Erik Grankvist was 17, living in Stockholm, Sweden, and feeling lost. But after a chance viewing of a classic wilderness documentary, he thought he’d found a path.
Editor’s note: This story was originally published on Explorersweb.
The youngster decided to venture into a trackless forest to build a cabin. Using hand tools. On his own.
After turning 18 and watching Alone in the Wilderness — a classic 2004 documentary about American naturalist Dick Proenneke — Erik Grankvist set out on his quest. Although he didn’t originally intend to meticulously film every aspect of his cabin’s construction, he’d received a GoPro for his birthday and decided he might as well use it.
Three years later, Grankvist’s feature-length documentary stands as an incredible testament to his physical strength, mental fortitude, and obsessive documentarian instincts.
Forest Sounds
I Spent 3 Years Alone Building a Log Cabin doesn’t feature any narration, voice-over, or talking at the camera. It’s hard to decide if that’s a stylistic choice or if Grankvist was simply too exhausted by his labors to talk.
The work on display is simultaneously monumental and meticulous. Grankvist sets his camera up on a tripod and lets it run as he digs and hauls stones for a foundation, fells and debarks trees, and painstakingly fits every log together.
The soundtrack is the gentle hum of insects and the call of birds overhead. No gasoline-powered tools mar the pristine soundscape.
To fell his trees, Grankvist turns to an axe and saw. To get them to his build site, he rolls the massive trees over smaller logs one foot at a time.
And for splitting the logs, he uses a homemade wooden mallet and hand-whittled wedges. He builds his own sawhorses and uses the most basic of physics tricks to haul logs to the top of his increasingly higher walls.
Things Take Shape
