A remote Swedish family home full of craft, colour and pattern
“It’s so corny,” says Karl Erik Halldén, “but I’m kind of into bird watching, and this is the best place for rare birds.” Erik (as he is known day-to-day) and his wife Terése moved to their 1920s house on Sweden’s second-largest island, Öland, in 2018, when they decided to up sticks from Stockholm after learning they were expecting a daughter. Terése had family links to the island, and they realised they needed more space for their growing family than their apartment in the capital could offer. But there was an avian appeal, too. “I was like, ‘Yeah, sure. Let’s move there, and I’ll go watch the birds.’”
The emptiness of the island also added to its pull. Much like swathes of the British countryside, Öland is quiet and offers solitude. “I live here with a bunch of seniors and farmers,” Erik notes wryly. “That’s about it.” When he and his wife first told their neighbours that they were planning to live there full-time, they were pleasantly surprised. “They were like ‘That’s great!’ Most of the houses are empty in the winter, and the fall, and part of the spring, so it's kind of lonely, and that's what I liked about it,” he adds. Stockholm, by comparison, was like “living in an ant hill”.
A classic wooden house of the sort many Swedes own as a sommarstuga, a summer house, Erik’s seven-room, 140 sqm home was built in 1926 and still retains many period details. It was one of these that caught his eye – after spending “forever” searching for the perfect house, travelling the 300-plus miles from Stockholm to Öland to view properties, he fell in love with his house’s staircase, which is panelled and painted green in an attempt, he says, “to resemble marble. They’re hand-painted, kind of worn down.”
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They quickly had an offer accepted, and set about making the house more livable. This involved installing central heating as soon as possible – “It’s a bit of a pain when you have a newborn baby: ‘Okay. It’s November. Our daughter is two weeks old. It’s minus 10 degrees. We need to do something,’” he recalls – and stripping back the black and purple faux-velvet textured wallpaper that the previous owners had put up. Windows and doors installed in the 1980s and 1990s had become leaky, even though the hundred-year-old originals were still waterproof, and so they were replaced, too. “The key for me was making an all-year-round home,” Erik explains, “but making it feel like a summer home or a holiday home. But you never need to go home. You can stay there.”
In practice, this meant that the house was decorated with colour and pattern at the fore, something that Erik says surprised him in the context of his own taste. “I’m not a flamboyant guy – rather the opposite. But I wanted it to feel light and bright, mostly for my kids, and for myself.” A self-confessed hoarder and fan of the designer Carl Malmsten (who also founded a design school not far from the house), Erik made the most of the new space the house offered him and began trawling local flea markets and online auction sites during the Covid pandemic, browsing lots after his daughter had gone to bed.
“We didn’t even have a bed, so we started from scratch, and that was kind of fun,” he recalls. Centring on a few designers – he names a painted Malmsten cabinet as a particular favourite piece in the house – he began to furnish the rooms with a focus on pine and birch wood, both of which are common along Öland’s latitude. Erik calls Malmsten “the Swedish version of William Morris”, and lemon- and rose-motif Morris designs adorn the wallpaper in certain rooms, too. Gradually, the house has been transformed from a chilly, black-walled outpost to a serene yet cosy family home, full of books and objects of real value to its inhabitants.
There’s just one thing still missing: those birds. “We had our daughter two months after we moved here, then the house took up all our time, and I run a restaurant with my brother – there’s not much time for birds. But it’s okay. They will be here when I retire.”
Line T. Klein1/21The wallpaper is ‘Aurora’ by Svenskt Tenn, designed by Josef Frank. “We picked it because it has a lot of the flowers that we have in the garden,” says Erik, “so during the long winters we look at it as a reminder that there will be a spring.” The table is made from birch root, found at a flea market. The sofa is the only thing totally new in the house; everything else is from auctions, markets and second-hand shops.
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Line T. Klein3/21The rug is from Svensk Hemslöjd, found at a local auction house.
