Outside Sala is the country’s only monastery within the Church of Sweden. Five people live here at Östanbäck’s monastery, founded in 1970.
Brother Birger Nielsen, 71, has been here the longest of them. He grew up in a clergy family belonging to the Danish Church and came here from Denmark in 1973 and stayed.
– This life appealed to me. That was the only thing I was looking for. The silence was what I was looking for, he says.
What do you say to those who think that monks and monasteries belong to the Middle Ages?
– There is something eternal in this and in the eternal message there is no difference between the Middle Ages, the present and the future. But you have to weed out what belonged to the Middle Ages and what belongs to our time in order to enter the future.
“Put my life in God’s hands”
Brother Nils-Olov Lindström, 68, was also attracted by the silence. He grew up in a priest’s family in Västerbotten and became a priest himself in 1981, but then felt that the monastery was his calling and has lived here since 1986.
– I have put my life in God’s hand and felt that it was his guidance. For me, it was also appealing that you grow your own food here. It reminded me of what I was used to growing up because my parents had small farms.
“We don’t understand God at all” – in the clip the monk brothers Nils-Olov and Birger talk about monastic life and what attracted them most.
“Here lie two brothers” – join us on a tour of the monastery
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Brother Birger, one of the monks at Östanbäck’s monastery outside Sala, shows around the country’s only monastery within the Church of Sweden. Photo: Fredrik Samuelson/SVT