Robert Ferguson - 5 Sept

THE CABIN IN
THE MOUNTAINS

Robert
Ferguson

THE CABIN IN
THE MOUNTAINS

A Norwegian Odyssey

AN APOLLO BOOK

www.headofzeus.com

This is an Apollo book, first published in the UK in 2019 by Head of Zeus Ltd

Copyright Robert Ferguson, 2019

The moral right of Robert Ferguson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN (HB): 9781786696762
ISBN (E): 9781786696755

Cover image: Shuttterstock
Author photo copyright: none

Head of Zeus Ltd
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For Nina

Christmas 2018 the drive to the cabin ice on the roads problem of getting onto the roof clearing snow from the roof losing a snow shovel lighting the fire an alternative method of clearing the snow not used I check the Blackpool result Geirr Tveitts music on the radio

Selling a dream baptism in the mountain chapel origins of the cabin dream the dog gets bored chance meeting with a landowner

Visit to a cabin by the sea party on an island conversation with Sverre his pursuit of the lucid dream history of Norwegian cabin culture listening to calls of shepherdesses in the Norwegian mountains internet at the cabin

Thoughts on the nature of dreams a second-hand bookshop Malcolm Lowry and Nordahl Grieg translation problems street life around Majorstua Your cabin is being delivered today the drive through the Numedal valley the petrol station at Lampeland we meet the builders I resolve to find out more about wood as a building material

Midsummers Eve party near Oslo the spirit of dugnad the curious phenomenon of Norgesvenner (Friends of Norway) an argument concerning Bob Dylan and the Beatles on translating Norwegian Wood into English on wood as a building material differences between loft and stabbur courting customs related to the loft a case of mistaken identity the drive home

We pick up the key to the cabin fault-finding tour painting the cabin different ways of thinking about mountains Ibsen the collector of folk tales Carpelans mountain painting trip Olsens auction of Scream secret fears of working up a ladder W. C. Slingsby and Therese Bertheau climbing Storen Norwegians adopt mountaineering as a sport Johannes Heftye Emanuel Mohns unpatriotic failings Amundsens dogs

Walkers cabins in the mountains on using a tent a triangular walk in the west of the Hardangervidda Haukeliseter cabin first night out petrified trees footpath marking Hellevassbu losing the way up into Slettedalen blood on the snow Amundsen nearly freezes to death the descent to Haukeliseter how memory edits experience

The living roof arrives country and western music in Norway A. B. Wilse the photographer construction and maintenance of the living roof DAB radio in Norway conversation about Norwegian national dishes on the early trade routes across Hardangervidda the pre-Christian burial ground at Kjemhus

Problems with the komfyrvakt (cooker alarm) morning coffee in the village how cabin settlements rescue village economies the neighbouring plot of land sold on Norwegian newspapers formation and political fate of the Christian Democratic Party blasphemy laws abortion law reform the price of alcohol visit to the Kjemhus burial ground reading about Chinese hermits a street party in the mountains waiting for a lunar eclipse on Hardangervidda food and fuel at walkers cabins an idea from London the Resistance and the Jews in Occupied Norway

Wood delivered for the first winter stacking the wood I buy a tarpaulin some byoriginaler (street eccentrics) Willy the Jesus Singer Norwegian comedians lack of comic writers in Norway a closely observed delivery man conversation with an anarchist walking the dogs Frisbee golf comes to Norway Willy and the newspaper seller

We arrange for a terrace to be built architecture of a mountain cabin Kre the carpenter on the Norwegian lusekofte (louse jacket) the NOKAS robbery puzzling Americanisms in British English Norwegian fans of English football the plan to hang the cupboard on the wall on the English lakselords (salmon lords) history of Anglophilia in Norway clearing a salmon river the Fjordmog Club nostalgia in the footsteps of the lakselords a musical entertainment on Lady Arbuthnott Knut Hamsun, an Anglophobic Norwegian hanging the cupboard on the wall

The difficulties of sofa beds the terrace in place decide to clear snow from the terrace on making a dream come true on Bernhard Herres Recollections of a Hunter a love triangle influence of mountains on Norwegian philosophers Arne Nss and Peter Wessel Zapffe Nsss mountain cabins how smoking saved Bertrand Russells life Nss, Else Herzberg and Zapffe climb Stetind failure of my efforts to clear the snow on Zapffes Anti-Natalist philosophy Zapffes extreme environmentalism we sit down to eat

Christmas 2018 the drive to the cabin ice on the roads problem of getting onto the roof clearing snow from the roof losing a snow shovel lighting the fire an alternative method of clearing the snow not used I check the Blackpool result Geirr Tveitts music on the radio

It was about three oclock on a Friday afternoon and snowing heavily as we pulled up outside the cabin after the two-hour drive from Oslo. The sky had hardly opened its eyes all day and already it was closing them. The last half hour of the journey was a heart-stopping series of bends along a country road considered too insignificant to be regularly cleared by the snowploughs that chugged up and down the main roads like giant insects. Long sections of it were covered in what Norwegians call panseris , a dense and rock-hard layer of ice made doubly hazardous by the emergence, over the winter weeks, of rutted tracks that seemed, at first glance, in their subtle, asphalt greyness, to be actual road. You had constantly to resist the temptation to let the VW Golf slide into the comfort of the fit, and instead concentrate on keeping the offside wheels just holding the far side of the camber. It gave a feeling of control over the car, however slight.

Arriving at the village of Veggli after the last, twisting section of road through the Numedal valley always brought a false sense of journey over. There remained one final leg, as you leave the Fv 40 (County Road 40) just past the Circle K petrol station for the ten-kilometre climb up the mountainside to Mykstulia, and the eastern limits of the great Hardangervidda, the mountain plateau that extends from Eidsfjord in the west to Rjukan and Kongsberg in the east. For about half of its length this is a metalled road, becoming a cinder track as it passes across sheep grids and arrives at a toll barrier, operated by a plastic key card. After the barrier the track continues to twist and turn upwards, passing half-hidden tiny shacks belonging to the mountains original cabin-owners, the people who built cabins there thirty or forty years ago, when the cabin life Norwegians dreamed of was simpler than the one they dream of now.