
Preliminary program as PDF
About the festival site Åfallet Skogsträdgård:
Åfallet Skogsträdgård is a small off-grid cottage in the middle of the forest near Hjärtasjön in southern Närke, 9 km from the village of Hjortkvarn. At the center of Åfallet are climate adaptation, biodiversity and pedagogy. Åfallet Skogsträdgård is run by Elin and Viktor Säfve and their family. At Åfallet they are engaged in self-sufficiency and are testing on a small scale different establishment techniques and hypotheses about the establishment of forest gardens. A forest garden is a food-producing ecosystem, dominated by perennial plants with edible plant parts. A layered system with everything from tall and low fruit and nut trees, to berry bushes, perennial herbs, ground cover, root vegetables and climbing plants. The goal is multiple-use gardens that both produce food, bind carbon, increase resilience and benefit biodiversity.
NB! There is a beautiful lake within walking distance (500 m) from the festival site. Bring swimwear!
Accommodations: There are simple tent pitches and an outhouse on site. Tent pitch is included in the ticket price.
If you want a more comfortable stay, search for accommodation at B&Bs in the area.
Parking:
There are no places for caravans or motorhomes at the festival site. Tent camping only!
We must guarantee accessibility for rescue services and for visitors who come and go.
If you still want to bring a caravan or motorhome, it is best to look for, for example, a turning point on a forest road a few km from the festival area.
Here we are on Google Maps! Check if there are forest roads with turning points or similar around where you can park with a caravan or motorhome.
Food:
The food is vegan, and as far as possible locally produced and organic, and cooked on site.
Preliminary menu:
Friday
Lunch: Falafel
Dinner: Veggie burger with potato salad.
Saturday
Breakfast: hot porridge and overnight oats
Lunch: Pasta salad
Dinner: Daal with oat rice
Sunday
Breakfast: hot porridge and overnight oats
Lunch: Soup with bread
Rates:
50 SEK for breakfast including coffee/tea
25 SEK for children
100 SEK dish including drinks
50 SEK for children
NB! It is vegan and nut-free food that is served during the Forest Festival. There will be gluten-free options. However, we use oat cream in several dishes. We have a small kitchen with limited possibilities to cater for other allergies. If you have a special allergy that is not covered by vegan food and gluten-free alternatives, it is better that you bring your own food during the Forest Festival.
Address of the festival site: Haddebo 757, 697 93 Hjortkvarn
Getting here: Visitors arrange their own travel to and from the festival, and unfortunately we are not able to pick up or drop off visitors. However, it is usually easy to travel with other visitors all or part of the way. Feel free to organize carpooling. A tip is to post a thread on Facebook that you want to carpool, if you need space in a car.
Directions for cars (feel free to carpool!): Find us on Google Maps!
Public transport: Länstrafiken has a service called local traffic, which is worth checking out! If you are lucky, they may be able to drive visitors to and from the festival site, if the address above is given. The service must be pre-booked and the possibility must be checked with Länstrafiken in Örebro. Otherwise, it is not possible to travel by public transport to the Forest Festival.
Dogs: We sometimes get questions about whether it is ok to bring a dog to the festival. We don’t want you to bring your dog. On the one hand, there are visitors who are afraid of dogs, and on the other hand, there are allergy sufferers. Exceptions apply to guide dogs.
Contact persons and responsible organizers: Elin and Viktor Säfve: viktor.safve@skyddaskogen.se
Organizers: The Protect the Forest Association in collaboration with Åfallet Forest Garden, with support from Hopajola.
Program
Andris Bird Whisperer
Andris, also known as “The Bird Whisperer”, grew up in Degerfors, and has built a close relationship with the forest and its inhabitants since an early age. He learned on his own to track and get close to the wild animals, and developed the ability to imitate the calls of as many as 150 different species of birds. A bit of a “feral” person, he has explored the simple life in close contact with nature, and is passionate about rewilding and recreating living landscapes, an attempt to find man’s role as a key species in the ecosystem.
