Hytte

Jason’s parents arrive today for  a much anticipated 10 day vacation with us!  So I thought I would blog about our latest adventure before they arrive.   Two weekends ago we were invited to go to Jason’s project leader’s family cabin. Hytte is Norwegian for cabin.  Most Norwegians seem to spend a lot of time at one especially in the spring and summer.  Many times it is their own cabin, a family cabin or a company cabin that they can utilize a few times a year – hyttes are a big deal.  So we were excited to get to experience it.  Now Olav’s family cabin doesn’t have running water or electricity, which used to be really common but nowadays this is considered “roughing it” to most Norwegians since most cabin’s are pretty posh. 

We took off a little early from work on Friday (my last day of teaching before summer!)  and took a 2.5 hour drive to the cabin.  Which is between here and Roros for those of you familiar.  We took the dogs who were very excited for their first long road trip- that excitement waned for Stretch when he threw up.  We had to cross a private padlocked bridge then entered a community of about 20 hyttes.  We thought it was funny that they were all built together since we thought the point of the cabin was to be one with nature but I guess you can have neighbors and still do that. 

The cabin itself was very cute and 100% built my Olav’s father 35 years ago.  It has a customary grass roof and beautiful hand carved furniture inside.  It rained most of the weekend so we spent a good bit of time reading and playing with their 6-month old baby.  They had a cool set up for water utilizing a small lake up the hill and a pump so there is water at an outside tap next to the house.   Electricity was not really an issue since it is light all day and night now.  We did find it interesting to eat with Norwegians for 2 days though.  We found out that they eat a small meal before bed consisting of bread and cheese.  They eat a lot of bread and cheese- for breakfast and lunch that is basically the entire meal.  They thought our sweet rolls for breakfast were funny and our chips with lunch were hilarious.  We did introduce them to S’mores though which were a big hit. In the area there were sheep grazing with bells on – we enjoyed that – the dogs were not so excited about them though.  We also got to experience a Norwegian sauna, which is very hot but does have some humidity.  It was a good experience (Jason didn’t wither to bad)  and luckily we could take a shower after that.  The last day we were able to hike around a little – there was still snow on the ground about 50 meters higher then the cabin (it was June 20!).  As we left the cabin we saw a small family of female and youth moose- I made Jason turn around so I could take pictures.  At first we thought they were reindeer but they turned about to be small moose- I was still pretty excited about it!  It was a great Norwegian experience – glad we were invited to share it with Olav’s family!