From Hytte to Hytte: Jotunheimen National Park

Just completed my first excursion out into the wilderness! I spent the last week trekking from hytte to hytte in Jotunheimen National Park and the Utladalen Valley in south-central Norway. I was lucky to be joined by a dear friend, Mr. Federico Ruiz-Reyes, whose company was much appreciated. This post will cover the time we spent in Jotunheimen, specifically focusing on the hytter we stayed in.

Besseggen Ridge and Lake Gjende

The first leg of our hike happened to be one of Norway's most famous trails - the Besseggen Ridge. The trail climbs roughly 3500 feet into the mountains that line the glacier-carved Lake Gjende. At one point, we scrambled down a steep ridge between two mountain lakes, the turquoise waters of Lake Gjende and the dark blue waters of Bessvatnet - truly awe-inspiring natural beauty. 

The Besseggen Ridge, just prior to the rock scrambling descent

If you would like to know more details about the Besseggen Ridge hike, you can learn more here:  https://outtt.com/en/adventures/934/besseggen-ridge
(In general outtt.com is a great place to plan any outdoor adventures in Norway - definitely recommend it!)

After hiking for about 9 miles we descended to the hytte, Memurubu. While not our first hytte (see the full hytte list at the end of this post for more information), it was the first full-service hytte we stayed in. The Norwegian Trekking Association (DNT) operates three types of hytter: full-service, self-service, and no-service cabins.

• Full-service cabins are staffed and serve breakfast and dinner for a small fee. They usually have some form of electricity and showers. 
• As described on the DNT's website, self-service cabins "are equipped with all that trekkers need for cooking and sleeping." This includes firewood, a gas stove for cooking, utensils, beds with (minimal) mattresses, AND a room stocked with provisions - stuff like coffee, tea, crackers, soup, chocolate, etc. Trekkers are mostly expected to look after themselves - "fetch water, cook food, wash up, and chop wood."
• No-service cabins are basically the same as self-service cabins, but they don't have any provisions/food; trekkers are expected to provide food for themselves (or fish, hunt reindeer, etc... you know - that kind of stuff)

Memurubu is actually a private full-service hytte that isn't part of the DNT system... and it was packed! So many little Norwegian children running around. It's difficult to describe the atmosphere of this type of hytte because it doesn't really have that many parallels in the United States. I would say it falls somewhere between a ski lodge, a hostel, and an old time inn. It's nowhere near as fancy or commercial as a ski lodge - shared bathrooms, no flushing toilets, no luxury amenities, no cell phone service.  At the same time, Memurubu felt very different from a hostel because the wide range of demographics that were present - whole families with young children, seniors, young couples, groups of teenagers... Within the cabin there was a really lovely community feeling. Older folk reading books by the fire. Middle-aged adults drinking beers out of big mugs and gossiping - occasionally stopping to scold a child for being too rowdy. The younger children ran around in big packs, laughing and playing games. A group of five was playing Yahtzee, gazing at the tumbling dice with bated breath before letting out excited shrieks. One little girl sat alone in the corner, quietly coloring in a coloring book. The teens and young adults took the most advantage of the beautiful setting of the cabin, spending their time outside climbing on rocks or going on day hikes. No one was on their cell phone. No adults were working on laptops. And there were actually very few tourists - almost everyone was speaking Norwegian. Stepping into Memurubu was like stepping back in time to an era when life was simpler and more family-oriented - slower-paced and strangely peaceful (even with all the screaming children). A one night stay at Memurubu is a very affordable $30...

The architecture of Memurubu enforces the mingling of its inhabitants. Individual rooms usually have 4 to 8 bunks and are utilitarian and austere. The community rooms are big and open with higher ceilings and bigger windows that let in more light. There is a big dining room with long communal tables. Naturally everyone flocks to these spaces. These spatial strategies are common in the full-service hytter. While it was interesting to experience this type of cabin, my research will mostly focus on self-service and no-service cabins. I am hoping that these cabins, by virtue of being unstaffed and largely unmaintained, will be better places for the accumulation of stories: objects left behind, notes, etc.

The Living Room in Memurubu

dinner time!

Through the Svartdalen Valley

After another day of hiking in the mountains alongs Lake Gjende, we turned South to head through the Svartdalen Valley. We were alone - not another human in sight - for nearly the entire hike. The trail paralleled a stream (and the occasional lake) as it wound through a linear valley bound on its long sides by snow-dusted mountains.

