‘Fire, dog and starry sky’: Teens overcome phone addiction with arctic endeavor | Documentaries

n11-year-old Heiji suffers from all the fears common to her generation. She spends a lot of time browsing social media on her phone, and as a result she becomes obsessed with how others perceive her, and feels extremely nervous when it comes to interacting with real humans in the flesh. “I think a lot about what people think of me,” she says. “I’m tired of it.”

The young adult from Sandnes in southwestern Norway is one of the three teenage protagonists in Folktales, a new documentary that proposes a simple and fun cure for severe anxiety: “Give yourself a fire, a dog, and the starry sky above you.”

So says one teacher at the educational institution where Heggie and her classmates have been gathering for 12 months: a “folk secondary school” in the Pacific in the far north of Europe, 200 miles above the Arctic Circle. Here students don’t sit in classrooms, but rather “awaken their Stone Age brains” by learning how to pitch a tent, stay warm in minus 30 degrees Celsius, and drive dog sleds across the icy landscape.

Heggie may still be overthinking things when she dons a pair of RayBans to her first campfire, but soon she’s spending hours not even remembering to check her cell phone, and in the end there’s nothing in the world greater for her than hurtling through the snow on the back of a dog sled, her body racing but her mind ultimately standing still.

The folktale’s directors, American directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, say they became fascinated with the concept of a Scandinavian folk high school because its philosophy was so at odds with the priorities of the American education system. “I think the United States is very focused on data and results,” Ewing says. “You take a test and you get graded and it kind of sets a curve for how you do, so a lot of high school students only study for tests.

“At popular high schools like Pacific, there are no exams, written or otherwise. It’s about building character, becoming a more empowered adult, and challenging yourself internally and socially. The idea that you have to do something that may never contribute to your chances of earning a living in the future was really attractive to us.”

In Europe, the popular high school philosophy may seem more familiar. Its founder, the 19th-century Danish priest and poet N. F. S. Grundtvig, may not have been a household name like other reformist educators like Maria Montessori or kindergarten inventor Friedrich Froebel. But the legacy of Grundtvig’s basic ideas – that education should be for everyone and not just the social elite, and promote not only abstract enlightenment but also living “vitality” – can be seen across the continent.

In German-speaking Europe, this led to the spread of the disease volkshochschulen, Publicly funded adult education centres, while in the UK its philosophy is still found in the Duke of Edinburgh’s Awards scheme. There are popular secondary schools spread throughout the Baltics, Poland and throughout Scandinavia. The concept has been very popular in Norway, where there are still 85 of them, hosting about 7,000 students each year. They pay fees – a year at Pasvik costs the equivalent of around £10,000 – but most Norwegian students take out a student loan, 40% of which the government covers if they complete their studies.

Grady and Ewing first made a name for themselves with Jesus Camp, a controversial 2006 documentary about an evangelical Christian summer camp. It angered secular audiences with its harsh depiction of what appeared to be extreme Christian indoctrination of minors (in one scene, children are urged in prayer to join the fight to end abortion in America). In contrast, folk tales are unlikely to inflame tensions. Shot in a Netflix-friendly style, with an abundance of drone shots and a stunning soundtrack, the film actually tends to trim the edges of the popular high school experience. Much has been made of invigorating baths in the icy Barents Sea, the wisdom of ancient trees, and cuddling with huskies at camp – not to mention the moose hunting courses that the Pacific website also advertises. Norse mythology is woven into the film, even though 40% of popular high schools in Norway are Christian institutions. The film inadvertently shows, without commenting on, something the Norwegian government lamented in a recent report: that popular secondary schools struggle to attract students from immigrant backgrounds.

But the film depicts the kind of learning experiences that traditional schools are not designed to create. We follow Romain, an 18-year-old Dutch high school dropout who learns how to set up his own camp in the wilderness. Night is approaching, the temperature is dropping rapidly, and Roman goes to the teacher camp to ask if he can use fire to boil water. The teacher says: “If we allow you to use our fire, we will not help you.” “I think you can do it.”

It’s hard not to root for Roman as he struggles to hide his frustration on camera: “Do you think I can do it, or do you want me to do it?” He asks politely but clearly. But in the end, the young Dutchman manages to ignite his fire, and at the end of the film there is a suggestion that the experience of complete self-reliance opens up the ability for him to improve his relationship with the other young men in his class. He clearly had more than just a glorious gap year.

“We knew Roman and the other students were capable of making their camp,” Pacific Dog Sled Trainer Iselyn Brevold told me. “But the conditions were tougher than when we trained, and some of the students wanted to take shortcuts. They don’t learn anything from taking shortcuts.”

Many of Brevold’s students are the opposite of Roman: “They’re so confident in themselves and they know they can do this, they can do that. But they can’t, and they have a really big meltdown,” Brevold says. The job of Brevold and her fellow teachers is not to solve problems for young people, but to encourage them to solve them themselves. “These are challenges that you might never have accepted in life outside of popular high school. But there are challenges that make you grow as a human being, both personally, but also in how you see the world and the people around you.”

Folktales may be useful in Norway, where popular high schools have recently lost popularity with political decision-makers. The government is currently discussing changing the system that has until now given popular high school graduates two points that they can use in their university applications. In an attempt to boost the popularity of the Norwegian Army, these additional points may in the future be awarded exclusively to those performing military service. Reducing scholarships from 40% to 15% of the study loan is also being discussed.

Norwegian think tank Norris has embarked on a five-year project into whether all this will lead to the country abandoning a powerful tool for social integration. “Like many countries around the world, we have a growing problem with young people who lose confidence in society and stop working,” says senior researcher Vigdis Svensdotter. “In a world where so much emphasis is placed on individualism, popular high schools emphasize community and social interaction in a way that often goes under the radar in mainstream education.”

Heiji’s story has an ambiguous ending in the film. While a year in the wilderness seems to have strengthened the young woman’s character, her return to her hometown comes with new frustrations, and she ultimately chooses to return to the Upper North for dog-handling training. The line between character building adventures and escapism seems like a fine line.

I ask the directors: Do these young people emerge from the popular high school experience better equipped to face the challenges of the modern world? “It’s a difficult question, because part of the goal, of course, is to evade the modern world,” Ewing says. “They’re certainly not better at running ChatGPT or using AI. But they’re better equipped to be decent human beings who probably can’t buckle under pressure in the future.”