The oaks of Visingsö

The story

A ship of the line in the eighteenth century needed around two thousand oaks. Not just any oaks, but thick, straight and old ones, of the kind that take well over a hundred years to grow. After the Napoleonic Wars, Sweden worried about whether the navy would have timber in the future. Oak had been cut hard for centuries, and what remained was Crown property, protected by law.

So in 1829 the Riksdag took a decision that can only be taken if you think in centuries. On Visingsö in Lake Vättern, an island the Crown already owned, an oak forest would be planted for the navy. Planting began in 1831. Over a few years more than 300,000 oaks were set, in straight rows, with smaller trees between them as shelter from wind and frost. The forest would be ready to fell when it was needed, around the year 1975.

The remarkable thing is not that it was done. The remarkable thing is that it worked. The forest was tended for generations by people who would never see it finished. Thinned, protected, measured. It stood through industrialisation, two world wars and the whole of the twentieth century.

In 1975 the Swedish forest service wrote to the Armed Forces and informed them that the oaks were now ready to be delivered. The navy declined. Warships had been built of steel for almost a hundred years, and the last Swedish ships of the line had been broken up long before. Nobody had needed the oaks for a very long time.

It is easy to read the story as a failure. Wrong prediction, wasted work. But the forest is still there. Today it is one of the largest continuous oak forests in northern Europe, a hundred and fifty years old and still young for oak. It is used for furniture, for restoring old buildings, and for walking in. Nobody regrets that it was planted.

Those who plant for their grandchildren never know exactly what they will need. That is not a reason to refrain. It is a reason to plant something that becomes valuable regardless, and then let it take the time it takes.

The object on the poster is an oak. It was meant to become a ship. It became something else.