Det nya kontorslandskapet bland fjällvidderna : Kan distansarbete bli glesbygdens räddning?

The rural municipalities in the mountain areas of northern Sweden has for a many years experienced an out-migration of people in working age witch have led to an older populationand a smaller source of taxes. In addition of these municipalities with a lot of tourists and second home tourists have periods of the year when they have a population that is a lot larger then they have capacity for. This is a case study that examines whether or not flexible working (like working from home) is a possible solution for this problem. This is done by a survey among second home residents in Kultsjödalen, a mountain area in the municipality of Vilhelmina, to see if they have spent more time in their second homes during the Covid-19 pandemic due to flexible working. Moreover this paper examines how infrastructure and local service affect the second home residents ability to work from their second homes. Lastley the study investigates whether or not second home residents wish to spend more time in Kultsjödalen or to consider becomingpermanent residents in the future provided they have the option to continue working from home. The theoretical framework is based on previous studies concerning mobility, migrationand second homes, flexible working and the time-space compression. The survey had in total 271 respondents in its beginning and it showed that there is no way to tell generally whether or not second home residents have spend mor or less time in their cabins since the respondents was quite divided. Only those who had worked from home in their second homes (138 respondents) moved on to the latter parts of the survey. In terms of infrastructure and service the respondents was also quite divided in their opinions. Some of them were really pleased with the current quality whilst some experienced a lot of problems. The most common problem was about broadband, mobile broadband, the telephone networkand the roads. Overall the respondents where a bit more pleased with the local service than the infrastructure although some wished to have a better supply of groceries and an easy solution when you have children in school to enable longer visits in the second home. Provided that the respondents were able to continue working from home in the future, 86% of the respondents were positive to the idea of spending more time in Kultsjödalen. Noticeably fewer respondents could imagine becoming permanent residents, about 33%. On the other hand, from a local perspective these respondents are still of great importance since they bring extra tax incomes for the municipality and consumption power to the local services. Second home tourism overall brings a certain problem in the sense of that more and more tourists dwell in the area whilst the municipality in question experience a negative population development when tax payers move out from the municipality. This leads to a higher strain on infrastructure and service that don’t have the capacity to manage this type of tourism.Developing infrastructure and service so that it can facilitate flexible working might attract more people to move permanently to Kultsjödalen. This would favour the municipality in form of extra taxes and also the local entrepreneurs by increased consumption power during the entire year, even off season