Åreskutan seen from Åre Björnen, October 2014. Photo: Andreaze, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
There are mountains you ski on, and then there is Åre.
For a lot of Swedes Åre is not just a ski resort. It is the first proper downhill skiing as a child. It is the trip with friends in March. It is the cabin you return to every winter, après-ski on the square, and the feeling of standing at the top on a clear day watching the whole of Jämtland spread out below. Åre is a memory as much as a place.
And that feeling is exactly what we wanted to capture when we made our Åre piece.
The mountain that makes Åre Åre
Åreskutan rises 1,420 metres above sea level, and almost straight out of lake Åresjön. It is that dramatic difference in height - from the lake at just over 380 metres up to the summit - that gives Åre its long, varied runs and a view few other Swedish resorts can match.
Within the ski area that translates to 890 metres of vertical, more than any other Swedish resort claims. What that number actually means, and what it does not, we have written about in the guide to a ski resort's key figures.
It is also terrain that is hard to capture in an ordinary picture. A poster can show what Åre looks like. It cannot show what Åre feels like - how the steep sections actually pitch, how the ridge of Åreskutan rises above the village, how the valley winds through. For that you need a third dimension.
From map data to physical form
Our Åre piece is not an illustration. It is built on real topographic map data for the area, translated layer by layer into a physical 3D model. Every contour, every slope and every bend in the terrain sits where it should.
The result is something you want to touch. The light catches it differently depending on where you stand in the room. The steep faces throw small shadows. It is not a picture of a mountain - it is the mountain, in miniature, on your wall.
Along the bottom sit the name and the height: ÅRE, 1,420 m. Discreet, but for anyone who knows, it says everything. If you want to know how the translation itself works, step by step, the whole process is described here.
The lifts move, the mountain does not
The base station of the Fjällgården express, January 2026. Photo: AleWi, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One thing we have deliberately left out of the relief is the lift system. The reason is easy to see right now: the 1000-metre lift, dismantled after a cable broke in January 2017, is being rebuilt for winter 2026/27 with a top station at 1,319 metres, and the detailed plan that would replace the cable car with a gondola is out for public review at the municipality. What is happening to Åre's lifts over the next few years is collected in our rundown of the news for 26/27.
The terrain underneath all of it is the same today as it was when the first lift went up. That is the part we shape.
Who is it for?
We made the Åre piece for anyone who has a relationship with the mountain.
For the cabin owner in Åre or Duved who wants their mountain on the wall. For the person who made their first turns in Björnen as a child. For the group of friends who go back every year. And as a present it is hard to beat - for the skier who already has everything, or for someone whose best memories sit in exactly this terrain.
It is handmade, precision built and designed with the same minimal Scandinavian feel as everything we do. The idea is simple: a product that looks as considered as the place it depicts.
If it is going to a cabin rather than a home, it is worth reading about cabin walls first, since pine panelling makes completely different demands than a white wall.
Not Åre? Build your own mountain
Did you mostly ski one specific part of the mountain? Do you have a completely different favourite - somewhere in the Alps, a peak in Norway, or the cabin by a lake nobody else knows?
With FRMD by You you choose any place on the map, and we design and 3D print it as its own piece. Same craft, your place.
Read more about FRMD by You, or start with which places actually work in relief.
Get Åre home
The Åre piece is available now. Handmade to order, ready to hang.
The range has grown since this was written. Trysil, Hemavan, Helags and Kebnekaise are now available, along with Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn, Cortina, Etna and Teide. See the full selection under mountain pieces.