Park X with Jan and Rose


Out in the countryside, on a beautiful summer’s day, alongside the river. It’s now high summer and everything is in full growth. We’re visiting an art installation in an old industrial area. Long grass grows everywhere and swallows are zooming back and forth across an area of low vegetation. It feels very close to nature but this is misleading.
The picture is taken in the old harbour office at the long closed Marieberg Sawmill. We are looking at an art installation, Park X, which takes up at a case of old industrial pollution that happened here.

This area was one of the centres for the Swedish industrial revolution. Timber was floated down the river from the interior of the country. Just a kilometre from here is Sandslån, which was a huge centre for sorting the timber as it arrived here, where the river opens out and sea-going vessels could come in and dock. So when a sawmill was built here in 1862 there was no shortage of raw material. The logs were floated here, pulled out, and fed into the saw mill. Out the other end came planks and beams, to be loaded onto boats and transported to other parts of Sweden and Europe.
In 1944 they decided to increase the value of the wood further by drying and impregnating it to prevent it from rotting. By 1970 times and markets had changed and the sawmill closed down, the gates were locked and nature returned. Where long grass now grows there was a thick wood of young trees and riotous undergrowth.
In 2006 the authorities started to check the levels of pollution and in and around the area where that drying and impregnation shed had been there were extremely high levels of dioxin in the soil. Being on the edge of the river the dioxin was slowly washing out into the water. The artist’s co-op that had just renovated the main building was told to leave and no-one was allowed to enter. From 2012 to 2015 measures were taken to solve the problem. Among these were the removal of the drying building (poor artists!), the top metre of soil, containing most of the poison, and  the construction of deep ditches lowering the level of the water table under the poisoned ground.
 Much of this information comes from an information notice from the county, and from the artwork in the installation that we are looking at, Park X. The art co-op putting on the exhibition is the same one that thought they had gained wonderful studio space 15 years ago.
I always find the mix of nature and old industry interesting, whether it’s quarries in South Wales or glass works or saw mills in Sweden. Unfortunately the environmental drama which is part of this particular place is all too common.