Norwegian Wood 2006

After 11 hours on the Hurtigruten, we arrived in Finnsnes and took a bus to Målselv to visit one of Norway´s experts on traditional woodcraft, Roald Renmælmo. Siv, Roald´s girlfriend who is also expert in traditional woodcraft, picked us up from the bus and took us to the property in the woods. Roald has been working with the NHU to preserve and document different types of woodworking traditions in Norway, including the making of a particular old type of reindeer sled called a pulk. Roald had the pulk that Nils Nilsen Anti had just made as part of this documentation project, so I was able to look closely at the pulk. (Nils is in his 80´s and is probably the last living Sami pulkmaker, but I will tell you all about him in a later entry.) When we arrived, Roald, Siv, and Siv´s brother had just spent nearly 2 weeks stripping birch bark off the birch trees and stacking it in flat sheets to store it. They had filled a whole shed with birch bark. There is only about one month in the year when the birch bark is loose on the tree, and this is when it must be harvested. A vertical slice is made through the bark with the knife, and then cuts are made all the way around the tree at the top and bottom of this slice, so the sleeve of bark is unpeeled in a square sheet. The bark is used to make some small items like baskets, but the big use for Siv and Roald is in constructing tradidtional sod roofs on traditional wood houses. The birch bark is the waterproofing layer that goes between the roof planks and the sod. It is incredibly effective. Roald and Siv have taken apart roofs and found that after 100 or more years, the uppermost layer of bark may be weathered, but the next layer of bark is as good as new.
Roald knows an incredible amount about working with an axe to cut and shape wood for cabins. He is extremely knowledgable in most of these old tools actually. I bored a few holes using a few of Roald´s old tapered auger twist drills, or "navar". These simple, T-shaped, hand-driven augers are typical in old norsk woodcraft, and some were even found on the Oseberg ship excavation so they were over 1000 years old. Roald prefers the navar to crank drills because they are so fast and simple. He has found the one and only blacksmith who is still making navar, Johannas Fosse.
Into these holes, one would drive a wooden peg or nail. This is called "nagling". Using a knife, a nail is cut from pine. It should be the heartwood of the pine, from the lowest meter of the tree so it has more give and won´t crack. The nail is driven into the hole and out the other side. The point of the nail is then split with the knife, and a tapered piece of wood is driven into the endo to the nail, wedging it open in the hole. Both sides can be sawn off clean. In the next week I would be going to visit the pulkmaker Nils Nilsen Anti, who is a master of this nagling, so I was glad to have a preview.
The next tools to try were the axes, so Roald set up a big log for me to hack away. Roald demonstrated how clean and straight he could cut the face of the log with his axe technique, and it looked very easy. I was ready to get rid of my machines and get a few axes until my turn. I was not so coordinated and it was very hard work. There is a video of me doing this that must be destroyed. I need some more practice. Still, it is amazing how much one can do with only an axe and a knife, and how quickly it can be done too. It makes machines seem too fussy.
Terri and I stayed all day and overnight with Siv and Roald and had a great time.