Good morning. Coffee’s hot, the day’s short, and Sweden’s king just picked up an axe. That is not a sentence we write every week, so let us start there.
This week King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden paid a working visit to Kalthoffs yxor, a small axe company on Södermalm in Stockholm, where he did something most visitors never do: he took up an axe, set a log on the chopping block, and split it himself. Beside him, laughing, stood the company’s boss: Julia Kalthoff, a young woman running a proper old-school craft business in the middle of one of Europe’s trendiest neighborhoods.
The photograph alone is worth your minute. The King in a dark suit mid-swing, Kalthoff in a blue work jacket doubled over with laughter, shelves of axe handles and rough timber stacked behind them. It is the kind of image that makes a royal visit feel less like protocol and more like an afternoon that went wonderfully off-script.
What happened
The King toured Kalthoffs yxor this week on Södermalm, the southern island district of Stockholm known for its creative shops and independent makers. During the visit Kalthoff talked him through her leadership journey and the values behind the company: a business built on handcraft, honest materials, and the kind of slow work that does not scale at the speed of an algorithm.
The axe-splitting moment was not staged photo theater, either. Anyone who has split firewood knows the stance is real: weight over the front foot, eyes on the grain, full commitment. The King obliged, and the log gave way.
Why it matters
This was never just a photo op. Kalthoff is a former recipient of the King’s own Kompassrosen – the Compass Rose – scholarship, which makes this visit something closer to a homecoming than a ribbon-cutting.
When the King turned 60, the Swedish Scouts set up the Ungt Ledarskap (Young Leadership) foundation with one goal: to lift up young leaders. Ever since, the King has personally awarded the Kompassrosen each year to leaders under 25 who have shown courage (mod), compassion (omtanke), and the will to act (handlingskraft). Those are not résumé words. They are character words, chosen by the scout movement’s own vocabulary for what leadership actually looks like in a young person.
Kalthoff earned that scholarship, and then she built a company that embodies every one of those three words. Courage to run a manufacturing business in one of Stockholm’s most expensive districts. Compassion in how she talks about craft and community. And the will to act – well, the axe handles speak for themselves.
The backstory worth knowing
The Kompassrosen program is one of the quieter gems of the Swedish monarchy’s calendar. Year after year, a monarch in his eighties personally hands a compass-rose medal to teenagers and twenty-somethings and tells them the country is watching what they do next. It is mentorship at the highest level of the state, delivered with a minimum of fuss.
Visits like this one are the program’s proof of concept. A scholarship winner from years past is now the boss, greeting the King not as a subject but as a founder showing off her workshop. That arc – from recognized young leader to employer and maker – is exactly what the foundation was built to produce.
What to watch
Keep an eye on the young-leader angle. Monarchies across Europe are doing the same math: invest early in people like Kalthoff, and a decade later you are visiting a thriving company instead of reading a thank-you letter. Expect the palace to keep spotlighting Kompassrosen alumni whose businesses are doing real work – it is good policy and, as the photograph shows, very good television.
And if you are wondering what happened to the split log: no word from the palace, but we would bet good money it went home in somebody’s bag as a souvenir.
Over in the rest of the morning file
It has been a big week for craftsmanship in all its forms. Scientists just pushed a step closer to practical fusion power, with plasma heated to 12 million degrees closer to fusion power than where the field started. And researchers have mapped how nature’s comebacks follow three rules, which is about as elegant a design philosophy as you will find – one the axe makers of Södermalm would probably appreciate.
That is your briefing. The coffee is probably cold now. Tomorrow, more.
Photo: Nathalie Malic / Kungahuset.
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