Sweden – Dces 18. – 25. March 

Our last meeting. This has been an incredible journey the past two years. It’s time to meet in Piteå, Sweden and experience a real winter wonderland and learn about Social media influence and have some fun.  

The Icelandic team arrived in Stockholm on a beautiful Sunday morning and we got some time to explore the beautiful capital of Sweden, did some shopping and visited the Vasa museum. After dinner it was time to take the plane to Luleå to meet our hosts that took us to Piteå and since the plane was delayed we arrived very late and got to sleep in the following morning.   

Monday: We started our visit to Stömbackaskolan with a Swedish fika and got to taste some home baked cinnamon buns, bullar. After the fika we went on a school tour and did some ice breaking activities to get to know the whole group. The countries presented their schools and some examples of how social media influence affects their lives. After lunch we had a lecture and seminar with Mariana Vnuk about gender norms. It vas a good lecture but we agreed on that we were aware of all the traps you can fall into regarding this topic. Surprisingly the countries were not all in that place. Interesting! We had a workshop about gender norms and what to watch out for. After the second fika we went bowling. Then we got some free time to explore and we were so lucky to get the chance to go by snowmobile and see the northern lights and drink hot chocolate by an open fire.  

Tuesday: After fika we started our work and had a workshop photo studio and started to  prepare our talk shows about all the topics we had been working on for the last year. We also had a lecture by Karl Rönnback about  social media influence. After that we went out to play in the snow and had some fun. We had lunch in the forest by an open fire. With our bodies and minds filled with joy and oxygen we continued our work on the talk shows and took some photos to edit later. The evening we spent with our hosts.  

Wednesday: We used the morning to work on our talk shows and edit our photos.  We then had lunch at school and then we  walked to Acusticum, School of Music, Luleå University of Technology for a guided tour and workshop at Rise Interactive. The evening we spent with our hosts and did various things.  

Thursday: Started the day with fika and a Lecture by Hanna Modig? “Social media and mental health issues” After the fika we went by bus to a frozen lake to do some winter survival training!! This was a real ice breaking activity! The Icelandic team did well 4/6! After lunch at school we started filming our talk shows and were quite impressed with the good devices the school had. The evening we spent at Piteå Havsbad and had a lot of fun there.  

Friday: Presentation of the talk shows and photos. New stars were born :-) In the evening we had a farewell party at the school and got our certificates. The students then had a party that evening.  

Saturday: Very early flight back home!  

Thank you all for a fantastic week.  

Ásdís, Dagbjört, Nína and Þóra.