Women over 50 who chop and stack 20 cubic metres of wood, throw axes and make waffles. Dorte Olesen’s installation ‘Women Chopping Wood’ is filling Stortorget in Malmö for two days as part of ‘Green Light’. “It is great to be able to show that older women are strong and certainly do not need to be taken care of”, says Elisabeth Ahlgren, a chemist from Djurö in the Stockholm archipelago and one of the hard-working women on the square.

Elisabeth Ahlgren, together with Siv Qvarfort, a textiles teacher from Tidaholm, are sawing up logs for their wood-chopping partner Jane Sellström, an artist from Gotland. All three of them are part of the core group who have travelled together to both Berlin and Malmö in a red rock-star bus. The core group also includes two German ladies, who got the taste for it on Alexanderplatz, and the axe-throwers, who, in the breaks from chopping, throw impressive double axes at a target with precise skill. The other women are recruited from the local area.

“Women over 50 are so invisible in today’s society. We want to present female strength and show that older women are also capable of most things”, they say.

All three are experienced wood-choppers, as they use wood for both heating and cooking every day. They saw a preview report about the installation in their daily newspaper and immediately got in touch with Dorte Olesen, and definitely do not regret the decision.

“It’s wonderful here, there’s a great sense of community. People passing by call out encouragement to us, and a lot of people are surprised to see us lifting heavy logs and splitting thick blocks of wood”, they say.

Choreographer Dorte Olesen’s installation ‘Women Chopping Wood’ had its premier on Sergels torg in Stockholm in 2007, and drew a lot of attention this summer when it was displayed in Berlin as part of the Swedish Presidency’s opening celebrations. In Berlin around 30 women took part – half of them German, half of them Swedish – from the age of 50 upwards.

Dorte Olesen, who acts as the foreman, got the idea for the installation when she was standing chopping wood at her country cottage in Dalarna. She felt that she wanted to visualise female strength and community, make an aspect of rural life visible in the city and demonstrate the physical strength that is required to produce energy. However, the project is also about showing the knowledge that women over 50 possess and creating meetings between different cultures and countries.

“I hope that the audience here in Malmö take in the smell of the wood and sense the force field and the physical life in the cooperation and community among the women”, she says.

Ms Olesen is overwhelmed by the great interest women have shown in the project. She is bombarded with emails from women who want to do this together with others.

“Women over 50 are an interesting group. They have let go of the demands of physical appearance and have a more relaxed attitude. It would have been a lot more difficult to recruit 20-year-olds to chop wood”, she says.