The Cabin in the Mountains: A Norwegian Odyssey

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The Cabin in the Mountains: A Norwegian Odyssey Author: Format: Hardback First Published: Published By: Head of Zeus
string(3) "432"
Pages: 432 Illustrations and other contents: 50 integrated b&w Language: English ISBN: 9781786696762 Categories: ,

The wooden holiday cabin, or hytte, is a staple of Norwegian life. Robert Ferguson, author of Scandinavians, explores the significance of a national icon in this charming, affectionate history. Turf-roofed and wooden-built, offering fresh clean air, peace, isolation and the promise of a day’s wood-chopping, hiking or snow-clearing amid landscapes of great beauty, the hytte – or wooden cabin home – is a crucial part of the national identity of every Norwegian. In 2016, Robert Ferguson and his wife bought a piece of land high up in the Hardangervidda, the plateau that dominates south-central Norway, and on it they built such a hytte. For Ferguson, the hytte represented the realisation of a dream that first brought him to Norway from England more than thirty years ago. As the cabin takes shape he learns, through conversations with friends and cabin-builders, the cultural history of modern Norway. He learns of the changing traditions attached to these cabin homes for native Norwegians as they try to marry their new-found urban affluence to their past as a tight-knit, impoverished rural community-nation. Along the way he also describes the intense and mutually rewarding relationship that arose between the colonial Norwegians and their wealthy, imperialist British neighbours across the North Sea in the 19th and 20th centuries; how the British ‘salmon-lords’ showed them another way of looking at their great rivers, and how English climbers introduced them to a new way of thinking about their mountains.

Weight0.7948044 kg
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'Illuminating ... Insightful knowledge of Norway's cultural and social history' * TLS * 'Ferguson takes us on an uncompromising journey into the dark cold north, to reveal the warmth that comes from deep community bonds - qualities all too often lost in our modern urban lives' -- Tim Ecott 'Singular and captivating: the pursuit of a dream' -- Professor John Carey PRAISE FOR ROBERT FERGUSON: 'Scandinavians is a terrific read ... [It] reads like many 19th-century travel books, which also combined wonderful narrative description with bright speculation ... It's this approach that makes the book so thoroughly enjoyable' Literary Review. 'Ferguson stretches wide the fabric of history, his knowledge and insights in the process bringing the varied stories of the Nordic people vividly to life' Irish Times. 'Charming, affectionate ... Penetrating' -- David Aaronovitch, The Times

Author Biography

Robert Ferguson is an award-winning writer, translator, and radio dramatist. He is the author of numerous books, including Scandinavians: In Search of the Soul of the North, The Vikings: A History, Henrik Ibsen: A New Biography, and Enigma: The Life of Knut Hamsun, which was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Best Biography Award and won the University of London J.G. Robertson Award. His translation of Lars Mytting's Norwegian Wood won Non-Fiction Book of the Year in 2016. Born in the UK in 1948, he emigrated to Norway in 1983 and has made his home there since.