Our Story
Sometimes you have a dream and you just go for it. We are a family of four that lived in Oslo, Norway for a little over a year while the two adults attended a graduate program at the Universitet i Oslo. We left our home in Denver, Colorado, took our two kids out of their excellent elementary school, and enrolled them in local schools in Oslo. Chasing our dream could not have been better.
We spent every weekend exploring either Norway or other parts of Europe. Whether hiking in the forests of Norway, cross-country skiing across the frozen lake of Sognsvann, or walking the cobblestones of old cities we embraced the adventures found in the unknown. Without a car, we navigated Oslo and the other cities we visited via their fantastic public transportation systems or, sometimes, did the Norwegian thing and simply walked.
Once we settled into our life in Scandinavia we started to pay attention to the form and fashion of living. The muted blues, grays, greens, and pops of red, were the colors of Scandinavia, the storied simplicity and practicality of design were both intangible and yet integral to life.
Throughout Scandinavia there is a saying: there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing. While the weather we encountered wasn’t the 300 days of sun a year we expect in Colorado, the clothing we found was excellent. When we returned we realized that much of the clothing we’d fallen in love with was unavailable in the United States, and an idea was born. How about bringing the Scandi style we’d grown to love to the USA? As we gave this more and more thought, we decided to be more specific. We would bring a carefully curated line of Scandinavian-designed, mostly European-made clothing to the attention of American customers. Our primary focus would be on clothing that was conducive to exertion, exploration, and relaxation. The brands we would focus on would be out-of-the-ordinary, the makers would be focused on responsibility, durability, quality, and always—style. And thus, Aktiv was born.
Aktiv is your view into different aspects of Scandinavia. You will find Scandinavian clothes from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden that are above all, excellent quality, beautifully designed, responsibly produced, and durable. This is not disposable clothing, it is warmth, or coziness, sometimes fitted, sometimes relaxed, but always there for when you need to Exert.Explore.Exhale.™
