By Nikola Marinko · Technical Project Manager, then Manager EIA, Revolt Ett, Sweden, 2021-2023 · Updated October 2026 · 10 min read

I had not heard of Skellefteå until a project called me there. In late 2021 I drove 3,000 km from Belgrade to join Revolt Ett, Northvolt's battery recycling facility, as Technical Project Manager for Wastewater Treatment and Utilities, and within about a year I became Manager EIA, responsible for everything on the site that ran on electricity. The winter was long and dark, the rooms were small, and the team was the best part of it.

The story covers the town between shifts. The Skellefte River and its pine forests, the Lejonström Bridge, over 200 m long and so narrow that a traffic light lets one direction cross at a time, Bonnstan church town built between 1830 and 1840, and the twenty-storey timber Wood Hotel in the centre. Then the seasons: snow from the end of October to May, the Northern Lights in a sky with no light pollution, and a midsummer sun that never sets, so you end up kayaking at 11pm in daylight. Skellefteå AIK hockey in winter, harness racing in summer, and trips to Storforsen on the Pite River and the High Coast Bridge.

If a trip takes you that far north, give the town at least a day. A 19th-century church town next to a battery factory is not a combination you will find anywhere else.

Revolt Ett project · Stockholm · Kanaanbadet · All 12 projects · Field stories

Skellefteå, Sweden - Eighteen Months on the Edge of the Arctic

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