Marie Elisabeth Mjaaland is the CEO and owner of Nyksund Courses & Retreat Center. She holds an MBA (Orebro 1980), philosopher / cand. philol. (Tromso 2002 treatise on Martin Bubers dialogue philosophy) and priest (Oslo 2008). She also has an intermediate exam in art history, intermediate addition in municipal management, as well as a very extensive self-study and practice of Christian mysticism, spirituality and self-development (about 40 years).
Marie experiences herself strongly associated with nature and Mother Earth, and owes much of her daily inspiration from nature and the many shifts of light. Through more extensive and profound inner processes of transformation and restructuring, she has gained deep insights in both spiritual and creative and innovative processes, like what it means to be a human today.
Marie is convinced that all people are one, and that everything we say, think and do, necessarily affects the whole. She is also convinced that many of the challenges humanity and the planet faces today stem from lack of awareness of this connection.
Marie has the ability to go in depth and to be present at the meeting with other people, and wishes through her Author- and retreat business to facilitate the individual’s restoration of his/her own unique touch with the totality / source of all life. Only in this way it is possible to create good and lasting changes to the planet and the common good, she says.
Marie was born 1958 and grew up in Munktorp on the Swedish countryside 15 mil west of Stockholm. She has lived in Northern Norway (Lofoten, Vesterålen and Tromso) since 1980.
Svein Erik Tøien is married to Marie, web manager, handyman and caretaker at Nyksund Retreat.
He is a civil architect (Trondheim 1979), and has mainly worked with planning public buildings such as schools, kindergartens and health facilities.
1982 -1992 Svein Erik was co-owner of the architectural office Arbeidsgruppen HUS in Bergen, where he worked on projects for Steiner schools in Bergen and Stavanger.
1993 – 2014 Svein Erik was employed by BOARCH arkitekter AS in Bodø, and was mainly responsible for Skjerstad school and kindergarten, Steiner kindergarten in Bodø, Fauske upper secondary school, and a new hospital building for Nordlandssykehuset Vesterålen (Stokmarknes, head of the architectural team, full-time employment 2008-2014).
2014 Svein Erik established his own architectural firm in Nyksund, NYKSUNDARK. More information about the business can be found here
Svein Erik is concerned that architecture should create good places and spaces for human interaction and meetings, while at the same time that the buildings themselves express something that resonates with the user/viewer.
From an early age, Svein Erik has been interested in photography, and since 2006 he has had his own online gallery – Svein Erik Tøien Photography, www.setoien.com
Since 2013, Svein Erik has held solo exhibitions in Norway, Sweden and Iceland, and for two periods he has also been an invited guest artist in East Iceland. From 2015 he has had his own exhibition spaces in Nyksund ART Gallery.
For many years, Svein Erik has worked with landscape and nature motifs, where he has particularly tried to make visible the invisible and magical in nature – without any form of manipulation or photoshopping.
In 2022, however, Svein Erik’s creative activity took a sudden unexpected turn. Triggered by, among other things, two years of pandemic and severely limited freedom of movement at times – and war in Ukraine that suddenly also threatened the stability and security in our part of the world – Svein Erik felt a strong need to give the feelings of fear, uncertainty and absurdity a creative expression.
Svein Erik began to use his own photographic material freely and unrestrainedly. The landscape images were given surprising and absurd / surreal elements, wildlife took up a larger space than usual, and – says Svein Erik, “It was as if nature itself were asking ‘What are you really doing?!'” The result has been a series of photo collages where the elements interact in unexpected and “impossible” ways, and where the viewer can find layers upon layers of meaning and content – all based on his own photographs, and without the intervention of any form of artificial intelligence. And behind it all lies a feeling that existence is so infinitely greater than what our limited “daytime consciousness” tells us.
Svein Erik was born in 1955, raised in Eastern Norway, and has lived in Northern Norway since 1993.
Pictures of Nyksund in Svein Erik Web gallery can be found here.