An 18-Year-Old Spends a Year Alone Building a Log Cabin in the Swedish Wilderness: Watch from Start to Finish

Hen­ry David Thore­au has at times been upbraid­ed by crit­ics for “everyone’s favorite incrim­i­nat­ing bio­graph­i­cal fac­toid,” writes Dono­van Hohn at The New Repub­lic: “Dur­ing the two years he spent at Walden Pond, his moth­er some­times did his laun­dry.” The author who became “America’s orig­i­nal nature boy “played at rugged self-suf­fi­cien­cy,” it is said, “while squat­ting on bor­rowed land, in a house built with a bor­rowed axe”; he played at rugged indi­vid­u­al­ism while rely­ing on friends and fam­i­ly to sup­port him.

Who did Erik Grankvist’s laun­dry, we might won­der, while he built a log cab­in alone dur­ing the year he record­ed in the edit­ed video above? Grankvist shows how, at 18, he “ven­tured out alone with only a back­pack full of sim­ple hand tools to actu­al­ize my dream… [to] build my own tra­di­tion­al off grid log cab­in by hand from the mate­ri­als of the Swedish wilder­ness. Just like our Fore­fa­thers did.” You may notice, or not, the clean­li­ness of Grankvist’s cloth­ing. You may won­der, “who washed his fore­fa­thers’ clothes?”…

Or, you might say, “this isn’t a video about laun­dry but about build­ing a log cab­in!” And you would be cor­rect. As an exper­i­ment in build­ing a log cab­in from scratch with (most­ly) just a few hand tools, it is an extra­or­di­nary doc­u­ment: “I had no pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence in build­ing, gath­er­ing mate­ri­als or film­ing,” Grankvist writes. “So I start­ed study­ing myself the old arts and learn­ing from my grand­fa­ther and men­tor Åke Nils­son. I began to cut down trees and film with my phone, learn­ing as I go.”

The project real­ly picked up steam once Grankvist grad­u­at­ed high school, he writes, sug­gest­ing he did not actu­al­ly live full time in the woods but that some­one fed, housed, and clothed him while he worked. We see none of this in the video. We do see a trac­tor at one point, and Grankvist admits he’d rather the mod­ern extrav­a­gance have been a horse.

Does it ruin the mag­ic a lit­tle to won­der about the mun­dane details of the builder’s life — food, cloth­ing, health­care, etc. — while watch­ing him cut his own tim­ber, clear the land, build a stone foun­da­tion and, on top of it, a rus­tic lit­tle cab­in? Maybe a lit­tle. But as extra­or­di­nary as it is to watch an 18-year-old Swede build a log cab­in by him­self, one also can’t help but remem­ber it takes a vil­lage worth of fore­fa­thers, and moth­ers, to make an 18-year-old Swede. But Grankvist does not present his visu­al Walden as a how-to guide (any more than Thore­au did), but as his own state­ment of inde­pen­dence, one worth mak­ing even if it does­n’t tell the full truth about self-suf­fi­cien­cy.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Japan­ese Car­pen­ters Unearth 100-Year-Old Wood Joiner­ies While Tak­ing Apart a Tra­di­tion­al House

How Frank Lloyd Wright’s Son Invent­ed Lin­coln Logs, “America’s Nation­al Toy” (1916)

How to Sur­vive the Com­ing Zom­bie Apoc­a­lypse: An Online Course by Michi­gan State

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness


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Comments (9)
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  • lilly says:

    fun­ny, i didn’t think about his mum or his laun­dry once. just his accom­plish­ments, which are many.

  • Hans Bumgarth says:

    Såg ni inte att han hop­pade i sjön med kläder­na på sig, och sedan plock­ade av dem, kanske var de så han gjorde hela tiden!
    Var­för hän­ga upp sig på det­ta, bät­tre se till vad han ensamt fix­ade och ställde allt ensam det tyck­er jag är värt att framhål­la, Typiskt en amerikan, skulle kom­ma med den­na sak­en, det visa att de är avund­sju­ka, de vill vara Störs, bäst kun­na allt, så kom­mer en kille på 18 år och drar dem vid näsa, det har de tydli­gen svårt att ta in,
    Nä, heja Erik, du är bäst, stå på dej, du kan göra storverk, Önskar dej all lyc­ka till. Har du fix­at någon brunn nu, så du får vat­ten?
    Vi hörs kanske om du har tid, vill se mera av dej.
    Häl­sningar
    Hans Bum­garth
    Kalmar

  • ken long says:

    it only ruins the mag­ic if you are dumb

  • Drew Hillier-Cicconi says:

    I agree with Hans who stat­ed: “Did you not see that he jumped into the lake with his clothes on, and then picked them off, maybe they were like he did all the time!” This 18 year old kid is impres­sive, espe­cial­ly when he takes a swim in an ice pond. His wood­work­ing skills are excel­lent. Sir, only a com­plete wanker would throw shade at this won­der­ful kid.

  • Mary Brown says:

    I saw him do his laun­dry! In the lake, he took a bath and wrung out his clothes.

    All that he did was sim­ply amaz­ing! He gave us a true pic­ture of what our fore­fa­thers did, for their fam­i­lies. There were no lum­ber mills, chain­saws or hard­ware stores to pick up nails and screws. Not to men­tion gro­cery stores or food deliv­ery.

    He had to plan when to plant those veg­gies, so they’d be avail­able to him, at the same time build­ing that cab­in.

    I nev­er saw what he did with the win­dow, but I saw the door he built, so I can imag­ine!

    Those cold baths killed me to watch. Lol I love my hot ones. The sauna was epic!

    Where did the 2 dogs and the cat come from? How nice for the com­pa­ny. :)

    His black­smithing was as amaz­ing as all his wood­work­ing, and stone cut­ting too?! Won­der­ful! And so pre­cise! I could sure use that kind of work on my 3 acres, in this for­est!

    I bet your fam­i­ly is so proud of you, young man! Awe­some job! Big hugs!

  • REGY says:

    HOLA ERIC, TE FELICITO. ERES UN JOVEN ASOMBROSO…CUANDO VEIA TUS VIDEOS TE ADMIRABA PORQUE SENTÍA QUE SOLO UNA PERSONA CON DESEOS DE MOSTRAR QUE TU SOLO PUDISTE CONSTRUIR ESA CABAÑA EN MEDIO DE ESA MONTAÑA SIN SENTIR MIEDO A LOS ANIMALES SALVAJES ES DIGNO QUE ADMIRAR.
    YO VI EN UN VIDEO QUE EN EL LAGO UN DIA SALIO COMO ALGO EXTRAÑO QUE NADABA. ¿ QUE ERA ESO ERIC?.

  • Don says:

    Stum­bled on these videos and could­n’t stop watch­ing them. This young guy is tru­ly amaz­ing and tal­ent­ed. When you look at oth­er young peo­ple on tik­tok that are too com­fort­able on there post­ing absolute rub­bish beg­ging for gifts and mon­ey and then watch what this guy does kin­da blows you away. Great YouTube look for­ward to fol­low­ing your adven­tures.

  • bait says:

    This cab­in is like from a walk­ing dis­tance from this guys par­ents farm where he has all neces­si­ties. No year, or three years spent alone in the wild. Just for youtube clicks. Not that Im not impressed by log relat­ed crafts­man­ship even though there are cou­ple of big errs, notably regard­ing ver­ti­cal con­trac­tion

  • Zane McFarland says:

    Wow. I stum­bled onto this video at my farm/ranch in the pan­han­dle of Texas. Just wow. This young man could do any­thing he set his mind too. Tru­ly impres­sive.

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