I threw in a lot of spruce branches and a moose/elk skin to sleep on. The fire was just used to keep warm on dressing and undressing as I was slightly afraid of cracking the rock above. I can really recommend this type of shelter, pretty smokeless and totally waterproof. Make sure that the direction of the slate goes pretty much horizontally if you are going to use a fire in there though. And that there are no major cracks in the rock.

I’ll borrow the photos from you again Steve, thanks.

Pine moors, being very dry because of well drained soils, scotch pine dominate this terrain, with occational occurence of birch and spruce. Wildlife is relatively scarce here, red squirrel and pine marten are two of the most common mammals, but caribou/reindeer and moose/elk often have their winter habitat there. Capercaillie are the most common game birds. I don’t know of many examples of virgin forest of this kind. Probably because it’s a very easily accessible terrain for logging excellent timber.

Hillsides are usually fertile, especially the ones that face to the south and are slighly moist. There is often a large variety of plants there. These hillsides have willow, spruce, birch, juniper, aspen, bird cherry and a number of other trees. The north facing sides are usually covered in predominately spruce, but with some birch. Right below the mountains, where the very warmest places in all of the territories are, you’ll find elm, hazel and linden. Wildlife is very diverse, hares probably being the most common specie. Roe and red deer often stay only here, since they require foods of higher quality. Beaver can often log quite far up these slopes. I have seen them log several hundred metres up, though then with additional dams up a nearby stream. These slopes are difficult to log, and are often left to “rewild” today.

Bogs are often relatively barren, but if combined with lakes or on rich ground they can harbour important sites for waterfowl and important grazing zones for moose. Wet ground, but overgrown with alder is the primary habitat of the hazel grouse.

Mountains are in summer quite fertile in the lower portions. Sometimes covered in birch or willow. The moose and caribou often go there to graze during that time. The snow patches on the higher elevation provides an escape from the moskitos and flies. In winter the higher elevations provide habitat for the caribou and lower for the grouse.

Edge zones are the most productive places in a habitat, either where a terrain meets a lake or two types meets eachother. The reason why my part of Telemark is particulary productive, is because an abundance of such zones. Many of them created by lakes. Along these lakes

There are several hybrids of these habitats, like deltas, which can be exceptionally rich, but they are rare. Especially today, since many have been drained.

And remember to have a look in the chatroom.

In a camp you are planning on staying for an extended period of time or return to later, you might want to store some food. Even if you don’t expect to return, store any surplus food so you have something to turn to if famine strikes. In addition, all equipment you make and need can usually not be carried with you at any given time.

Equipment, like fishing traps, nets, empty containers, sledges and similar, don’t need to be stored particulary protected. A overhanging rock, to keep it dry is enough. The indicator to look for is no vegetation whatsoever. Make sure there is enough space, so that no snow comes in. Things of hide, raw or tanned, can be left, but not indefinitely. Keep it as elevated as possible. A common way of storing things away from mice, is to keep it suspended from the roof. This will at least reduce the amount of chewing on winter garnments, hides or whatever you should be storing. Bigger animals will come in and can destroy the hides, so if you are going to store animal matters, close the rockshelter with a wall. If there is no fat or meat on the hides, during the snowfree season you can store hides and similar without any damage to it. During the winter, when things are at a pinch for the animals, nothing is safe. Photo: I left a fishing trap, some knapping rock and a few containers in a natural cache on the site, for later use.

Any foods must be protected. Rodents and moisture are your worst enemies in this regard. You can’t store any food on the ground, where both of these factors are too great. The exception seems to be this particular type of storing fat for later consumption. Marrow will go bad when stored in bone, but within a year’s time frame or so, the fat will not be leached out. When you have shot a great animal, you have consumed and/or dried the meat and want to move on, take the remaining bones that you have not cracked open. Every bone, even if there is tissue on it, make a pile of them and pile rocks on top. The rocks will keep the larger scavengers at bay and the smaller ones can’t get through the bones. When you need the fat (usually in winter time), you go to the location, crush the bones and render off the fat. This method of piling food down can also be used for short time storage of meat, if you are coming back in a day or two only. I have not tried this method, but it makes perfect sense. It was appearantly used by Paleo-Indian hunters in America.

