The Exchange III. Hut, Cabin or Cottage?
An excellent question. One might settle the matter on varying degrees of cosiness. Others might put it down to semantics. I’m not really bothered, any of the above suits me just fine.
When Marion asked if I wanted to come with her and a group of her friends from SLU (the other university near Uppsala) to a cabin in the woods called Lunsentorpet, I could hardly say no. Although there was a busy Whatsapp chat to organize the trip, not much organization was done. I focused on getting myself sorted and then working from there. Given I only have a 60 litre pack, I had plenty of room to pack unnecessary things, including far too much food. About the only thing we had arranged for certain was our meeting time and place, 2:15pm at a bus stop by the start of the track. This was about 40 minutes away by bike from Flogsta and I left around 1:50pm… Safe to say I was in a bike of a flurry peddling my way through the streets. Several wrong turns and a headwind later and I arrived thirty minutes late. There was no one there. Fuck, they must have left I thought. Out of the trees came a Swissman, and we exchanged hesitant greetings, both trying to ascertain if we were both in the same party. He introduced himself as Kilian, interested in all things outdoors. We had plenty of time for small talk, as it turned out that the others had not even arrived yet. It took them another twenty minutes, with tales of flat tyres and other mishaps to explain their lateness. I was more relieved than anything.
My first impression upon entering the forest as that the track was more suited to ice skating than tramping. To safely navigate it one had to cautiously venture around the edge, occasionally making the treacherous crossing when obstacles blocked further progress. This made the going slow, but this was not the worst, there was plenty of small talk to get through. The pines stretched skyward in an impressive array of parallel lines, making me feel very distant from my own whenua. We climbed a whole 20 metres or so to the high point of the track. Not exactly what you might call mountainous, although the vertical elevation had those from the lowlands calling for oxygen to be supplied. Thankfully for them we descended again, entering a marshy forest landscape, complete with boardwalks covered in a perilous coating of ice, just to make life interesting.
We followed good practice by stopping at each sign post to reassemble our party, much to my disdain. Two of the boys were falling behind, the result of catching some sort of flu, alas, they pushed on, committed to at least suffer in beautiful surrondings. Some of the party were cautious so that we did not get lost. To me this feat would be rather impressive, given the flat nature of the land and the abundance of tracks with markers. With just 500m to Lunsentorpet we stopped again, at least this time Alice pulled out some cinamon buns for a touch of fika.
Once it was confirmed that the stragglers were still breathing I made it my mission to see the cottage before the sunlight finally failed. I nearly carked it multiple times, but by some sort of miracle I found myself emerging into a snowy clearing. Immediately to my left was a small wooden structure by a fire pit, which on first look could be mistaken for a rather ‘simple’ hut. Now that would have been cosy. A few more steps revealed our actual accommodation for the night (except for you Kilian). The cottage stood proudly behind a tricky section of ice that one could only assume acted as a defence mechanism in the night against drunk trampers.
The interior of the hut was warmed by a fire not yet burnt down. Boots off at the door, we wandered into the interior. The cottage was furnished with a full dining suite, a bread oven, range and a bunkroom for 6. On one of the study cabinets sat an array of retired gas lanterns and other suitably rustic decorations. It didn’t take long for the rest of our party to march in. We laid out fika proper and waited for our accompanying party that had afternoon classes to arrive. When we were united with them the cottage was well and truly bustling. The exception to this was Thomas (one of slowly dying boys from before), who retired to the couch in the corner, struggling to maintain consciousness. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger right?
As it turns out, the primal desire to assert masculinity through fire is universal across all the civilizations of this earth. There was much flapping and pageantry around the bread oven as the boys, myself included, attempted to get a fire going, perhaps just for the sake of it. Stuffed with cake and warmed by fire, there was a lot of inertia to having a campfire outside in the pit I mentioned earlier. I for one was sure to try it, I had been longing for a campfire the entire time I had been in Sweden up until that point. A small crew of us overcame the said inertia, and so we ventured out to repeat the fire dance. Flying embers and the glow of the flame drew the others outside in time, and soon our whole party sat around the fire with our assortment of foods that were meant to be something like dinner. I had been a bit adventurous and brought flour to make damper. As soon as I added beer to it I realized that I had fucked up. The mixture had about as much chance of sticking to a stick as there was to finding a sober Swedish student during Valborg. I attempted to recover the mixture by adding oats. The result once cooked was a sort of doughy porridge. Maybe next time. Alice had wrapped her potato in tinfoil and asked us to ‘wash her potato’ as it was on our side of the fire. This confused me as it the potato looked quite clean to me, asides from a bit of soot.
One by one as the fire burnt down and the wine sunk in, the group retreated to the cottage. We gathered around the table, each with a cup of goon in hand (I know, very classy). We attempted to play Never have I Ever. I say attempted because it was more entertaining listening to Europeans trying to say ‘never have I ever’ than any of the actual content.
Had I never ever…. Never ever have I never… Ever have I never…
Perhaps the wine didn’t help. From that we progressed in a chorus of songs. Marion couldn’t let a chance to sing ‘Hell and Gore’ slip past. After we had exhausted our memories and the songbook we turned to Youtube to provide songs for our entertainment. We finished the night with the ‘coin game’, which consisted of flipping a coin onto a piece of cardboard, then drawing a circle around it and writing a dare inside it. If your coin landed in the circle of another, you had to complete the dare. By the nights close there were plenty of us with pants inside out, that’s for sure.
At the crack of dawn an advanced party left the warmth of the cottage to make it back for morning classes. I was in no such rush, my class stated at 1:15pm. When it did finally come time to get up, I was on porridge duty, something that fell within my skill set. The smell of porridge drew Kilian out of the shelter he had spent the night in (to test out his sleeping bag apparently, I am of the opinion that he must say embarrassing things in his sleep). Our porridge was adorned with all manner of flavorings, far fancier than anything I normally eat. At 10am a group of people arrived, they turned out to be the cottage keepers, who walked in everyday to chop the excessive amount of firewood that lay out the back. It explained the fire in the cottage the day before. When 10:30am rolled around I packed up in earnest, before making tracks myself out from the cottage and the forest.
I felt incredibly grateful to have discovered Lunsentorpet.
Read my next adventure here: https://medium.com/@Triompher/the-exchange-iv-weird-flex-but-norway-f492e31b56c0
