{"id":2020,"date":"2013-08-24T19:04:20","date_gmt":"2013-08-24T23:04:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tusentakk2.com\/wordpress\/?p=2020"},"modified":"2013-08-26T05:32:46","modified_gmt":"2013-08-26T09:32:46","slug":"skurvenuten-august-3-11-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tusentakk2.com\/wordpress\/2013\/08\/skurvenuten-august-3-11-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Skurvenuten — August 3-11, 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

On August 3, the Brunborgs and Shipleys left the hytte of Bodil and Rune after another hearty (aren’t they all?) fr\u00f8kost<\/em> (breakfast), and continued northward to the hytte of the Brunborgs, which they call Skurvenuten<\/em>, and about which I will say more later in this article.<\/p>\n

The hytte was by far the most remote we visited in this series of hytte-trips. \u00a0We drove through an increasingly beautiful landscape as we wound down and (mostly) up along the walls of dramatic canyons of granite formed by glaciers in past ice ages. \u00a0Our goal was reach a dam in the southeastern corner of a lake high above the timber line: \u00a0Holmavatnet. \u00a0Just before reaching the dam we met Bj\u00f8rgulf and Berit driving out from a visit to their hytte. \u00a0(More about them later in this blog.) At the dam we unpacked the small trailer we had pulled behind the Brunborg automobile and transferred our supplies to a small boat powered by a new 4-stroke 8-hp Yamaha engine. \u00a0It had begun raining in the last part of our auto trip, so we were all clad in waterproof jackets and trousers and rubber boots. \u00a0The car was left in a nearby clear space and we took the boat through the driving rain across the lake to the northeastern corner where Skurvenuten lies.<\/p>\n

We moved our supplies into the hytte, and immediately started a toasty fire in the wood-burning stove and hung some our clothes and and some of our bedding (which had gotten wet in the trip across the lake) up above the stove. \u00a0Then Lars Helge and Tove took the boat back out onto the lake in order to set about a dozen\u00a0garner<\/em>\u00a0(nets). \u00a0When they returned, we had a dinner of tomato soup and sausages and some of the delicious Norwegian bread. \u00a0Next day about noon, we all went out into the rain and drizzle and pulled in the nets; Lars Helge always at the motor and the rest of us taking turns retrieving; done by reaching out an arm’s length, grasping the net, pulling it up to the body and securing the net onto a plastic prong held in the other hand — and repeating this process until the entire net is retrieved. \u00a0If the net contained trout, the net was placed into one large plastic container; if not, and if the retrieve had been “neat”, then the net was placed into an equally-large but different container. \u00a0Tangled nets were placed in the “fishy” container, since they would have to be unsnarled just as the nets that had contained fish would. \u00a0When all of the nets had been retrieved, we landed the boat on a shore that had nearby large flat rocks, and took the fishy and tangled nets up to the rocks, where the fish were removed from the nets and the nets were unsnarled and readied for another placement in the lake. \u00a0While the three of us did the unsnarling, Lars Helge cleaned the fish down at the lake side. \u00a0Then we took the boat and the nets back out onto the lake and set the nets in likely but “new” bays or points along the shore. \u00a0We performed this routine each day but the last: eating breakfast, retrieving the nets, removing the fish from the nets, unsnarling the nets, resetting the nets in “new” places, and then returning to the hytte for some lunch, which often consisted of boiled trout and boiled potatoes and thinly sliced cucumbers. \u00a0But we also had meals of polser or pork loin or smoked trout. \u00a0 In the long afternoons (in this part of the world at this time of the year the sun doesn’t set until well after 9 PM) we went for walks, or fished with casting rods or lounged inside or outside the hytte (depending on the weather) or performed everyday chores.<\/p>\n

But I have gotten ahead of myself. \u00a0It rained on and off all day during our first full day on the lake, and then really rained hard that night, causing the lake level to begin rising. \u00a0When Lars Helge went out to the boat late the next morning, he found that the boat, whose bow had been pulled up on the shore, had taken on so much rain water that a corner of the stern was nearly submerged. \u00a0Attempting to reposition the boat so that he could bail out the water, he inadvertently moved it off a supporting rock and the stern immediately sank, submerging the new motor! \u00a0That was the scene when the rest of us arrived at the shore. \u00a0Together, we managed to position the boat so that we could bail out the water. \u00a0 When an attempt to start the motor failed, we removed it and took it up to the cabin, where we extracted the spark plugs and put a bit of oil in the combustion chambers. \u00a0We then put the engine on a saw horse with the foot in a bucket of water, and after replacing the plugs were able to start the motor. \u00a0Yippee!<\/p>\n

We caught an average of about 15 trout a day. \u00a0What did we do with that many fish, you ask? \u00a0Every day we ate some, either boiled or smoked. \u00a0The rest were reserved for rather unusual treatment, even in Norway. \u00a0Lars Helge made a batch of grav\u00f8ret that we ate after three days of aging, and he began several batches of rakfisk; but that delicacy takes several months to mature to the point that it is ready to eat. \u00a0Neither preparation involves cooking; the fish are eaten raw and without heat. \u00a0We think that they are both delicious.<\/p>\n

