From Dún Laoghaire and a former UCD art history student, Michael O’Dwyer found his calling as a jewellery designer when he was selected for Jane Huston’s acclaimed goldsmithing course in Kilkenny, one of only 12 students selected every two years for specialist training.
He furthered his career in Antwerp with a master stone setter and, having met and married a Swede, came to Stockholm to live in 2009 “because the social welfare is so good – the best in the world” and found immediate work because of his microscope stone-setting skills, then unique in Sweden.
He set up his own company specialising in goldsmithing, stone setting and enamel work.
Five years ago, O’Dwyer had a studio in a leafy part of the city; later he moved to a bigger premises in Stockholm just at the point when the world economy was overheating, Covid hit and the Russians invaded Ukraine. The subsequent effect on him financially forced him to rethink his business model and relocate.
Today his workshop is housed in an old industrial building in the city which was the original Electrolux factory. He commutes from Sörmland, about an hour’s drive away (“the equivalent of driving from Aughrim to Dublin”), where he lives with his wife and their five children aged between one and 14. There is little traffic and the road network is very good, “and I could also take a train”, so it’s easily accessible.
His work can be found in Dublin in Stonechat in the Westbury Mall, where owner Anne Chapman has remained a friend since their student days in Kilkenny.
As well as being an established professional goldsmith, O’Dwyer has developed another career writing guidebooks for cyclists and other lovers of the outdoors.
“When I was young, I did a lot of hiking, rock climbing and cycling in the mountains and when a friend, David Flanagan [a writer and climber who runs Three Rock Books], invited me on a bikepacking trip to Mongolia eight years ago, it took me back in to the outdoors and gravel biking, sea kayaking and paddling.
“I formed a network of interested friends both Swedish and international. I like to gather people, to collect people. So some know me for my jewellery and others for my guide books, so I am known equally well in two different fields,” he says.
The guides on his site grvl.se provide bikepacking routes all over Sweden and beyond, with more than 300 original and curated routes in a global network spanning 50 countries. “I tell Swedes where to go,” says O’Dwyer.
Given the demands of his highly skilled craft and its precision, it is easy to see how the outdoors provides some escapism and a counterbalance to the intensity of the work.
“I live outside the village in a location known for the most intensive wildlife in Sweden – in fact, I nearly crashed into a deer this morning; I saw about 20 of them. We have wolves coming into the village – they were extinct, but they have walked in from Finland and Russia and we now have one of the highest concentrations of wolves, though you would rarely see them.”
Swedes are conservative without being formal, he says.
“The friends they make at preschool tend to remain best friends for the rest of their lives. On the surface, they are very nice and polite and love to speak English, but then it is very difficult to break into that inner circle of friendship. There is a very big gap between the two, but once you are in, that’s it for life and they would do anything for you. Irish people have more fleeting friendships,” he observes.
Ireland will always be home, but it’s like a different band playing your favourite song
As for jewellery, “it’s not a big part of their culture – though that is changing – so it can be difficult to persuade them to see the value of expensive high-end jewellery. They will drive a nice car and have a nice house and go on fantastic holidays, but there is an old philosophy called Jante’s Law, unwritten but powerful, that holds that it is rude to show your wealth.
“You could be on a train and sitting beside a multimillionaire and you would never know,” he says. Call it Nordic modesty.
In the countryside, O’Dwyer and his children enjoy outdoor sports – cycling or ice-skating. “All the children are bilingual, though holidays home to Ireland with them are expensive.” His wife, currently on maternity leave, is an education teacher specialising in preschool.
“The way people interact here is different to the Irish, where people are more outgoing, so the craic is different, but you get used to the lifestyle.
“Ireland will always be home, but it’s like a different band playing your favourite song – you know the words, you know the music and the melody, but it is just different. I am that long gone.”
