Swedish politicians – and they are not the only ones in the world - like to take their ti- me. The citizens of Luleå in Swedish Lap- land have been waiting for a new culture centre for fifty years, just as for several years they have petitioned for a new main library. But suddenly the many prelimina- ries resulted in action, and in early January of this year an all-embracing ‘House of Culture’ was inaugurated, which includes a new main library at the heart of it.

Already in the late 1930s Luleå Orchestra
Association was on the lookout for
a concert hall, and in 1948 a culture
centre was mentioned for the first, but
by no means last, time in the municipal
council’s protocol. But despite the steadily
increasing public demand for concert
facilities, political awareness and
action were sadly lacking. The libraries
fared somewhat better. With city architect
John Berglund’s building jammed
up against the City Hotel, Luleå in
1965 got a purpose-built main library
for the first time, a library which by
virtue of its architectonic qualities
heralded a veritable golden age for the
library cause. Surprisingly quickly the
physical framework became hopelessly
outdated and restrictive for any new
development and desirable impact. So
also in this case, several of the town’s
citizens were clamouring for concrete
action.

The political decision-making process
did not get off the ground, though,
until endeavours to get a concert hall
and public opinion in favour of the
new main library joined forces in order
to try to get the two things housed under
the same roof. Luleå’s library director
Britt-Inger Rönnqvist was the first
person to advocate such a course in the
local press, but it was Karl Petersen,
mayor of Luleå since 1992, who wholeheartedly
approved of the idea and
persuaded his political colleagues to
the extent that the building of a ‘House
of Culture’ and all the rest of it was
approved by an almost unanimous
municipal council in September 2003.
And then things started to move at a
furious pace. The first spit was taken in
April 2005, and in January 2007 the
house was inaugurated under great
festivities and a cornucopia of events.
As Karl Petersen pointed out in his inaugural
address: “The building process
took no longer than in the 1950s I
needed for making a bookshelf”.

‘Lady in red’, as the building is called, is
designed by architects Tirsén & Aili. It
is on four levels and measures 14,000
square metres in all. There is a car park
on two levels beneath the house. The
building expenses were estimated at
370 mil. SEK (about 41 mil. Euro) –
and the budget was not overrun. The
house is admirably placed in downtown
Luleå and has a view of Norra
Hamnen so breathtakingly beautiful
that even the most prosaic soul must
surrender. Apart from the library the
house has i.a. three exhibition rooms,
conference and meeting facilities,
restaurant and café, a small hall and a
large concert hall with electro acoustics
and with room for about 1,000 people.
The house is so dimensioned as to be
able to accommodate 3,500 at the same
time.

Luleå (73,000 inhabitants) lies about
1,000 kilometres to the north of
Stockholm and 100 to the south of the
Polar Circle. During a visit to Luleå
with the building process in its final
phase, the then Swedish prime minister,
Göran Persson, upon looking at
the nearly finished culture centre, is
said to have called the house “a
diamond the radiance of which will
shine all over Bottenviken”. A little
more down-to-earth, but no less
enthusiastic, were the words of Karl
Petersen. In his welcome speech to the
hundreds of citizens who had turned
up for the inauguration, he compared
the House of Culture to the sugar mills
he as a very young man had encountered
in the 1950s in Southern Sweden.
“We need both the sugar mill and the
culture centre in order to survive. We
need sugar for the body to grow, and
we need culture for our souls to grow”.

Mayor Karl Petersen considers the
library to be the heart of the House of
Culture. The library’s public area is
3,500 square metres, distributed on
three levels. Add to this offices and
stacks. The library can also use the
conference and meeting facilities and
book the large or the small hall. The
library staff has not increased in
number with the move, but there are
now self-service facilities in connection
with loans and returns. Opening hours
have been extended to a total of 54
hours per week and Sunday opening
has been introduced; and the library
has received an extra grant of 1 mil.
SEK for the acquisition of books,
music, e-books and database licenses
etc. Another important thing is that all
twelve library branches in the municipality
are intact, and that a brand new
mobile library from Finland is on its
way.

As opposed to conditions in the old
main library, where the children did
not get a fair deal, the children’s library
has been given the most easily accessible
placing in the new culture centre,
namely just inside the entrance, to the
right. It is designed in cooperation
with Teknikkens Hus in Luleå’s univer
sity area, and in cooperation with artist
Anna Almqvist and the children, a
completely new, icon-based location
system for the materials has been introduced.
In design and profiling great
emphasis has been placed on the
physical children’s library entering into
a rich and ingenious symbiosis with
the net library with web newspaper for
children (www.barnenspolarbibliotek.
se) launched by Norrbotten Libraries the
first in the country.

The large trade union, SKTF, has appointed
Luleå ‘Cultural Municipality’
in Sweden in 2007, and this is mainly
due to the initiative in relation to the
new culture centre and main library.
But it is also due to the will both on
behalf of politicians and staff to fill the
house with life and fervour, and ingeniously
and purposefully to exploit the
possibilities of underpinning the crossfertilization
and interplay between the
many players of the house and cultural
impressions and initiatives.

Per Nyeng
nnc.nyeng@mail.dk

Per Nyeng is a journalist and former editor of
Bibliotek70/Bibliotekspresssen.
From 1965 to 1969 he worked as a librarian in Luleå.

Translated by Vibeke Cranfield