Andris will share his relationship with the wild animals, especially focusing on what he has learned by following wild wolves, and how they can show us our own role in nature’s restoration. There will also be the occasional bird chirping!
Concerts
Mullin Mallin Band
Push away the tables and chairs, and light the colored fairy lights: When Mullin Mallin plays, it’s time to dance! Long dance or individual crazy dance, choose yourself. No one can be still when Balkan music is played.
Mullin Mallin Band plays catchy party music from the Balkans, but also has more evocative songs in their repertoire. Sometimes wild and crazy, sometimes with longing melancholy. It’s music from different parts of the world, music for love, pain and insane joy! Joy of life in music format, quite simply.
The band consists of nine people who offer powerful vocals and play violin, bass, bouzouki, electric guitar, accordion, clarinet and various percussion instruments such as darbouka, djembe, davul and cajun.
The band’s website
IZHAV
Izabelle Norén Nielsen (IZHAV) writes lyrics and music in the genre of pop/folk/indie that touches on big emotions and universal human thoughts. By sharing her musical stories with others, she wants to create a space where everyone can embrace themselves where we are right now.
She picks stories from the darkness and light that have followed her through life. Her story is more reminiscent of a fictional adventure trilogy than a thirty-year life. Street music, hitchhiking across continents belong to chapters from the past, while Queer in the countryside and vegetable cultivation belong to the present.
There is an accessibility in the music that stands out. An invitation to land and to just be – just the way we are. Imperfect and absolutely wonderful.
Listen to IZHAV
Anders Norudde
Anders is a legendary folk musician, instrument maker and national fiddler. He plays Swedish bagpipes, violin, horn and mora harp, among other things. In the 1980s, he formed the group Hedningen together with Totte Mattson and Björn Tollin. He is also one of the driving forces behind the magical folk music group Blå Bergens Borduner.
Anders has a strong love for the forest and a rage towards those who devastate it: “My forest will remain even though it has lost all its needles”…
There will be forest magic and traditional folk music when Anders enters the stage!
MOCKLA was hatched from the forests of Värmland.
Like a Trojan horse, you never know what they are in for you.
From worship to worship
From coffee music to chaos
From beautiful song to sea song
From samba to analogue techno
Pleasurable and timeless, stolen and her own.
Come, it’s going to be fun.
Kamilla Sol – Forest Life
Skogsliv is an audiovisual performance created and performed by Kamilla Sol. Live sound art to images from Skogsvärn’s inventories of Forests worthy of protection.
Kieli
Singer, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Kieli (Elin Pöllänen) invites listeners to her cinematic soundscape that breaks the barrier between nature and culture. With Swedish-Finnish-Karelian roots and influences from folk, chamber pop, alternative and classical, her music has been described as unique, melancholic and at the same time uplifting, and her voice as “dancing in the music like a body rushing through the forest, precise and beautiful.”
Her music portrays in a personal way life themes such as grief, timeless love and identity and embodies her background in animal and natural law, minority representation and research on human-animal-nature relations. Kieli has released a debut EP (2019), a multilingual full-length album (2023) and several singles (2020-2024). Her music has been heard in an exhibition about the Swedish forest at the Swedish Museum of Natural History and in BBC Radio’s program “Unclassified”.
She is currently recording “Bäckar och lågor”, an album in Swedish about the forest and the memories, feelings and resistance that arise when one’s home forest is felled.
Lectures and author meetings
Author meeting:
Erik Westholm is a human geographer and professor emeritus at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. He is also a forest owner in an actively managed forest property. Active as an author, writer, lecturer and current with a new book: Ten thoughts on the future of the forest.
Lecture: Forest Monitor – a tool for monitoring and protecting the EU’s natural heritage in forests
Skogsmonitor is a unique map service that gathers important map layers with valuable forest environments in one place. It also presents a new comprehensive mapping of potential older forest and continuity forest. The map layers show where there are, or may be, forests with high conservation values, but also social values and forests with large carbon stores throughout Sweden.
