Jane had showed me on a Zoom call the other day our Jotul stove all cleaned from its exertions last Winter. It has seen its first season. Sam had cleaned the glass with newspaper and cold water and the stone slab base had been cleaned and oiled with linseed.
It reminded me that I have not reported on my latest and rather specialised reading. I guess you could call it "log porn". I discovered Lars talking on a podcast called the
Art of Manliness (a slightly off putting name but a cracking podcast covering an eclectic mix of well...manly topics curated and hosted by Brett McKay). The interview about his book "Norwegian Wood" started with a lovely story about the author watching his elderly neighbour struggling to build his log pile piece by piece. It turned out the neighbour was ill and he was laying down the fuel for the next Winter that he possibly would not see himself. The woodpile was the last he would build for his wife of fifty years.
The book works through, in fine Scandinavian detail, how you should chop or source, stack and season and finally burn your wood to give heat to your home. I'm in I thought - this is my type of read. It is the most beautiful book and if you have a stove or a few logs I think it is a must buy. I had no idea how beautiful woodpiles can be. I knew I was hankering after some ideal and here it is writ large by Norwegian nuns of all people at a convent.
So a woodpile can clearly be beautiful and a feature in its own right. They say a mouse should be able to run clean through a pile and explore it if it is to dry and season properly.
The book is both full of beautiful artistic pictures and deeply technical. I learned recently that Ash will burn hot and also burn green which has made me happy because we have quite a stack of it building up. Below the type of wood physics you can pour over when deciding which tree to fell in the depths of February,
It would not be a book for boys without some tool fetishism. I have to say I am doing quite well or was until the giant blonde one as he now is splintered the handle of my beautiful antique axe. He has a habit of breaking my tools. I note the handy device attached to the chainsaw bar below for keeping your logs of an even length - tidy !
Of course when it comes to axes one is not going to do - the book explains in full detail why you will need a minimum of 7 axes dependant on... well I haven't got that far yet but clearly an axe for all seasons will be needed.
There are plenty of discussions with the sort of Scandanavian men we should all aspire to become. Lean, super fit seventy something ex-Vikings who hew, chop and create well ... loads of beautiful wood piles everywhere they go. I am sold. This is part of my future self.
I guess it is a romantic notion but at the heart of it is a deeply practical and visceral one. Providing warmth for the Winter for your home is part of being a well seasoned man.
I have signed up - I did not even realise what I was signing up for but the door is ajar to a world I barely knew existed. The feeling was always resonating with me from the moment I set foot in Oaklands as you can see from my own pictures below. I knew there was something I was hankering after and then I remembered the interview with Lars Mytting. The book has sold getting on for a million copies I believe and is now in dozens of languages - you read a translation in the English. It is a cultural Scandanavian book.
I have an inspirational book now to guide me on this strange new journey. Hopefully in a year of two I can show off my truly beautiful woodpile. Everything should be useful and beautiful - including the wood we surround ourselves with for Winter fuel. No more messy piles. Its time to become Norwegian.
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