Jokkmokk tourist company owners by chance

When Germans Jasmin and Volker Husman camped in Skabram Holiday Village, in -30c during the winter market in 2005, they told the campsite owner about their dream to live and work above the arctic circle in Lapland. Three weeks later, he e-mailed them offering them summer jobs and within three months they were back in Jokkmokk.

Friends and acquaintances at home in Jever in northern Germany were not impressed at all. “When we told them that we were going to give our notices in, sell our stuff and move north of the Arctic Circle, people said 'you're totally mad! ". “But our parents said, do it now, while you are still young, which was the green light we needed”, says Jasmin Husman.

We came for summer jobs, but the goal was to stay. Since we are nurses, we both hoped to get a job in health care, but instead, we were offered the camp for a year on a lease basis. To do that, we had to start a business. This was absolutely not what we had considered, "says Volker. While the couple began to learn Swedish as quickly as possible, the local enterprise company Strukturum helped them with setting up a business. In record time, they became self-employed, rented a campsite - and both secured jobs at the health centre. Since then, everything has gone to plan. Today, the pair have full time jobs at the health center and run the activity company ‘Experience Jokkmokk’.

Thanks to Strukturums ‘Project for entrepreneurs with foreign backgrounds’, the company has developed its website and Volker has been able to participate in avalanche safety training in Åre. Volker will have completed Mountain Security Training for mountain users shortly as well. Since Volker came to Sweden, he has trained as a certified Laponia guide, a museum guide for Ájtte and has also studied for two years as a nature guide through Umeå University.

“It has been a few years of hardwork. I have worked full time at the health centre, studied 100 percent and we have run a business and bought a house, "said Volker, who can now take leave from the health centre from December to April to work in his company full time, which amongst other things, includes arranging dog sled rides and snowshoe walking tours.