In June 2000, Västernorrland's regiment was disbanded.

In I 21's area in Sollefteå, military activities were replaced by civilian ones.

But times are changing, and this year I resurfaced in 21. Now work is underway to put in order one of the old barracks for new conscripts.

- If we fast-forward the clock to October - November, we will have military activities with daily training activities.

It will be seen that the regiment is in place again, says Colonel Jonas Karlsson, regimental commander of I 21.

New regiment in smaller format

In the old days, more than 800 people at a time did the dirty work here.

Now the format is getting smaller, initially 40 conscripts in Sollefteå and 60 in Östersund.

- Now the plan is to have 150 conscripts here in Solleftetå and 100 in Östersund in 2025.

If we then get the opportunity from the outside to be allowed to hire more and we are required to train more conscripts, we are prepared to be able to do so, says Jonas Karlsson.

He says that 850 conscripts are being targeted again, but not until around 2035.

Lieutenant Colonel Paul Sundin is head of planning at I 21. He worked here as a commander 22 years ago, now he is back.

- It feels great.

For me, it was a chance to be involved and build something up again after all these years of closure.

Plus it is my old band that we set up, he says.

However, the area is far from military nowadays, here there are, among other things, a swimming pool, shops and homes.

Therefore, the Armed Forces intends to build a new area for the regiment, ready by the end of the decade.

"Takes a very long time to build up"

Among the parliamentary parties, there is a broad majority for the defense to be upgraded quickly.

In a survey conducted by SVT, 5 out of 8 parties open up that more conscripts than the planned 8,000 may be needed, and there is a majority for 2 percent of GDP to be spent on defense.

But there are bottlenecks, says Jonas Karlsson.

More officers are needed to train more, and then more people must show interest in a military career and have time to train themselves.

- There is an opportunity for us to be able to gather strength to buy more equipment for our military units to increase the capacity quite quickly.

When it comes to training conscripts, it's about how many officers we have available, that's the limitation I can see for us.

How many officers can we recruit to be able to increase conscription volumes, says Jonas Karlsson.

- It is not the case that you can train people from the street for this job.

It is military schools and educations that make it possible to have this profession and therefore it takes a very long time to rebuild, says Paul Sundin.