There is a workshop on Södermalm where the sawdust never quite settles, and this week the King of Sweden walked in, looked at the axe handles stacked like firewood, and picked one up. King Carl XVI Gustaf spent the morning at Kalthoffs yxor, the axe company run by Julia Kalthoff, and the photographs from the visit tell the whole story: the King mid-swing, splitting a plank over a chopping block, with Kalthoff laughing beside him in a blue work jacket.
It was not a state visit with motorcades and marching bands. It was something warmer. Kalthoff is not just another entrepreneur on the royal calendar. Years ago she received Kompassrosen, the Compass Rose scholarship, from the King himself. The visit to her workshop was, in a way, the King checking in on what one of his scholarship winners has built since he last saw her.
A scholarship with a mission
The Kompassrosen has a backstory worth knowing. When the King turned 60, the Swedish Scouts set up the Ungt Ledarskap foundation in his honor with a single mission: to lift up young leaders. Every year since, the King personally awards the Compass Rose to leaders under 25 who have shown courage, compassion, and the will to act. It is one of the rare royal honors in Sweden aimed squarely at people barely out of their teens, and the King takes it seriously. He reads the applications. He meets the winners. And sometimes, years later, he walks into their workshops.
During the visit, Kalthoff told the King about her leadership journey and the values that hold her company together. Kalthoffs yxor is not a big operation. It is a craft business built on Swedish steel, honest handles, and the belief that a tool should outlive its maker. That is a philosophy the King, who has spent a lifetime around Swedish industry, forestry, and the outdoors, understands instinctively. Swedish craftsmanship has always had a soft spot in the royal heart, and here was a young woman carrying the tradition forward with a royal scholarship in her past and a chopping block in her present.
Hands-on royalty
What makes the photographs from the visit so endearing is that the King did not just pose. He split wood. In a dark suit and glasses, surrounded by shelves of axe heads and timber, he looked completely at home, the way a man who grew up with Swedish forests in his blood would. Kalthoff’s grin in the pictures says she was enjoying every second of it. This is the kind of royal engagement that cannot be staged: a craftsman, a king, and a chopping block, with sawdust in the air and nobody pretending otherwise.
The visit also says something about how the Swedish royal house works with young enterprise. The Kompassrosen is not a one-time handshake and a certificate on the wall. It is a relationship. The foundation’s winners become part of a network of young leaders, and the King keeps showing up, year after year, to see what they have done with the vote of confidence. For Kalthoff, that confidence turned into a company that makes tools by hand on Södermalm. For the King, it was a morning well spent.
Leadership, in the end, looks a lot like craftsmanship. You show up, you do the work, you keep your edge sharp. The King seemed to know that already. On Södermalm this week, he watched a young woman prove it. Royal watchers can follow more moments from the Swedish court in our coverage of Prince Daniel presenting photography’s biggest prize to Zanele Muholi and Japan’s Imperial Family admiring Edo masterpieces.
Photo: Nathalie Malic / Kungahuset.
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