Belonging Is Also About Taking Responsibility

Some thoughts on belonging, responsibility, and the small choices we make in a changing world.

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about what it really means to belong somewhere.

For some, it is the place they were born. For me, it is a place I found along the way in life. A place that slowly, almost without me noticing, began to feel like home.

I believe belonging is about more than an address or a place on a map. It is the people, the landscape, the memories, and the small things we gradually take for granted. All the things that shape us, and that we ourselves become an ever-larger part of. But there is also another question that, over the course of life, has begun to press itself upon us:

Does belonging not also come with responsibility?

If my home gives me so much, should I not also consider what I give back?

I keep returning to that question. But no longer alone. Now also as part of a larger whole at Trasti & Trine.

We make our living from a place that gives us an incredible amount. We live in the community, with the people and off the land. From the raw materials, stories, knowledge, and experience that have been created over generations. All of this helps make it possible for us to create experiences for guests from near and far.

And precisely for that reason, I believe we also have a responsibility for how we use what we have been given. Not because we can do everything right, because we cannot, but because we can choose to do something. Responsibility does not have to be large and overwhelming. Perhaps it is more about a series of small, deliberate choices. Often they are decisions that are barely visible from the outside. They lie in the questions we ask ourselves, and in the willingness to do something differently when we actually have the opportunity.

One example is our collaboration with Ishavskraft. We have chosen a power agreement with facility-specific guarantees of origin. Through this, we can document that Hakkstabben hydropower plant in Finnmark produces an amount of renewable electricity equivalent to our annual electricity consumption covered by the agreement. And that means something to me. It adds a little weight to the side of the scale I want to weigh the most.

At the same time, we know very well that this will neither change the world nor save it from itself. But we have taken a stand. We have made a conscious choice and taken responsibility together. For it is precisely our sense of belonging to Finnmark, and our collaboration with people and businesses like Ishavskraft, that makes choices like this possible.

Read more about our collaboration with Ishavskraft and the facility-specific guarantees of origin →

I do not believe responsibility is primarily about telling others what they should do. It is much more about doing something yourself. And when we start with ourselves, belonging becomes interesting. Because it gives us not only something or someone to love, but also something or someone to care for.

At Trasti & Trine, we will not always make the right choices. I simply do not think that is possible. There are dilemmas, limitations, and considerations pulling in different directions, even within a company. But I also do not believe we need to have all the answers in order to take responsibility.

We just need to keep being curious. Keep asking questions, both of ourselves and of the world around us.

One thought that has repeatedly returned to me through the work of establishing the Forkprint foundation is that belonging is not only about what a place means to us.

Perhaps it is just as much about what we want to mean to the place.

And perhaps that is exactly where responsibility begins.

Rikki E. Nielsen
General Manager, Trasti & Trine