Baggböle
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Baggböle is a small village on the
History
The original sawmill at Baggböle Rapids, which was built in 1813-14, stemmed from a partnership between Johan Unander, Eric Nyberg and Johan Vikner, who obtained permission to build a sawmill there.[4]
The original business was bought by James Dickson & Co of Gothenburg, Sweden, a company started by Scottish-Swedish brothers
The mills' impressive productivity was partially due to the owners' disregard for the law. During 1842–68, the locals, who delivered logs to the sawmill, felled more trees on land belonging to the Crown than they had permissions for.[3][5] A reckless cutting of timber that through the press coverage of the resulting court cases became so infamous that a new word in the Swedish language was derived from the name of the village: baggböleri, a derogative term for reckless deforestation.[2][3][6]
The court cases
The business methods of the sawmill owned and operated by James Dickson & Co became headline news in Sweden when the manager and director of the company, James Dickson Jr, was taken to court on 15 June 1850, accused of encouraging his suppliers upstream to supply him with logs that did not belong to them. Dickson's defence was that he did not know that a large part of the logs that the sawmill was processing belonged to the Crown. The Crown was, however, said to be well aware of the fact that much of the wealth the sawmill was creating for local residents and land owners, for which the local population was very grateful, came from illegal felling of timber on Crown land. By swearing to his honesty and his lack of knowledge of what had happened Dickson was able to escape a conviction, which was allowed under Swedish law at that time, in cases where all evidence was circumstantial.[8]
James Dickson was fortunate in avoiding a conviction, because even if he personally had been unaware of it his company was guilty of receiving stolen goods, having, every year since 1842, taken in more than the 4,500 logs per annum from Crown forests than had been agreed.[2]
The exploitation of Crown timber continued but in 1866-67 the company was again taken to court and this time they were obliged to agree to help prevent the use of Crown timber. This was the time when the company was featured in satirical cartoons and the term baggböleri was first seen in print. The rights to fell a certain quantity of timber on Crown land had been given to the farmers and the local villages, which in theory put them in a position of power, but since the only way for the farmers and villages to move logs at that time was by log driving, i.e. letting the current of the river move the logs downstream, the only viable purchaser was the sawmill at Baggböle; which since the sawmill set the price made it possible for the mill to exploit its suppliers. An exploitation that was also included in the meaning of the term baggböleri.[8]
The sawmill was able to use its power to set the terms of logging contracts with local villages, contracts that through the nature of them, giving Baggböle sawmill exclusive rights to all timber felled on all forest land belonging to the villages for a period of 50 years, resulted in no one feeling responsible for, or being interested in, replanting
The end of the sawmill era
The sawmill came under threat when
Today the land formerly used by Baggböle sawmill is Arboretum Norr, an arboretum that has been developed to attract visitors, and develop plants suitable for northern latitudes, while the manor, which originally served as residence for the manager of the sawmill at Baggböle and became a historically listed/graded building in 1964, is used for business conferences and as a restaurant.[7][11]
Notes
1.^ "Baggböleri, skogsskövling, olovlig skogsavverkning. Uttrycket kommer av Baggböle, ett sågverk i Västerbotten, vilket på 1860-talet anklagades för olovlig skogsavverkning på Kronans mark."
References
- ^ "Tätorternas landareal, folkmängd och invånare per km2 2005 och 2010" (in Swedish). Statistics Sweden. 14 December 2011. Archived from the original on 27 January 2012. Retrieved 10 January 2012.
- ^ a b Welcome to the Arboretum North!, arboretun-norr.se, retrieved 17 May 2014
- ^ a b c "Baggböleri". Bra Böckers Lexikon. Höganäs: Bra Böcker. 1973.
- ^ a b Visit Areas Archived 2014-09-24 at the Wayback Machine, Umea.se, retrieved 25 May 2014
- ^ ISBN 0415671302.
- ^ a b c d e Baggbole Archived 2014-05-05 at the Wayback Machine, Umea.SE, retrieved 18 May 2014
- ^ a b c Baggbole Mansion, Vasterbottens Museum, retrieved 3 June 2014
- ^ a b c The Term "Baggböleri" Archived 2014-05-19 at the Wayback Machine, SkogsMuseet, retrieved 19 May 2014
- ISBN 0195361415.
- ^ History, Umea Energi, retrieved 25 May 2014
- ^ Baggbole Manor House Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine, visitumea.se, retrieved 18 May 2014