To contribute to more balanced perspectives on sub-municipal population change in sparsely populated areas(SPAs), this paper closely examines a local pocket of growth in a shrinking Northern Swedish municipality.Integrating Swedish register data with in-depth qualitative insights, the geographic study examines patterns andprocesses of uneven local population dynamics linked to life course migration. This is done through a sociospatialcluster analysis containing, first, 15 aggregate socioeconomic variables for sub-municipal areas, andthen individual characteristics like birth countries, age groups, sex ratios, educational attainment, andemployment status. A Foresight approach and interviews with locals, municipal officials, and incoming lifestylemigrants complement this. Studying these individuals’ practical compromises regarding housing, income, andleisure at sub-municipal levels helps in overcoming fallacies in population change research at broader regionallevels, and illustrates the limits of relying solely on quantitative demographic change indicators. The paper showsthat urban traits in the municipal centre and rural natural amenities around a dogsledding trail combine toattract and retain different population groups. This adds to population change studies and shows that municipaladministrative centres in SPAs are not necessarily growing while other villages are declining, and that populationredistribution at the municipal level does not automatically imply the movement of people to municipal centresfrom a municipality’s minor villages.