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Seminar Facts and Fiction in Interaction

Welcome to a day dedicated to Bergslagen storytelling. At 11:00 AM there will be a guided tour at the old Stollbergsgruvan and from 2 PM we continue in Meken. Smedjebacken.

Bergslagsfantasy in dirty reality

This spring, Albert Bonniers Förlag is publishing the novel Hidden flows that takes place in a poisoned part of Bergslagen. The characters in the story struggle with themselves and each other. It is fiction.

But the enormous and leaking waste deposits left behind by the mining industry are a reality that the residents have lived with for more than a century. Previously, local newspapers wrote about the issue, but now the area rests in media shadow.

The pressure that has drawn and the waste that has remained is the factual basis that authors Martin Hedén and Inger Orre present to their characters. And their anger grows.

Welcome to Smedjebacken May 4th from 11 AM to 5 PM

Take the opportunity to leave the car at home. Free bus to Stollbergs mine departs at 10:45 AM from Meken, Kyrkogatan Smedjebacken. The bus passes the train station in Smedjebacken at 11:00 AM.

The bus will then take you back to Meken at 12:45 PM from Stollbergs mine. Break for lunch before the day continues at 2 PM in Meken.

On Saturday, May 4th, the authors and Smedjebacken municipality, with support from Leader Bergslagen/EU, invite all interested to Stollbergs mine and then to Meken in Smedjebacken to follow up on the novel's environment/nature theme and the gap between alarm reports and actual measures.

Here, guests from other parts of the country will meet locally engaged people.

How can fiction and other art forms influence reality?

This is the core question of the event Facts & Fiction in interplay.

Marcus Derland from Dagens Nyheter's Norrland editorial will explain how they work with the mining theme. In June 2022, DN published an extensive series on mining in the north. There is room for exchanging experiences here.

Martin Hedén and Inger Orre will share how they – both with a background as reporters – landed in fiction and a broadly laid-out novel about a local editor who refuses to be silenced despite most wanting to shut her up.

How should we understand and handle the creeping changes in nature and the environment? This can concern climate, groundwater, and threatened species of animals and plants.

What can fiction contribute? What are the risks?

On Saturday afternoon, these questions will be discussed in Meken in Smedjebacken, based on journalism and the novel Hidden flows but with inputs and digressions from several art forms.

Among others, composer Torbjörn Grass has promised to participate with practical examples of how he is inspired by reality in Bergslagen's mines and industries. But the day begins in the morning at Stollbergs old mine. Mining operations were shut down in the mid-1980s, yet the smell of sulfur still lingers strongly over the area. Nearby are also three of Sweden's 1660 contaminated areas in the highest risk class, meaning ”with very high risk to the environment and human health.”.