Svartdalen Valley

After making our way through the valley, we descended down to the shore of Lake Bygdin, the picturesque setting of the self-service hytte Torfinnsbu.

The approach to Torfinnsbu

Torfinnsbu consists of a collection of lakeside buildings - the main cabin which features a sitting room, dining room, and three sleeping rooms with multiple bunks; a standalone cabin with additional lodging; an outhouse; a shed for firewood and waste storage; a cabin for anyone staying with a dog; and a separate living quarters for the two people who look after the cabin and spend a good amount of time there. The exterior of each structure is painted black with electric blue trim/details. Instead of explaining the spaces through words, I've included a series of pictures that I hope provides a better idea of the experience of being inside Torfinnsbu:

upon exiting the mud room, you come to a small kitchen
complete with wood stove and drying rack above

the dining room (notice the roof support structure and columns that
come down to make the "large" space possible - pretty atypical for hytter)

the sitting room, complete with old dusty Norwegian books; dim and cozy

the food pantry! you keep track of what you use, note it
on a form, and pay later (typical of a self-service DNT cabin)

our bedroom

quite the view : )

lots of interesting old furniture like this corner chair. Also notice
the guitar in the background - just on the wall, waiting to be played...

there were multiple additional communal spaces outdoors;
this corner bench is particularly great for putting on / taking off gear

typical hytte construction - the wood never touches the ground,
it is held above by a foundation made of stacked stones

the shower, outdoor and directly fed by the (ice cold) mountain stream 

Torfinnsbu was so clean and charming that it was easy to imagine it as an expensive Airbnb. But once again, the vibe is different. It's more about the outdoors. People don't really stay there - they just stop through as part of longer adventures. Also there is a feeling of collective ownership; it is your duty as the occupant to leave the hytte as clean as you found it, and people seem to take that duty very seriously. The whole system of self- and no-service hytter relies on that assumption. I couldn't help but wonder if something similar would work in America (especially at such a low cost), or if it would get abused...

For my research, I had initially planned on leaving books in various hytter with the prompt "Leave a message, tell a story," and coming back to collect them after a few months to see what people wrote. But at Torfinnsbu (and at pretty much every hytte) they already have a similar system in place called the "Hyttebok." This was a super exciting discovery for me! Torfinnsbu's Hyttebok was pretty new, but some of the others I have found since have entries that are almost 100 years old! The vast majority of entries are in Norwegian, so I have taken pictures of a lot of entries and plan to translate them later.

The Torfinnsbu Hyttebok

Some of my favorite entries from the Torfinnsbu Hyttebok:

"Hi! We are a group of 4 friends who love nature, mountains, and snow. We are an international team from New Zealand, Germany, the Phillipines, and France who gathered for the Easter holiday for a cross-country skiing tour... When we finally reached the cabin we were welcomed by the keeper, very friendly, who was chilling in a chair under a quilt, reading a book, with a classical music tune!"

"Thanks to the quite shitty weather we appreciated the warm living room upon arrival even more! Here we go again into the storm : )    Still, it is a very lovely place."

"Used the special DNT key to access. Sipped whiskey on lake ice... Just 4 Brits. Not a sound at night. Paradise."

The hyttebok imbues the cabin with the life of its previous inhabitants. Flipping through the entries, it's easy to imagine a whole collection of characters sitting alongside you telling stories by the fire. While the carefully crafted communal spaces connect people by gathering them in one place, the hyttebok connects people across time - it's an amazing record of past occupants and their stories.

Note: I have made quite a few rough sketches of site plans, cabin plans, and some unique details. I hope to polish some of those up a bit and include them in future posts - stay tuned! The plan is to have a standardized set of drawings for each hytte I stay in: a site plan, building plan, entry elevation, sketches of emblematic details, and rubbings of the exterior texture.

For now - here's a sketch of the entry elevation of the main cabin at Torfinnsbu!

LEARN NORWEGIAN:
fjell = mountain
(fyell)
elv = river
(elv)
innsjø = lake
(in-shuh)


HYTTE COUNT:  4
Svartsgokoia https://ut.no/hytte/101378/svartskogkoia (stayed here on the way to Jotunheimen)
Memurubu
Gjendebu https://ut.no/hytte/10581/gjendebu (DNT's oldest tourist lodge, constructed in 1871)
Torfinnsbu https://ut.no/hytte/10915/torfinnsbu