During Jon Andersson’s lecture, a tool will be presented to facilitate the work on environmental objectives and different types of nature conservation and climate initiatives. Skogsmonitor is a map service that creates better conditions for locating the forests that have the highest conservation values, and the landscape sections where there are concentrations of potential older forest and continuity forest that can be or are forests with high conservation values. This is the basis for functional landscape planning, something that helps forest managers in their nature conservation work: individual forest owners, municipalities, forest companies and authorities, etc. But it is also a map for outdoor life, and for anyone who wants to explore the natural heritage of the north and enjoy the beauty and diversity of Sweden’s most natural and magnificent forests.
About the lecturer:
Jon Andersson is a project manager, data developer, animator and illustrator at Skogsmonitor.se
Jon is a GIS expert, forest expert, conservationist and Ph.D. in biology. Born and raised in Västerbotten. Already as a child, he became interested in the forest and spent a lot of time there. After university studies with a focus on biology, he has worked with forest issues – in research, at government agencies and as a consultant – and built up a solid knowledge of the state of the forest and the impact of forestry on biodiversity and climate. Today I work part-time at the organization Protect the Forest, with forest mapping, and forest monitoring in the project Skogsmonitor.se, but also as an environmental consultant.
Lecture: Forest gardens as educational environments
Annevi Sjöberg will give tips on suitable plants to plant in educational environments and share her experiences of planting edible and creating forest garden-like environments at preschools.
A class for beginners.
About the lecturer: Annevi Sjöberg was one of the founders of Permakultur Stjärnsund, teaches forest gardening at Färnebo Folk High School and is one of the authors of the books Skogsträdgården – odla edible everywhere, and Perennial vegetables – discover, grow, enjoy. Together with children, she has planted edible plants at a couple of preschools in Gävle and Hedemora municipalities. Nowadays, she works mainly with the company Plockhugget and close-to-nature forestry, but has a large part of her heart still in the forest garden.
Lecture: A diversity of perennial vegetables for the forest garden
About the lecturer: Stephen Barstow is a British-Norwegian plant nerd, author and expert on perennial vegetables and blogger at edimentals.com. He is known for his book Around the World in 80 Plants and his work promoting edible perennial plants. Barstow is a central figure in KVANN (Norwegian Seed Savers) and is today a visiting onion researcher at the NTNU Ringve Botanical Garden in Trondheim, Norway, where he has built up a collection of over 400 perennial onions (Løkhagen Chicago). He is particularly known for his extensive trialling of perennial vegetables (over 6,000) and for having created a salad with 537 different species! His many megasalads, a winter salad with 140, a ferment with 412 plants, a pesto with 230 types of onion are all inspired by traditional Mediterranean multi-species dishes, earning him the title “Extreme Salad Man”. Since retiring he has also created The World Garden in the Væres Venner Community Garden in Trondheim, showcasing over 200 perennial vegetables and is busy documenting the amazing biodiversity associated with his plant collections!
Lecture: The forest and the climate
How does forestry affect the climate? It is an important, relevant and interesting research area. Research shows that reduced felling levels would provide immediate and cost-effective climate benefits. Göran Englund and his colleagues have made calculations that show that the climate benefits would be great if felling levels were to decrease. At the same time, there are other researchers who claim the opposite. Why do different researchers come to such different conclusions? Göran will talk about this during his lecture.
About the lecturer: Göran Englund
Göran is Professor Emeritus of Ecology at Umeå University, and in recent years has taken an interest in the climate impact of forestry.
Lecture: Close-to-Nature Forestry – Underlying Philosophy, and Its Practice. Can it be quality assured?
A lecture on forests and close-to-nature forestry, and about how the view that the forest is a cultivation must be broken. Martin talks about the basics, the practice and about the Ekoskog initiative.