For regular storage of food, conserved in whatever method appropriate, needs to be stored in a raised cache built in a tree or between several trees. The Native Americans often took off all of the bark and branches of these trees, to make it more difficult for the bear to enter the cache. Food should be stored in relatively air tight containers (raw hide or birch bark for instance) regardlessly though, since any moisture from the air can destroy the food. Hazelnuts and other nuts are exceptions, since they have their own air-tight containers. Any containers will become wet and loose their protecting properties (rawhide in particular) if not protected from rain or snow. You will need a perfectly waterproof roof, of for instance bark, fully enclosed to the floor of the cache to prevent any birds or squirrels from entering. I have yet not had the need for making and utilising such caches, but the principle is the same as with the traditional storage houses in Norway (bur or stabbur).

• Few people in the mountains, few people to leave litter and pollution.
• No cattle and little livestock in general. Animals can pollute the water if they are kept in an area in high concentrations.
• Large rainfall and fast flowing water. The water doesn’t usually have time to gather pathogens.

There are a few guidelines though, which I always follow:

• I don’t ever drink water that is miscoloured, foul tasting or smelling. Some bog taste can live with.
• I rarely drink from wide rivers, since chances are that human interference above will pollute the water. If I know there is no such interference, I do drink it and prefer it. This is because a potential carcass upstream will have the washed out bacteria dilluted in a greater river than in a larger stream.
• For lakes, the rule is as for rivers.
• Take the water where it flows with the greatest speed (within very reasonable walking distance of course) to avoid buildups of pathogens. Water with some air in will also taste fresher.
• Do not drink from lakes with very large beaver influence or immediately beneath them.

There will always be bacteria in the water, but when in low concentrations, your immune system will take care of it. I know a very few incidents of giardia in Norway, keep in mind that the European variety of giardia is less than 5% lethal if infected. Below: Streams such as these are usually safe.

A key element in any survival is fire. A fire is needed to cook food on, brings a lot of “free” warmth to your body and light when it’s otherwise pitch black. Different materials burn in different ways and this will affect the usefulness to the different tasks. The process of getting a fire going I will demonstrate in a later article, when I have taken enough photos to accompany it. Please excuse the metal can below, this photo isn’t from the last trip.

There are six factors that I rate firewood by:

• Direct heat
• Coals
• Burning time
• Ease of procuring
• Smokeyness
• Light

Softwoods:

By softwoods I generally mean conifers. Direct heat in softwoods is usually great, excellent for getting warmth in the body quickly and for warming up a cold tent. On the downside, coals are practically non-existant and they tend to burn up rather quickly. It has a good lighting quality, especially the resinous species, like scotch pine. Particulary resinous pieces, like old stumps and the base of dead twigs not only burns bright, but also keep it going for a pretty long time. The dead twigs are easy to gather, even rather large branches are often so dry and brittle that they can be broken without too much trouble. Truly large, standing and dry trees are usually out of the question for the primitive though. It is possible to chop them down, but it’s so much work without a metal axe that I wouldn’t do it if there are easier options available. Photo is of a dead pine trunk of which you can very easily rip of resinous branches.

And yes, the smokeyness of resinous wood is horrible. Norway spruce isn’t so bad though.
Hardwoods:

Hardwoods generally means decidious trees. A long burning time, very tolerable smoke (if not wet) and excellent coals are the main advantages of the hardwoods. They don’t burn very bright and direct heat is often so poor that you can almost sit freezing next to the fire. As I told you yesterday, beaver sticks provides an excellent and easy firewood opportunity. Birch normally rots standing because the bark keeps the moisture inside of it. Other species can be found dry in a “natural” state, but I often prefer beaver sticks, since they are of handy length and of bigger diametre than you can usually expect to be able to cut with stone tools. The truely huge dimensions, up to half a metre in diametre, are usually not barked, but they are often sectioned. So if it has been laying elevated for some years, a few chops with the axe can free a log that is massive enough to last for almost the entire night. Perfect winterwood. And if it is too long, just let it stick out of the door.

General advice:

Rotted wood is no good for burning, except for smoking skins. On regular firewood, sizes of the pieces dictates burning time and intensity. Smaller diametre burns quicker and hotter, but for cooking fires or to keep the lodge warm through many hours, use bigger diametres. If you want several qualities on your fire at once; like good coals, but also some light, use a mixture of hard and soft woods. Birch bark, fatwood (resinous wood) or resin lumps can give the flames a boost that can allow you to perform tasks that require good lighting. In the long winter of the north you will have very little time to do your chores if you don’t know how to adjust the lighting of the micro-environment in the tent. Photo is of pitch lumps on some dead spruces.

