Villagers set up own petrol station in central Sweden

Villagers in the county of Dalarna in central Sweden  have decided to deal with the problem of vanishing shops and services by setting up their own petrol station.

In the county of Dalarna people are thinly spread. Some areas have about seven people for every square kilometre.

And for residents of Sollerön village the closest town is Mora, with around 20,000 residents. Mora is where most of the people of Sollerön work, and it has also been the closest place to fill up their cars’ petrol tanks.

Making things hard for people setting off in the morning who have forgotten to fill up while in town, or for farmers who do not want to have to drive all the way into town just in order to get their tractors going.

So now there is a petrol station in Sollerön – it is owned by the villagers themselves, and it is totally deserted. People simply roll up and use the automatic petrol pump.

“It’s the best ever” says Hinders Erik Andersson. He is filling up his tractor with diesel, and says he is very happy not to have to drive into Mora.

A month ago the petrol station was set up, financed by selling 758 shares, at a thousand SEK each. And so far people have filled up their tanks with about 37,500 litres of fuel.

This is the result of years of hard work by a local group that has long aimed to get a petrol station for the village.

They are not the only ones. In this area of north-central Sweden Dalviks Kvarn is the company that delivers fuel to the various stations. Håkan Söderlund, at the comany, says that there are about 15 of these cooperative petrol stations, owned by the people who use them.

He adds that filling up at this kind of station feels like an act of solidarity for the local residents, and that he thinks it is a great set-up.

Other areas of Dalarna have tried different ways to keep the fuel flowing. In Sörsjön and Sunnasjö villagers have raised money to keep their petrol stations, and in Malungsfors the people there have built their own filling station.

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