About the lecturer:
Martin Jentzen works as an independent consultant with a main focus on close-to-nature forestry.
Martin has a forest engineering degree and has previously worked at the Swedish Forest Agency and as a wood buyer for a few years. Over time, however, his interest has become more focused on forest ecology and close-to-nature forestry. In this area, Martin has gained a lot of knowledge and inspiration from his German colleagues.
Workshops
Gylleboverket
Gylleboverket’s artist group (Jona Elfdahl & Etta Säfve) work as artists and together run Gylleboveket – a cross-disciplinary platform for art, culture and resilience on a former construction scrapyard. They also run the permaculture farm Båt i skogen – a harbor for radical nomads. On the farm, they have, among other things, established a 3-hectare food forest with hundreds of nut trees and fruit, berries and perennials.
Using both of these sites and interdisciplinary collaborations, permacultural tools and artistic methods, they explore questions of existential resilience, of inner and outer transition, how we can live with the intangible, what an ecological self could be, and how we can be part of something regenerative.
At the forest festival, they hold a conversation workshop and social sculpture about diversity, relationships and existential resilience. How do we take care of our differences, the intangible, the sorrow and love, the more than human, the landscapes, ourselves and each other in the transition process.
Gylleboverket’s website
Workshop: Designing a forest garden
An inspirational workshop on how to design a forest garden with Hanna Jönsson from Under Eken.
Learn the basics of how to design a forest garden based on the plants.
About the workshop owner:
Through gates of beech forest and clearings in bedrock, my childhood sneaked through nature’s beautiful things and magical light. In my mother’s garden, my hands got to know the leaves and stems, soil and seed. Behind the schoolyard I planted my first secret snowdrops of my own and in the forest I created my first gardens for mice and trolls.
I became a florist and my hands were created in color and transience. I wanted to see and understand the world, and my desire to create a more beautiful world for more people led me into reuse design and involvement in schools around food and climate. But I wanted to understand more, understand how everything is connected. The climate, the food, the soil. The forest garden became my new friend and today it is where I find the answers, ask the questions and get the inspiration. At Rönnsåker and Under the oak I create the garden of my dreams and what is the future of my dreams. At Holma Folk High School and around the country, I lecture and inspire in the design of edible perennials. Hope I can inspire you too and welcome to contact me if you want me to design at your place!
Website: www.undereken.se
Bioblitz – The Forest Festival
During the Forest Festival, there will be two different bioblitzas led by Elin Götmark and Toni Berglund. One takes place in Åfallet Forest Garden and the other in a forest near the Forest Festival.
Bioblitz is an intensive inventory of species and biodiversity in a specific area. At the Forest Festival, experts and amateurs are invited to discover and map biodiversity together, by taking an inventory of as many living organisms as possible in the areas and then going through all observations together. This is to highlight and highlight the fantastic biodiversity we all depend on and have an obligation to protect.
Elin Götmark is a spokesperson for Protect the Forest and is on the editorial board of the Friends of the Mossorna’s magazine Myrinia. She first became active for the forest over twenty years ago within the Field Biologists, and has a great interest in species diversity in all its forms. She has just acquired a farm with some forest north of Alingsås, where she has also started cultivating – and of course aims to map the farm’s biodiversity.
Children’s activities
Biologist and nature educator Sara Antell will be in charge of the children’s activities at the Forest Festival this year! There will be several exciting sessions during the weekend for children and families with children. -Participate, play, learn and discover!
Among other things, we will explore life in the pond, in rice piles, in the forest garden and in the surrounding forest. We test different methods of collecting animals and plants to take a closer look at them and think about why they live/grow here and if they have any exciting special abilities. We use magnifiers and binoculars, flip through books and try some useful apps to find out what we have found, if possible. Inspired by what we find, we can also create with natural materials and play games. During the festival’s Bioblitz, there is also the opportunity to join the Children’s Arrace.
