Baggböle is a small village on the Ume River in northern Sweden, approximately 8 km (5 mi) upstream of the city of Umeå.

[2][3][6] The business methods of the sawmill owned and operated by James Dickson & Co became headline news in Sweden when the manager and director of the company, James Dickson Jr, was taken to court on 15 June 1850, accused of encouraging his suppliers upstream to supply him with logs that did not belong to them.

By swearing to his honesty and his lack of knowledge of what had happened Dickson was able to escape a conviction, which was allowed under Swedish law at that time, in cases where all evidence was circumstantial.

[8] James Dickson was fortunate in avoiding a conviction, because even if he personally had been unaware of it his company was guilty of receiving stolen goods, having, every year since 1842, taken in more than the 4,500 logs per annum from Crown forests than had been agreed.

[8] The sawmill was able to use its power to set the terms of logging contracts with local villages, contracts that through the nature of them, giving Baggböle sawmill exclusive rights to all timber felled on all forest land belonging to the villages for a period of 50 years, resulted in no one feeling responsible for, or being interested in, replanting clear-cut areas.

[6] Instead a hydro-electric powerplant was constructed at the Baggböle Rapids in 1899, in order to provide electricity for the city of Umeå, replacing a local steam powered plant.

[4] Today the land formerly used by Baggböle sawmill is Arboretum Norr, an arboretum that has been developed to attract visitors, and develop plants suitable for northern latitudes, while the manor, which originally served as residence for the manager of the sawmill at Baggböle and became a historically listed/graded building in 1964, is used for business conferences and as a restaurant.