Surf Norrland | Salusand, Sweden | spring 2019
Salusand is a fine sandy beach, camping site and a surf club Salusand Snowsurfers’ home beach located approximately 60 km south from Umeå by the Baltic Sea. Surfing this far up in the north may sound like a bad joke but it isn’t. Salusand is actually one of the best beginners’ beaches to get to know the sport. The drainage basin for Baltic sea is 4 times the size of itself and the brackish water of the sea circulates slowly through the narrow Danish Straits. These conditions make Baltic sea very special giving rise to unique flora and fauna. The same conditions make the sea and its species very fragile and even slightest changes on land affect the whole water body massively. Being constantly in the water the current state of the sea becomes very present to the surfer. This is possibly why surfers often are concerned about the environmental issues and Salusand is no different.
Surf Norland is a proposal to help out Baltic sea starting small, imagining what a single community could do. The proposal consists of a new clubhouse for the surfers, a recycling center to enable waste management and recycling on and a combined wave power plant-environmental lab operated by marine researchers of the university for tracking and analyzing the condition of the Baltic sea. Everything is built with ecofriendly materials and building methods that leave no mark on the surrounding nature. Together the surfers sharing their environmental skills with the campers, the campers learning and taking care of the environment and the researchers monitoring and producing scientific research from the site, the camping as a whole aims to be an example of how slightly changing the way we live can have a huge positive impact on our environment.
