In our work on hytter, we have often heard of the important role they have played in times of crisis. From early on, many hytter were used as a base for gathering food – either as hunting or fishing lodges or as places to gather berries and fungi for drying, or preserving and storing for the winter. In this, they follow a longstanding agricultural tradition of using mountain and forest regions as seasonal resources. But another set of tales tells of less regular events, of how people fled cities during the World Wars, for example, and sought refuge in hytter. The last major crisis in Norway was the invasion in April 1940, when exactly this took place. Those who had a place in the countryside, either at a hytte or with family, packed up and left the cities. Families in Oslo who had a hytte crammed as many people as they could into the rooms they had there, and stayed, sometimes for many weeks to be as far from the bombs as possible. Famously, of course, some hytter were also used by the resistance (the ‘Heroes of Telemark’ being the best known), while some hytter across the country were also taken over, destroyed or even moved by the occupying forces, particularly in the North.
Some of the reasons why people were first urged not to, and then officially refused permission to move to their hytter included the fact that hytter might bring together different households who might infect one another, that people travel long distances to hytter in remote low-populated areas thus far uninfected, and risk bringing the infection with them, that hytte-districts often have very limited health facilities and can be difficult to access in the event of emergencies, and that hytte-activities (particularly things like skiing) bring health risks that the health services would be pushed to manage in the circumstances.
It surely didn’t help when it emerged that a group of 3 men with the virus travelled several hours to a hytte, stopping on the way at service stations and hardware stores, spreading the infection all along the way. So despite the idea that the hytte is a place of safety and isolation, it soon became apparent that it was not a good response to the pandemic.
Whether or not it is, in fact, helpful for infection-avoidance to remove to the hytte – whether the hytte is a place of safety in a crisis, or whether fleeing the city spreads the risk, it was soon clear that there were worlds and beliefs in conflict. The commitment to individualist self-sufficiency remains a strong shared value in Norway, one that remains and is, in fact, reinforced by the solid welfare state that enhances the notion of individual autonomy in a fellowship of equals. Unemployment and sickness benefits and health services are still largely taken for granted despite the many shocks to the systems in recent years. But they remain solid enough that the tension between autonomy and dependency can be managed, with the welfare state to fall back on.
The Covid crisis, and the confusing message about hytter suddenly brought this tension into focus. When the prohibition on hytte-visits was repealed in May, it also revealed another set of tensions, how the relationship between hytte-owners and local communities had been hurt. Hytte-owners who may have imagined themselves at home with the residential communities near their hytte, or whose families had been in contact for generations, suddenly felt rejected. Some wrote to the papers arguing that their investment had kept those local communities going, and complained that they were now being turned away. While local residents shook their heads and asked, ‘don’t you realise that you’re putting us in danger by coming here?’
Such tensions have started to resolve, however, as both sides recognise the mutual benefit they can offer one another, with some hytte-districts setting up neighbourhood-watch style groups to keep an eye on empty hytter, and hytte-owners write to local media to explain that of course they’ll keep away until it’s safe, and looking forward to their return, a return that in the end pretty much missed the skiing season, but saw the arrival of summer weather.
Overall, this crisis revealed how deeply the notion of self-sufficiency and the hytte as a refuge is held. If it was barely recognised in the initial plan for crisis-management, that does not alter the fact that there are nearly half a million hytter in a country of two and a half million buildings1. And these carry strong feelings, not all of which can be reconciled.
1. https://www.ssb.no/bygg-bolig-og-eiendom/faktaside/hytter-og-ferieboliger