Line T. Klein4/21Erik found red four chairs at a flea market, and bought them because of the colour. “You can find the same colour in Carl and Karin Larsson’s house ‘Sundborn’,” he explains. “They were Swedish painters from the late 1800s / early 1900s who had a big impact on home decorating.”
Line T. Klein5/21The old rattan chair is from a place called Folks interiör, which sells used furniture. The cushion is designed by Birgitta Hahn, with a pattern called ‘Stadsbiblioteket’ (‘City Library’). The lamp is Carl Malmsten’s ‘Staken’ design. “It’s from a local auction house. We have a couple of this lamp model. I really like that you can change the height of it (and that it has that ‘summer house’ feeling).”
Line T. Klein6/21The table is designed by Anika Reuterswärd. “It has a more ‘modern’ feeling then the rest of the house but I really like it, so it stays.” The sofa is upholstered in Josef Frank’s ‘Hawai’. Erik bought it for his wife on her birthday.
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Line T. Klein8/21The kitchen used to be purple and grey. “It was not really my cup of tea,” says Erik. Now, the walls are painted in a green linseed oil paint. The painting of wine bottles is done by Emeli Mårtensson.
Line T. Klein9/21The chairs used to be part of a restaurant interior, while the pendant lamp is from a flea market. It’s from Markslöjd. The tablecloth is Josef Frank’s ‘US Tree’. It used to hang on a wall but now it works as table setting.
On the wall to the left is Erik’s self-confessed favourite piece in the house. “The wall cabinet is designed by Carl Malmsten, and the model is called ‘Pluntan’ (flask/pocket flask). But the painting is done by Liselotte Malmsten, Carl’s daughter-in-law. She made a couple of these – this one is called ‘Oktober’ and is dated 1997.”
Line T. Klein10/21The chair is designed by Bruno Mathsson, bought at local shop Folks interiör the same year Erik’s family moved in to the house. The yellow rug is designed by his favourite designer, Liselotte Malmsten. The rug on the left was found at a flea market across the street from his restaurant in Stockholm. “I had to carry it home on the stroller.”
Line T. Klein11/21The wallpaper is ‘Lemon Tree’ from William Morris & Co. “It’s really out of my comfort zone, but I like the summer kitchen vibe. A lot of the choices I make are based on the question ‘Would my daughter like this?’ I want our home to be a fun place. It sounds corny, but that’s important to me.”
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Line T. Klein14/21The red chair is one of from the set Erik found at the flea market, like those that in the downstairs hallway. The smaller stool was made by his wife’s uncle Beppe, and the lamp was from him, too.
Line T. Klein15/21The quilt on the bed is by Josef Frank, a textile called ‘Himalaya’. Erik bought 10 metres at a flea market “for basically nothing, but I forgot that I was going to a dinner party so I walked around with it like an idiot. But a happy idiot!” The 1970s pine light is from Capellagården, the Öland school founded by Carl Malmsten.
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Line T. Klein17/21The rug is from a flea market. The wallpaper is ‘Fågel blå’ (blue bird) and is designed by Carl Malmsten. The lampshade is from Robygge. “You can find this kind of lamp in Waldorf schools and Steiner schools. I searched a long time for that one!
“The art is from Jobs; my father got it on his 30th birthday, now it hangs on my wall reminding me of him and that time flies.”
Line T. Klein18/21The armchair is upholstered in ‘Stensöta’ by GP & J Barker.
Line T. Klein19/21The bed is designed by Vidar Malmsten and is called ‘Fata Morsgris’. “It’s huge,” Erik says, “so my wife was not that happy when I brought it home. But it has a lot of nice built-in features (reading lamp in the middle, shelves, a hanger for clothes).” He and his wife built the shelves themselves. The wall is painted in ‘Ärggrön’ from Auro.
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Line T. Klein21/21Terése and Karl Erik Halldén