Sara Antell
I was raised in the big city but understood early on that I had to get my dose of forest and sea to feel good. I trained as a biologist and have also studied pedagogy, worked with research and research communication and have been working as an educator at the nature school in Knivsta for more than ten years. In my spare time, I like to pack my backpack with a coffee thermos and some sandwiches and go hiking, I want to discover new interesting places, preferably together with others. With age, I have become a real association fox, among other things I am chairman of an association that runs and manages a former children’s colony in Knivsta municipality – Eda lägergård. Helping to ensure that more people, not least children and young people, have the opportunity to take part in our fantastic Swedish nature is my driving force.
Exhibitors
Under the oak – sale of seeds for the forest garden
Under the oak has a diverse range of naturally grown seeds for forest gardens and the cultivation of perennial vegetables.
Come and buy seeds and meet and talk to the exhibitor and forest garden designer Hanna Jönsson during the Forest Festival!
Presentation of the exhibitor:
Through gates of beech forest and clearings in bedrock, my childhood sneaked through nature’s beautiful things and magical light. In my mother’s garden, my hands got to know the leaves and stems, soil and seed. Behind the schoolyard I planted my first secret snowdrops of my own and in the forest I created my first gardens for mice and trolls.
I became a florist and my hands were created in color and transience. I wanted to see and understand the world, and my desire to create a more beautiful world for more people led me into reuse design and involvement in schools around food and climate. But I wanted to understand more, understand how everything is connected. The climate, the food, the soil. The forest garden became my new friend and today it is where I find the answers, ask the questions and get the inspiration. At Rönnsåker and Under the oak I create the garden of my dreams and what is the future of my dreams. At Holma Folk High School and around the country, I lecture and inspire in the design of edible perennials. Hope I can inspire you too and welcome to contact me if you want me to design at your place!
Website: www.undereken.se
Ordfront Publishing House is an independent book publisher that has been around for more than 50 years. We publish social debate, history, cultural history, handbooks and high-quality fiction and adhere to a libertarian, socially critical and popular education tradition. Ordfront also includes Galago, which publishes adult comics.
On site at the Forest Festival is Jenny Bjarna, who is a publisher at Ordfront publishing house and who also lives in Haddebo in her spare time.
Website: ordfrontforlag.se
Christer Sandberg from the Swedish Pomological Society is an exhibitor at the Forest Festival
My name is Christer Sandberg and I have been retired for 9 years. I have been a beekeeper since the age of 14 and grow vegetables for household needs. Another great interest is apples, where I have been chairman of the Swedish Pomological Society for 8 years. Right now, together with gardener Mats Andersson, Fågelvik, I am creating a test cultivation of 9 different common Swedish apple varieties on 8 different rootstocks (roots) with 5 trees of each variety. I also usually sit and help people see what kind of apples they have in their garden. I am helping to take care of a villa garden after Carl Strömberg where there are about a hundred apple trees, several of which have more than one variety grafted in. I usually hold courses in pruning and grafting.
Protect the Forest Association
We are a non-profit environmental organization with a focus on the forest. We work for biodiversity and the climate, and for the reform of forestry to an ecosystem-based multiple use within planetary boundaries.
Our engagement is international, national, regional and local. Through information dissemination, public education, advocacy and debate, we highlight the biodiversity and climate benefits of forests and emphasize the importance of climate-proofing forests and protecting them from exploitation and depletion.
We protect the right of public access and stand up for Sami rights.
Come to Protect the Forest’s information table and talk to committed members and board members during the Forest Festival!
Hopajola is a unique non-profit nature conservation organization for Örebro County. The organization was formed in 1994 and collects money for the protection and care of biologically valuable nature in the county. Hopajola also offers nature tours and collaborates with other local/regional organizations to show the county’s fantastic nature and species worthy of protection.
Come and meet representatives from Hopajola at the Forest Festival!
Read more on www.hopajola.se