Planted

When I got involved with climate activism and started learning more about ecology, biodiversity and climate change, I looked at my forest differently. I understood that it was—like most forests surrounding me—a monoculture plantation, which led me to feel almost tricked by the beauty that had surrounded me since childhood. But this also started a further inquiry into “what makes a forest."

Emelie Victoria Isaksen

Reflections Nearby a Forest That Raised Me | Emelie Victoria Isaksen

Reflections Nearby a Forest That Raised Me | Emelie Victoria Isaksen
Reflections Nearby a Forest That Raised Me | Emelie Victoria Isaksen
Reflections Nearby a Forest That Raised Me | Emelie Victoria Isaksen

Dear Reader,

I often close my eyes just to imagine what it feels like walking down the path from my childhood home into the forest. After walking it countless times, you’d think there isn’t much left to discover—after all, my forest is just a plantation of spruce—yet every time I think of parts of the path, I stop in awe and wonder what it could look like right now. Every centimetre of the soil is covered with a rich world that changes and shifts over years and with seasons. And every year I learn to see this world with new filters and in new ways.

The forest has taught me to notice and listen.

Värmland and Klarälvsdalen in Sweden were the backdrop of my childhood, and still the only place on earth I feel is home. I like to think that I was raised by ‘forests’ but have learned with time how we can think of vastly different things when we listen to this word.  

The forest has taught me about belonging.

I know you, forest, best as an old spruce plantation right on our doorstep, where the straight lines of old moss-covered trees seem endless. Here, the chantarelles surprise us with their abundance every autumn, and wood sorrel creates a fairylike and everchanging soft carpet in afternoon sunbeams as shadows move and each plant closes its petals. Even as a monoculture, you enchant. I also know you as the wet and mosquito-dense nature reserve close to our house. Here, one of the few breeding pairs of white-backed woodpeckers in Sweden can be found, and aspens have graciously built a tunnel over the gravel road guiding us through the wetland. Multifariousness and biodiversity.

The forest has taught me how abundance looks different but is found everywhere.

In the north of the region, large spruce forests calmly cover the terrain and in the south and the west, broadleaf forests eagerly stretch out. In the east specifically, but also throughout the region at large, the landscape is characterised by intensively logged forests due to a centuries-long history of mining. These extractions have supported welfare and been the backbone of livelihoods, but also changed and intervened drastically in landscapes. In Sweden, political discourse often refers to a binary framework of ‘untouched forest’ versus ‘monoculture plantation.’ But our history is entangled; forests and trees have developed and grown together, and many forests lie somewhere in between. There aren’t really any ‘pristine’ or ‘untouched’ forests. That doesn’t mean that plantations of pines are the same age as the lichen-rich, boreal old-growth forests near the Scandes Mountains, nor that there aren’t forests that we should protect from logging. On the contrary, there is much to learn about what we lose when we change a landscape without thinking about our entanglement. Forest management and felling have increased steadily since the 1950s and our forests contribute significantly to the economy and provide important alternative materials in a ‘green transition.’ Following a new EU directive on forest management, Sweden has however received international criticism for its forest management—it’s scale and frequency of clear cutting and a prioritisation of timber production over ecological health. Clear-cutting of old growth and continuous cover forests in Sápmi (vital to Indigenous Sámi reindeer herding practices) is also finally receiving increased attention. 

The forest has taught me about dependence and power.

Although I go back home to visit often, I have lived in urban centres across the world since I graduated high school. When I got involved with climate activism and started learning more about ecology, biodiversity and climate change, I looked at my forest differently. I understood that it was—like most forests surrounding me—a monoculture plantation, which led me to feel almost tricked by the beauty that had surrounded me since childhood.  For some time, a deep sadness overwhelmed me when I spent time in my forest, and I felt as if it was almost dead. I still can’t help but notice when forests in films and media are illustrated with images of rows of quite young spruce and pine and am quick to point this out when people bring up the vast forests of Scandinavia. But this also started a further inquiry into “what makes a forest.” Today, my understanding holds a new nuance and is informed by both international work with conservation, Queer Ecology, Ecopolitics, Environmental Anthropology, Posthumanism, and the writings of Indigenous scholars. The more I learn, the more I want to figure out how we can regenerate ecosystems, integrate benefits for all of us, and work with disturbed or changed landscapes. I felt that the sentence “suddenly one day, my fairy tale forest comes to life” from Swedish author Harry Martinsson’s 1934 poem resonated with me. Although it had been acting as both a playground and a refuge, 

I had not seen how alive even my forest (or plantation) was until I started learning the names and qualities of some species that also grew up in it and started noticing the gifts that forests give so generously. When I did, a transformation in my perspective happened almost overnight. Food to be foraged, lessons to be learnt on rest and adaptation, time to be shared and cherished. Although both biodiversity and carbon sequestration capacity differ between forests, an old plantation is also an ecosystem.

Reflections Nearby a Forest That Raised Me | Emelie Victoria Isaksen

The forest has taught me how things can change and shift and reminded me to stay openminded.

Botanist and writer Robin W. Kimmerer, who is a member of the Potawatomi Nation, emphasises interconnectedness and the importance of gratitude, reciprocity, and respect for the earth in her book Braiding Sweetgrass. Speaking of the enjoyment of picking wild strawberries, she explains how indigenous wisdom and storytelling can alter our relations to the world around us—it’s the “human perception that makes the world a gift. When we view the world this way, strawberries and humans alike are transformed. The stories we choose to shape our behaviours have adaptive consequences” (Kimmerer 2013, 30). Changing our perception and our relationship to land can create a new reality. Author and academicLiisa-Rávná Finbog pinpoints, from a Sámi perspective where this perception has always been status-quo, why this is important. Speaking of kinship and our involvement and exchange with land, waters, humans and other living organisms, she states, No matter the form, the intent behind a gift is always to make the receiver aware that they are part of a world-of-relations and that they are responsible for maintaining these relations in a good way” (Finbog 2022, 33). Indigenous perspectives teach us that there is potential for interspecies healing,and species of the forests are keen on collaborating if we pay attention and stay respectful.

The forest, and Indigenous voices from different corners of the world, have taught me about generosity and gratitude.

Recently, my research has been largely film and photography-based and develops a relational analysis of different communities that closely interact with forest landscapes. I like to think of correspondence as a framework and method, and therefore my research has previously been presented in the form of letters. In the letters, I weave critical theory together with reflections on my interactions with ethnographic interlocutors such as foresters and farmers, Sámi activists, mushroom enthusiasts and artists who are shaped by and in turn shape the landscape. Their generous engagement and collaboration help me approach the forests themselves in even more ways than I have been able to do before, and they all continue to teach me their way of relating to and reading the landscape. While some of these letters are addressed to forests, I still aim to find a way to better record and locate its voice(s); here, ecosemiotics and sensory recordings enter my research. I believe all of us who have grown up with and in forests have learnt to read and listen to them. But being raised includes learning both practical and abstract teachings, and we can interpret these different. Perhaps with correspondence, we can make a way forward where we, in generously precise yet open-ended communication, can pay attention to difference, power and entanglement 

The forest has taught me that we create best in close collaboration.

Words and photography by Emelie Victoria Isaksen 
Reflections Nearby a Forest That Raised Me | Emelie Victoria Isaksen
Reflections Nearby a Forest That Raised Me | Emelie Victoria Isaksen
Reflections Nearby a Forest That Raised Me | Emelie Victoria Isaksen

Words and Photography by Emelie Victoria Isaksen

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