I Went Looking For A Cheap Cabin In The Northern Sweden Woods (Story 1)

My name is Rosanne and I'm going to take you along on my journey of finding a cheap cabin in the north of Sweden. I came to Sweden in June this year and had this dream of finding a cheap cabin in the north to renovate and live a bit more remote, away from people, somewhere tucked into the woods, grow my own vegetables and starting a new chapter in life. After spending 18 years in London, I was really ready to do something completely different and not be surrounded by buildings and people but to be in nature and be surrounded by trees instead. My search ended up being a little bit unconventional because I don't own a car, I didn't have any way to view houses other than take public transportation and go on foot and decided to wild camp along the way. I had a couple of requirements or dreams for the property. I was really hoping to find something, a little cabin that I could renovate away from direct neighbours, away from roads. A lot of these places were summer houses which means that they're not set up for living during winter so many of them aren't insulated properly. To me the most important thing turned out to be location and I knew that that was the one thing that I might have to forego. You know, I had this vision of being in the woods. The one surface that I really needed was electricity so I just really tried to select the houses to view that seemed to take as many boxes as they could, always checking the satellite images of how they were located, always checking whether there was electricity, some sort of water source on the property, if there wasn't like a water well, whether there was a stream or something that I could rely on and whether the roads would be ploughed during winter and that was the main thing. So I was really hoping originally to find something between 200,000 and 250,000 crowns and very quickly realized that the prices have already gone up. Many of the houses that I was looking at were summer houses which are very popular right now and I was looking at houses that were listed between 300,000 even up to 400,000. They are all on a bidding system so all of these prices are pretty much starting prices. You can bid below but I found that a lot of the places that were popular, pretty much all the places that I looked at, went up often by like a hundred thousand crowns. I'm going to take you along on my cabin hunt. I am going to run through all of them and I'm going to add locations and prices or starting prices. How successful was I to find a cabin in Sweden? I went to Stockholm initially. I flew out and took a bus, took a train and I had two days before the first viewing and I decided to walk the final 65 kilometers and got off the train and walked and set up my tent in the woods, which was really fun. It was really a good introduction to Sweden. The first house I looked at was a house that was actually just for year-round living but it was small and it was really nicely situated off a quiet road, probably at like the most southern tip of where I was looking. Now my initial idea was to look for houses in basically the middle third of the country. I didn't want to go too far north because I really want to grow vegetables and I didn't want to be too far south because there'll be too many people, too much agriculture. It was actually really nice. It was just a house that was perfect for one person. It had everything, water, sewage. It just needed a lot of cosmetic renovation and that was something that really appealed to me. Oddly enough the house was on one side of the road with a plot of land and on the other side of the road there was a huge shed and a cute little guest house. But the shed and guest house, that plot of land wasn't actually part of the property and now the estate agents told me that it was owned by a forestry company. They would never want it back or anything but that just didn't really feel all that comfortable. The one huge downside though was that there was a huge road nearby and that road you could just hear the cars roar in the background constantly. So that cabin was quickly a no for me. The next morning I walked up 10 kilometers to a second cabin and that cabin was also beautifully situated. There was a quiet road, it was near a lake. Unfortunately the forest leading up to the cabin was just cut down which I came to find out is a very common thing in Sweden. The plot actually included quite a bit of forest as well which I really liked. It had an outhouse outside. Inside was very simple, obviously it would need to be insulated better. There was a water well which had been installed and it definitely was something that I could turn into something fun. It was a nice cabin, it's a very masculine small summer house. With none of these properties I really cared much about the inside of the house to be honest. It's something that I would have always changed. I liked the cabin, I didn't love it. It didn't give me, you know, the coziest feelings but it was definitely something that you can turn into something beautiful. The one huge downside was that there was a plot right next to it and the summer house on that plot was really close to this summer house and they had a huge deck which was looking out onto this summer house which seemed a bit awkward. So I wasn't all that excited about it. After this the agent actually gave me a lift to a nearby town. I took a really long journey up north. I went on my first night train and ended up looking at the only house that I got through Blocket. Blocket is a little bit like eBay and people sell anything on it. So people sell houses as well. All the other houses I got through Hemnet which is the official housing website in Sweden. It's just one of the biggest. There's a couple, there's Hemnet, there's Booli. When I started looking at it I was so happy that I came all the way up north and I really felt as though this was a house that I could do something with. Now it was going to need some work because it wasn't insulated. It was set up as a summer house but it was a good size. I could really turn it into something and it just had so much potential. Outside I had this huge deck which was gorgeous and the garden was just wild and a bit overgrown but I really liked it. And the best thing was the guest house which was an old log cabin style guest house with a little platform upstairs for some beds. And I really thought that was just so cute. There were a couple of downsides. It was just off the road and the road wasn't busy but it wasn't quiet either. And oddly enough there were neighbors right next door. Trees were cut down just like where you can see the other house. The biggest downside was the water. There was a water well in the garden but it was a shallow one. It was just a few meters deep and there was no water in it. The solution was to get water from the nearby gas station and the gas station was only a 20 minute walk which isn't bad but imagine not having a car and having to get water every day. Hauling water tanks would