The two piers may seem totally meaningless where they stand apparently reaching for the hillside. The body of water by which that are placed is much lower down. And they would not have been any use as landing-stages in a lake either. With railings all around they are rather like balconies, balconies sticking out from a hillside, or big spirit levels measuring the steepness of the slope. And why are there two of them?   The history of the jetties begins in Jonas Nätterlund’s last will and testament, which was written in 1961. Here he clearly expressed his will that the assets left at his death were to form Sigrid, Johan and Jonas Nätterlund’s Memorial Fund. The proceeds of the fund were to be used for buying artworks and sculptures for the adornment of public premises and places in his native district, the rural district of Nätra-Sidensjö.   Johan and Sigrid were his deceased parents; he was their only child. Jonas himself died in 1995. Nätra-Sidensjö does not exist any more; this geographical area now belongs to the municipality of Örnsköldsvik. Jonas never formed a family and he led a frugal life. Neither his workmates nor his acquaintances were aware or understood that he had a sizable fortune, which he had made thanks to clever investments in shares. He lived nearly all his life in Stockholm, leaving his birthplace at the age of twenty and visiting it only once, two years before he wrote the will, for his mother’s funeral. And yet he gave all his money to adorning this remote area where he was born, money for art and sculptures for a sparsely populated region that does not believe it needs adornments – the scenery is beautiful enough.   The foundation invited me to make an adornment for a place overlooking the lake called Drömmesjön. I interpreted the name as a lake for dreaming, with dreams or a dreamt lake. The landscape where the lake is situated is dreamlike and really exceptionally beautiful. The lake flows into the sea at Höga kusten (The High Coast), an area inscribed on the World Heritage List. The working team of the foundation chose the site by the lake because the National Road Administration was to build a lay-by for the road passing by the lake. The reason why they invited me was that I am used to working with art that is linked to landscape. I spent a long time making draughts. The ideas were slow in coming in spite of the rich sources of inspiration: the life story of Jonas Nätterlund and the exciting geography and cultural history of the area. It was as if Drömmesjön was enchanted. It did not want any adornment. I was hoping to be able to anchor my design somehow in the lay-by. This is where people would stop and rest. Perhaps a combination was possible, a lay-by with artistic value. But cooperating with the National Road Administration was not an option. Their construction work was quick; the lay-by was finished. It was a “free-hand” job, as the contractor who was responsible for the project told me ­– reluctantly, not being used to having to explain why – when I asked for the draughts. He said that they had done their best, that this was a first-class lay-by ­– top-standard, with a flush toilet. Here people can take a break, use the toilet, sit down at the tables and eat, look at the view. All the wounds caused by the construction work would soon be healed by nature; that was nothing to worry about. All right, this is one way of looking at design.   I didn’t feel like working on the lay-by where everything had already been given a form – albeit without draughts and without aesthetic considerations. I started to sketch on the slope towards the lake again. I experimented with pavilions, little houses made of wire mesh which would diffuse the image of the lake in order for it to come into sharp focus again once you left the pavilion. I placed the pavilion on the hillside, below and away from the lay-by. It was given a footbridge to the entrance. And suddenly I found myself in a state of flow; it was obvious that no pavilion was needed. The footbridge sufficed as a springboard into the air above the landscape and into the landscape. With two footbridges another dimension was added in that they got a relation to each other – different heights at the end, different lengths, somewhat different angles.   My suggestion was accepted. We signed the contract. Some of the people living in the near-by village of Näs started to struggle against the project; this was not really art. I could understand their point of view. They had longed for a statue, perhaps one of a farmer ploughing his land with a horse, some cultural historical document showing that this was an area that had been cultivated for a long time. They wanted a monument, preferably in bronze. But the two piers – how can they be called art? What are they doing here? That a place can be a work of art was an inconceivable and obviously crazy idea.   I made an addition to the title: “Two Piers – the treasure is where the two piers meet”. And so the two piers could suddenly be seen as representing something. What they represented was a matter of interpretation. The treasure could literally be buried where the extensions of the lines of the two piers intersect, or the treasure could be this place by the two piers as there’s obviously two of them. Or it could be the meeting between the beholder and this place that is valuable or else that there’s something valuable in the meeting between two persons, or …   So much depends on chance, but also on hard work, on somebody, or some people, working very hard for something, wanting something special in spite of opposition and scepticism. For a while in this project I felt like giving it all up. I could have said: sorry, I don’t do figurative bronze sculptures. I could have left with my fee for the draughts. I wouldn’t have had to take the financial risk for the construction work when the price of stainless steel, which the jetties were mainly made of, kept rising.   But then I thought that it is more exciting to complete a project than to give it up and that Jonas Nätterlund had saved money all his life for this project. The jetties were constructed, and the place is appreciated and valuable for the region, for excursions, as a site for events and festivals or individual experiences. Stepping out on the jetties is almost like flying. You just walk straight out without any effort and you take off. Once you let go of the ground, the surrounding landscape becomes much more tangible and the experience much stronger.