New Year’s resolution

Published on the blog Sacred Homeland in 2013

Every new years eve you have to make a resolution for the next year. It is often about how much fitter you will become the next year and how often you will visit the gym. Because we are interested in traditions and cultural heritages we made a resolution just like that. But we felt that we didn’t want to spend too much time in a gym when you can be outdoor hiking, so, we found an organization that we since yesterday are members in. The organization is called ”Frisksportarna” and started in 1930th inspired by the American Physical Culture movement and the German youth movement Wandervogel. 

Frisksport is a holistic organization with a clear ideology that says that people should have a healthy spirit in a healthy body. It advocate vegetarianism, no alcohol or tobacco, society involvement, tolerance and respect among people and countries, and of course a lot of sport and outdoor activities. 

In the 1940thgrandpa Trygve was working as a lumberjack in north Sweden. He and his lumberjack friends were at the time frisksportare. They ate vegetarian food, which in that time was mostly boiled potato and raw food. Their supervisor was sceptic if they got enough energy from their food to make a proper job but he was convinced when he understood that the young men didn’t used alcohol in the weekend and therefore was fit also in Monday mornings. Trygve is an idol with his sport and outdoor interest that he cultivated from young age until a few years ago when he couldn’t walk or run so fast anymore. He is still a good storyteller so now he has inspired us to cultivate our sporty life. We started yesterday with swimming and today we took a long walk.