just be impossible. Obviously having a water well, a boil well installed would be really expensive so that really kept me from seriously considering this house. So after this viewing I had a couple of days where I didn't have anything to do so I decided to take a bus up to the high coast trail because I was really nearby. First of all it was great to sleep in after spending a night on a night train. Now the trail was very varied. There was overgrown forest with moss and these rocky mountainsides overlooking these little islands in the sea. I saw some cute summer houses that you know kind of have me imagining all sorts of things and by the time the weather really started to shift and it started to rain I walked back to a bus station and took a train down south again for the next day. This house was very picturesque. The area was kind of gorgeous. It was a really sunny day as well and it's just beautiful. There were these beautiful grasslands right next to the roads and the cabin had this amazing rocky garden. It was very new built and really well done. It was just kind of finished and that actually was a downside for me. I really want something that I can renovate and this is just too perfectly done. But it was great. It had a toilet inside, a compost toilet. It had a main room with small bedrooms off to the one side which I saw more often. That was quite common. I guess for a summer house you want to try and host as many people as you can. Because it was a summer house it would definitely need more insulation and you would need to add a heating cable to the water pipes to make sure that the water doesn't freeze during winter. So it was something that you could fix and make suitable for winter living. But it definitely would need a bit of work. For me it was a little bit too perfect and even the area. It just seems like this very picturesque village and I couldn't really imagine myself living in this village surrounding. I just needed something a little bit more wild. Another downside was that there was absolutely no phone signal at the house and that was definitely a problem. So after this cabin I had a few more days to kill and I took a few more buses and trains and traveled down to this other trail. The trail was very foresty and the weather turned bad very quickly. I spent the night hiding from a thunderstorm. At that point I didn't really want to be hiking. I just wanted a few cabins. The next cabin I was going to I was really excited about though because it was far away from everything and that's really what I was looking for. Something wild. After I got off the bus stop, the last stop on the bus, I needed to walk almost three hours to get to this cabin. But I really enjoyed the walk and I went off the side roads that led to the cabin and the forest right around it was just gorgeous. I arrived at the cabin early and I walked around the plots and there was just so many lawns and crannies and different areas and so many outbuildings and I just loved it. That was the cabin that I'd been looking for. That type of plot was just amazing. I couldn't stand still because of the mosquitoes but it was perfect for me. Now the interior of the house was very small. It was just a room with a kitchen and a bedroom. I thought there was going to be enough stairs because there were windows but apparently that was just put in to make it look bigger. Apparently that's what they used to do back in the day. Unfortunately, there were a couple of downsides. First of all, if the description doesn't mention water or electricity, I always check the pictures for outlets and water taps. Sometimes you see a sink but there's no tap and then obviously there's no water but if there's a tap then I assume there's water. This cabin was like that but quickly found out that actually there's no water and the tap is just there because it's part of the kitchen build-out. There was however a stream on the property which I could deal with. Having a stream on the property was definitely okay for me. The other downside was electricity. There actually wasn't any electricity in the cabin which was very common. This made me have to rule out many gorgeous summer houses. But it had like a little solar panel and according to the estate agents that would be good enough for me to do work and do things in the house. But then came the thing that killed the deal altogether which was the roads to the cabin would not be plowed from snow during winter. The road is owned by the forest company and they do not plow the road during winter and you wouldn't be able to do it yourself. It's a kilometer and a half and that is just too expensive to have it done privately and the estate agent reckoned that you wouldn't be allowed to do it anyways because if the road gets damaged then the forest company would not be happy and basically they wouldn't allow you to. And I was so sad because this property was something that I would have gone for. But nevertheless I was so happy that I'd seen a property that I really liked because I was just getting worried whether I was going to find something that I was really going to be excited about. The next day I went to a cabin that was kind of nearby a little bit less remote but there were beautiful forest roads leading to it. Basically Sweden is one big forest are you always going through a forest? But the roads were beautiful. I had contacted the agent asking if I could just have a look outside. It was situated next to the road but it had a really good sized garden. It was really nicely done inside. Very simple but very well maintained. The downside was that the neighbors were actually really nearby. There were two houses next to it and on the satellite pictures they looked like they were a bit further away than they were. So that very immediately made me go it's not for me. But it had a great shed in the garden. It looked really nice and comfortable. There's a little pathway behind the house which led to this tiny stream and that was really cute. So after seeing these first six houses I'd been out there for two weeks. I felt like I'd been out there for months already. It had only been two weeks. It felt like I'd seen so many places and obviously I was checking everything online that was within my budget. I was just constantly on the app trying to find houses and figure out how to travel to the next place, which cabins would be suitable. And I obviously still hadn't had a property that made me really go I could consider this. Most of the places I looked at were nice and I could buy them and I could live in them and be comfortable and and I would be happy. But I didn't get excited about them. I just wondered is this going to happen for me or am I going to have to settle for something that isn't entirely what I was hoping to find. This video is going to be so long if I show you all the houses. So I have decided to turn this into a two-part video. Next week you'll see what happens. You'll see whether I succeeded to find my little piece of heaven in the northern parts of Sweden. So thank you for watching!