Building digital platforms from a mountain village

When people find out I live in Ljungdalen — a village of roughly 200 people in the mountains of Jämtland, Sweden — they usually assume internet access is the first problem. It isn't. Fiber reached here before it reached many Dutch suburbs. The bigger shift was mental: trading city convenience for something that most people only visit on holiday.

Why Sweden, why now?

I moved in 2022, initially to help launch a local hospitality project. What started as a short contract turned into a permanent base. The mountains, the pace, the people — it stuck. And professionally, it opened a niche I hadn't planned for: building digital infrastructure for exactly the kind of businesses I was surrounded by.

Building for the industry you live in

There's a difference between reading about a cabin rental business and managing one. I know what it means when a booking platform goes down on a Friday afternoon in peak season. I know why a stugvärd needs WhatsApp-level simplicity in the admin panel, not a Salesforce-style dashboard. That context doesn't come from a brief — it comes from living here.

EU-first isn't optional

GDPR isn't a checkbox in Scandinavia — it's a baseline expectation. Every platform I build runs on EU infrastructure: Hetzner for compute, Aiven for managed PostgreSQL, Bunny CDN for edge delivery. Not because it's mandated by a client spec, but because it's the right default when you're serving European businesses and their European customers.

What I'm building next

This portfolio is the first step toward a more focused freelance practice: fullstack development for Scandinavian hospitality operators, tourism platforms, and SaaS founders who need EU-first infrastructure. If that sounds like you, I'm available for new projects — reach me via the contact page.