This knitted wool beanie is named after the region, Jämtland’s forests in the northern parts of Sweden, where a senseless running career took off. In the book Frontlöparen, the author Björn Lundberg writes about the runner Gunder Hägg who during the years 1938-1945 set 15 individual world records in the middle distance. Among Jämtland’s forests and mountains, in the small community of Västanede, the foundation was laid for this fantastic running career. On a farm near Västanede,
Gunder Hägg was a farmhand at a young age and here he also received guidance from the farmer Fridolf Westman, who became his coach.
Between the work shifts on the farm, Gunder ran intervals and distance shifts among bogs and slopes in the beautiful but also physically demanding Jämtland landscape in the northern parts of Sweden. Regardless of the season, Gunder was out in the woods and trails and just like the farm’s former farmhand, Henry Jonsson, Gunder became a world class runner. At that time, the training was adapted to the environment and the season, which meant that there was also a lot of skiing for Gunder Hägg. Trail running was not in their vocabulary at the time, but it was already understood then that running in this kind of environment built both character and physique to run on the fast track during the summer months, where they even broke world records.