Viking Magazine - April 2012 - 40

... continued from p. 39
more time outside, so
there's physical exercise,
there's mental contemplation,
there's some skill
development and there's
an element of doing
something that's simply
very different from your
everyday life that sort of
vitalizes your senses. "
In new conveniencefilled
cabins, nature still
has a place, Jørgensen
says, but " it's much more
a leisure destination. " He
lists skiing, hunting, fishing
and picking berries as
" activities people want to
spend time on at the cabin-not
this manual labor
of chopping wood. "
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Cabins are scaling up in
size and in digital and electronic
sophistication, but
underneath the change,
Jørgensen sees continuity.
" One constant is
that the cabin is about
simplicity all along, " he
says. " But the content
of simplicity, what it really
means and how you
achieve simplicity, changes.
It changes from being
the absence of complicated
technology to being
something that technology
provides: You get to
the cabin and it's already
warm because you just
sent a text message to it
to start the heaters. You
just press a button and
the outside whirlpool tub
is ready. So it's technolo>[
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gy-driven simplicity that
takes over. "
" People tend to see
that as a big break " in the
cabin tradition, Jørgensen
says. " But one of the
things you see when you
go back 50, 60 years, is
that the first generation of
private cabin owners, on
a large scale, are almost
desperately seeking new
technologies that can help
the cabin become easier
to use, more convenient,
more comfortable. "
Take as a humble
example the toilet, he
says. In the 1970s, cabin
owners and companies
in Norway were trying
to solve the problem of
developing a composting
toilet that would
work in frigid weather.
The composting process
requires relatively warm
and consistent temperatures.
" So, they achieve
that by making electrical
toilets that have electric
heaters that keep the
temperature stable. And,
of course, with that then
comes the demand for
electricity. " It was one of
the first steps toward the
energy-intensive infrastructure
that supports
cabins today.
There seems little likelihood
that the technologizing
and upscaling of
cabins will be reversed.
There are still people,
especially in older generations,
for whom the
almost meditative physical
work of chopping
wood or hauling water
is important, Jørgensen
says. But for most new
cabin owners, it feels
like an impractical leap
to choose not to build in
all the modern conveniences
they can.
The real divide in
Norway's cabin tradition
isn't between generations
of cabin owners,
however. Jørgensen says
it's between the reality of
what people build and
buy and " the mythical
cabin they see in their
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minds when they start
dreaming about one. "
He says, " When you
start getting into this idea
of the cabin dream, this
kind of shared cultural
image of what a real
cabin is, " the dream is
definitely " further [up]
on the rustic scale than
the practice is. "
That may be why one
of the big bestsellers
in Norway this winter,
outselling the biographies
of Steve Jobs and Justin
Bieber, is a book called
Hel ved, on chopping
and stacking firewood.
During påskeferie, the
week's vacation that
many Norwegians take
at Easter, it should make
good cabin reading.
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Viking Magazine - April 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Viking Magazine - April 2012