I have unfortunately not looked into fat/blubber lamps yet.

My kids and I took off an afternoon to work on a wikkiup in a place that we have thought would be good to do it. We picked a spot right on a creek where there is a natural spring and we’ve been to the spot enough to know it doesn’t flood at any time of the year.

Right near this spot are old broken cottonwoods which tend to break off in large splinters that leave huge slabs of material to use as shingles. There are also some green alders that were washed away at the bank and were blocking the creek somewhat. Alder, no matter if it’s green or dry is very brittle and pretty large trunks can be broken off.

The point of this exercise is to show my kids that good dwellings can be made with what is available. When it’s done is should be fairly rain proof and tall enough to have a fire inside. Right now it’s drying a bit as it is very heavy from being green and the large slabs are still wet with the rain we’ve been having.

In the above picture you can see how we used the natural forks of the trees to make an interlocking center. You can make the center interlock very tightly by laying everything down on the ground first and interlocking it while it’s on the ground. Then you raise it up in the middle and keep pushing it up. The increasing angle will really help bind the forks together.

The above shows the large slabs of cottonwood that will overlap as shingles.

This last pic shows the approximate size of the shelter. I can easily stand up and have room to reach up still in the center. It should sleep 4 pretty comfortably.

Coating charcoal around your eyes will help a little, but to be properly protected you need some special googles. While I don’t know of any transparent natural material with UV protecting properties, the inuits (and probably others) made googles with slits in them, to reduce the amount of sunlight which hits the eye. Especially important it is to remove the reflection from the snowy ground.

If you of some reason has gotten snowblind, you need to stay indoors in the dark for a number of days days, the length depending on the severity of your case. You will know that you have been cured when it does no longer feel like needles stinging your eyes when you look outside.

Very soon I’ll post instructions on how to make more advanced snow googles of wood. Not many photos I’m afraid, but hopefully the text alone will be suffcient.

Here is a photo of some quicky birch bark googles in usage. They work reasonably well, but the slits could have been made narrower.

First on the advantages of going barefeet:

Hygiene
Having your feet exposed to water, dirt (which sucks up fats and moisture) and the sun washes, dries and condition your feet automatically. Shoes on the other hand, locks in moisture and promotes bacterial and fungal growth. At first it only creates annoying smells, but in time it can develop into quite dangerous foot-rot. There is a reason why all the rainforest tribes around the world go barefeet. Shoes would never dry up.

Foot health
If you ever have heard of massaging your feet. That happens all the time when you walk barefeet. Being as close to the ground as practically possible, it almost eliminates the chance of stepping over. It also trains your feet and legs (very much in fact) and toughens up the skin. Blood circulation is increased and that reduces freezing on your feet in winter. Something which I have barely done after I started to walk barefeet almost all the time.

Silence
There are three reasons why you walk silently without shoes.

1. The pain of stepping on something sharp makes you take care when you step (effect is reduced as you toughen though).
2. Better contact with the ground, when you feel the sticks directly you can avoid breaking them much easier.
3. The sole of the foot is softer than that of the shoe.

Economy
Maybe not so relevant today, but in a time when you needed that leather for winter shoes you would want to save it by walking barefeet in summer. Modern shoes may not wear out so quickly, but moccasins, birch bark shoes and other natural shoes do. So, if you are going primitive for a longer period of time, you more than likely need to learn yourself to walk barefeet.

Limitiations
Like a heavily used horse, a human trekking for multiple days with a backpack over rough country and without rest will need some sort of shoe to avoid wearing down the sole underneath. The sole will regenerate, but you need to rest for that to happen. You will also need shoes on very hot sand, where there are a lot of thorns and in the snow. There are plenty of ethnographic examples that defy all of these, so it isn’t written in stone.

Getting tough feet

Tough feet are unfortunately impossible to buy in a shop. Every spring I do this, as my feet has pretty much reverted by then. It will not revert all the way though, so it will not take as long as the first every time.

If you have extremely tender feet, start on grass and coarse sand. Walk around all day on this soft ground for several days, it should make your feet sore. Dont’ bother resting after this small ordeal, but press on. On the days that come, start walking on very coarse asphalt and coarse gravel. That will be very painful and your feet will be very sore. When it gets so bad that you feel like tendons are pulling all over the place and blisters are forming. Take two days with shoes on.