What are rakfisk<\/em> and grav\u00f8ret<\/em>, you ask? \u00a0First, laks<\/em> is the Norwegian word for salmon. \u00a0\u00d8ret<\/em> is the word for trout. \u00a0The grav\u00f8ret was prepared using essentially the same recipe as that for gravlaks; about which Wikipedia says the following: “Traditionally, gravlaks would be salted, buried in the ground and left to ferment (similar to how rakfisk is still prepared), hence the name. Contemporary gravlaks, however, is salt-and-sugar-cured salmon\u00a0seasoned with dill and (optionally) other herbs and spices. Gravlaks is often sold under more sales-friendly names internationally.” \u00a0You can\u00a0<\/em> read more about gravlaks here<\/a>. \u00a0About\u00a0rakfisk,\u00a0<\/em>Wikipedia says: \u00a0“Norwegian\u00a0fish dish\u00a0made from trout …\u00a0salted and fermented\u00a0for two to three months, or even up to a year, then eaten without cooking.” \u00a0<\/em>You can read more about rakfisk here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A note about the cabin: \u00a0years ago when we first visited Skurvenuten, the “WC” was an outdoor affair that consisted of a wooden “bench” with an appropriate hole mounted between two large boulders up some distance from the hytte. \u00a0 But now the hytte has a snurredass<\/em> — an indoor toilet that opens up not into the ground but into a cylindrical container with three chambers under the hytte. \u00a0When one chamber fills up after some months or years, the container is rotated so that the waste falls into a new chamber. \u00a0By the time the original chamber has come around again, its contents will have decomposed to the point that it is essentially empty, a process facilitated by the addition of a handful of a specially-treated tree bark after each occurrence of serious business.<\/p>\n

The hytte has no running water, so we fetched water from the lake for drinking and cooking and washing ourselves and our dishes. \u00a0The new room containing the snurredass contains a sink and a shower stall, but, without running water, showers are obtained by using a hand-pressurized garden sprayer.<\/p>\n

The hytte Skurvenuten is owned by Bj\u00f8rgulf Haukelid, who has been a friend of Lars Helge since they were school boys. \u00a0The Brunborgs fixed up Skurvenuten and have\u00a0used it for many years. \u00a0Bj\u00f8rgulf and his wife Berit have on the same lake their own hytte, called Vivik, as well as yet another hytte. \u00a0The Haukelids also own the northern half of Holmavatnet, as well as a considerable amount of land and several lakes immediately to the north of Holmavatnet. \u00a0The King of Norway has hunted Caribou on the Haukelid land.<\/p>\n

Bj\u00f8rgulf is the oldest son of Knut Haukelid, one of the Norwegian saboteurs of the heavy water plant at Vemork during the World War II occupation of Norway. \u00a0The Allies placed great significance on destroying the plant and its heavy water production, since it was feared that the Nazis would use it to help create an atomic bomb. \u00a0The Norwegians had been trained in Britain, and after the successful raid on Vemork all but two returned there. \u00a0Knut was one of the two who\u00a0remained behind to train and arm volunteers for the Norwegian Home Army, as\u00a0the resistance movement was known. He teamed up with another Norwegian named\u00a0Skinnarland\u00a0and fled on skis to a mountain hut called “Bamsebu” on the Haukelid property where they remained in hiding until the spring thaw of 1943 when they moved to a farm on the lower slopes, where they were better placed to gather information to relay back to Allied headquarters in London. In July they received an inquiry about reports that production of heavy water at the Vemork plant had restarted. It was decided to attempt to destroy the plant by a United States Army Air Force bombing raid. This wrecked the factory but failed to destroy the heavy water plant, which was protected by seven concrete floors above it.<\/p>\n

Norwegian technicians were able to convince the German authorities that the plant as a whole was no longer viable but, on January 29,1944, London advised Skinnarland that it was to be dismantled and shipped to Germany, together with the Vemork stocks of heavy water. Haukelid and he took great risks in entering local towns, where both were well known, to gather information about the planned shipment. Eventually, they discovered that it was to be conveyed in a Norwegian ferryboat which would have to traverse Lake Tinnsjo on its way to the open sea. Assisted by others recruited locally, Haukelid placed charges on the keel of the ferry, which blew up and sank in 1,000ft of water in Lake Tinnsjo in February 1944, unfortunately with the loss of several Norwegian lives.<\/p>\n

So much for the background concerning the small hut called Bamsebu. \u00a0During one of our fishing expeditions, we took a break and walked up to the hut. \u00a0It was my third visit. \u00a0On an earlier visit some 15 years ago, Lars Helge and I had repaired the roof, replacing a rotten plank and repositioning stones on the edge of the roof and cutting new clumps of sod to fill bare spots in the grass on the roof. \u00a0Remarkably, after all of those 15 years, some of the places from which we got the sod are still bare, a testament to how harsh the conditions are at that latitude and altitude.<\/p>\n

The Brunborgs love Skurvenuten, and the Shipleys do too. \u00a0We consider it a high privilege to be able to spend time in such a beautiful and such a historic place.<\/p>\n\n\t\t