Norwegian Wood 2006

Kjell Eriksmoen arranged another excellent field trip outside of Trondheim. His neighbor, Arne, was our unofficial tour guide for the day. As a result of not inheriting a cabinet which he was particularly admired, Arne has become an expert on a local style of carved wooden cabinets, Orkdalskap. Orkanger is southwest of Trondheim by about half and hour by car. First we went to an old hotel near Orkanger, Bordshaug. There is one particular room in this hotel, once a private residence, that was commissioned and built around 1904. The wood panneling and cabinets that line the room are intricately carved in this local style, a verion of the Norwegian accanthus carving that I learned about in Lillehammer.
After visiting the hotel, we went to visit a local wood carved-furniture maker who has continued with this style. Mr. B. Kvåle is about 80 years old and says he has been in the woodshop everyday since he was 15 years old (so he knows what he is doing!). He has learned woodworking in the most traditional way, passed from father to son with no formal woodworking schools. Mr. Kvåle showed me an old photo of a group of men. It was a class photo from a very short course in woodworking, and both his father and grandfather were in the picture. He has passed this unique craft along to his own son, Olav. Olaf was at the house when we were there, and we were going to see him at his place later in the day.
In the meantime, Kjell, Arne, and I proceeded to visit another woodworker, Kjell Fannrem. Kjell has made all of the furniture in his house, including some variations on traditional Norwegian tall cabinets that are decorated with a mosaic/inlay of cross-sections of yew branches rather than with traditional carving. Kjell says that this embellishment took as long as the cabinet itself. Most of what Kjell does is making small boxes and baskets using traditional bentwood and sveiping, that is the stiching with birch roots that I first learned about in Voss. He is able to sell these at a local market that allows only local items made by hand. Kjell demonstrated sveiping to us and let me have a short length of birch root to play with back in the shop. To get the birch root myself I would have to go to a bog in the spring and dig it up.
After this visit, we went out of the town and up in to the mountains to find Olav Kvåle. Olav met us at the bottom of his steep and rough gravel road, where we transferred into his jeep. Olav is living a woodsman´s life in the forest. On the property, which has been in the family since around 1875, there are several small lafted cabins. The main house has been there for many years, and his parents always used it as a summer cabin, but since Olav moved up there in 1975, he has bought some other lafted cabins from other places and put them on the property. He says that it only takes about 3 hours to disassemble a lafted cabin, and about one day to reassemble it.
Olav is doing all of his carving in this place using hand tools and a little bit of router work. He has a small hydro and some solar pannels giving him power. Right now, he goes down to his father´s shop to use the machines for building the cabinets, but he is installing a generator so that he can eventually move the machines up to this mountain property. When there is snow, he is skiing in and out of the property. Olav lives by himself but often has guests and takes interns for several weeks at a time. Olav may well be the only person continuing to make this Orkdalskap right now. He has trained one German woman, and another from the Midwetern United States. Hopefully more woodworkers will visit him and carry on this tradition.
We had a very good afternoon relaxing with the Kvåles in the main house. I had some Norwegian moonshine in my coffee, the preferred mix. The moonshine is kept in a jug in the case of the grandfather clock for full effect.