Every design for Skinnskatteberg

Skinnskatteberg, or Skinnsberg as people say, is an old Bergslagen district in northern Västmanland where mining and ironworking once marked the whole place. The mining district is mentioned as early as the mid-1300s, and when iron finally had to give way, the timber industry took over. Today it is the fan manufacturer Systemair that keeps things going, and at the manor the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences runs its Forest Master school – a detail that says a good deal about the place of the forest in daily life here.

It is the nearness of the water and the forest that gives the town its character. Dammsjön lies like a mirror in the middle of it all, and around it you find Lomtjärn, Kärrgetputten and the forested heights at Dammsjöberget. The Cable Car park and the Mirror pyramid are among the more unexpected features, small places that become fixed points of their own on a walk.

It is exactly the everyday – the lake through the trees, the silence between the houses, the smell of forest – that makes Skinnsberg hard to forget. A shirt with the map of Skinnskatteberg becomes a small way of taking that feeling of belonging right here with you.