After the rest, start walking everywhere without shoes. Especially in the forest, where the ling will whip the soft parts on top of the feet and toughen them too. Take two days with shoes whenever you feel blisters forming.

As you continue walking barefeet it will become second nature to you and you will loose your fear of stepping on something sharp and become able to run, even in the forest.

The shelter is situated almost at the top of the valley side, in the middle of old pine/spruce forest and only a short walk from prime hunting and fishing grounds. When it was first used I don’t know, but I know it was used by my grandfather in quite recent times. On one side, small and flat rocks have been stacked up to make a wall where there was none. This wall has deteriorated in time. In the far end there is a natural chimney.

One of my brothers and I decided to improve upon this shelter. We brought with us two pieces of reindeer antler to work with and started digging into the floor of the shelter. Within the dirt there was plenty of flat rocks, some which we used to repair the wall and some which we used to build an improved chimney. We originally planned to build it into an earth-lodge, but we have pretty much given up the idea as it is an excellent one or two person shelter as it is. As you can see on the photo, it is now much higher under the roof than it used to and very cozy indeed. We have yet to try it, but maybe some time next year.

A topic greatly neglected by most primitivists, including me. Most outdoors people seems to look upon being dirty as a proof of masculinity. I am now of another opinion. If you were living permanently in the wild, especially along with several other people, it might have gotten rather uncomfortable, not to say hazardous to your health. It is amazing how good it feels to clean up properly in the wilds, I’ll say it is even better than showering at home

Bathing

The most obvious consideration when it comes to staying clean is washing the body. Washing the genitals and anus should preferably be done every day. Either with a wet piece of cloth or with your hands. Soap isn’t really necessary to become clean. If you wash every day, you will never get so dirty that you need more radical means. That is however an utopia. Most people don’t have the discipline to wash every day. To clean properly up you then need to sweat it out and plunge into either water or snow to remove it before it sets back into the pores. This can either be done by exercise or a sweat lodge. In winter, sweating in your clothes can be dangerous, so the only alternative used should be the sweat lodge.

I have built and used a sweat lodge a couple of times and I love the way you feel after a sweat-bath. Slightly prickly on your skin, but glowing.

When cleaning it is no point in heating any water,except for comfort. You become cleaner with cold water. Most bacteria thrive in normal bath-temperature. Warm water is however more fat-soluble, so there you have another reason to use the sweat lodge. How to build a sweat lodge will be covered in a later article.

Toilet hygiene

When I was saying that bathing is the most obvious task with hygiene in the wilds there is an subject that really deserve that position. However, from experience I can tell you that this is not the case for a great number of people. Washing your hands after going to the “bathroom” is very important to prevent stomach upsets etc…

When it comes to wiping, there is usually an order of preference. I prefer sphagnum moss, with other mosses coming second and grasses and leaves third. In winter, none of these are usually available. As rather uncomfortable substitutes I use pine or spruce branches (with the needles!). To clean up properly afterwards I resort to snow. Sometimes, if there is nothing else around, I will use snow all the way. It is a good thing that the diet offered in the wild usually is full of fibre….

Nails and hair

That the hair gets all fatty is quite annoying. Personally I have never gone without soap long enough for this effect to disappear, but from what I have heard it disappears after a few months. To avoid the hair becoming like a cake of dreadlocks, you should comb it every day. Making a simple comb isn’t all that hard. You just need some pointy sticks tied together. Alternatively the hair can be braided. When the hair needs trimming (I wear mine long), you can either use a flake or a glowing coal. I have tried neither, but I assume that with some training the results can be satisfying. Especially if someone else does it on you. Beard can be cut or burned, but both seem too hazardous for me. I would rather braid mine.

The nails can be cut in one end and carefully ripped off. I have tried this and the results are a little too unpredictable for me, but it may be all due to lack of skill. Alternatively they can be abraded down on a stone. A slow task I’d assume, but if done every day it may not be so bad.

Mouth hygiene

Tooth rot that goes too far can actually be lethal. Because of that, preventing this problem is essential to long term survival. As long as you eat wild food only, it will probably not be much of a problem, but to be on the safe side I would suggest to brush your teeth with a chewed twig or a finger with wood ash on. Especially if you have eaten lots of carbohydrates. Pitch is sometimes recommended is pine/spruce pitch, but keep in mind that the taste will linger on for the rest of the day and ruin the experience of that fine venison you have for dinner…. Fine fibres, and sinew in particular, are suitable for flossing the teeth.