Cabin fever
Scandinavians are famous for holidaying in simple cabins. Scotland has much in common with its neighbours, so why has hutting never caught on? Lesley Riddoch gives a rallying cry for hutting
It was pitch dark and -18°C with the Northern Lights pulsing overhead as we loaded the snow mobiles with provisions, headtorches aglow, before heading across the glistening snow towards the Arctic hytte (hut) community of Skaidi in Norway.
Every weekend across the Nordic nations, families head for their wooden huts in the countryside. Some are large and luxurious, but the majority are modest, self-built, without running water or an indoor loo and often without electricity. So what’s the big attraction? Surveys show it’s partly the opportunity for endless small adventures in nature, but mostly the deep, relaxed reconnection with family and friends that can only happen when the stressful world of work is literally miles away.
Norway’s northernmost county of Troms og Finnmark probably has the world’s highest rate of hut ownership. Most intensive use occurs during winter, when a metre of snow and sub-zero temperatures make frozen ground, lochs and fjords easier to cross by ski and snowmobile. While citybound Scots hunker down, stay indoors and dread the darkness,
Norwegians long for the first snow, when huts become mini base camps for indoor relaxation and outdoor activities, such as cross-country skiing and ice-fishing.
My friend Inger Lise Svendsen and her husband Christian live in Arctic Hammerfest and, between them, their extended family owns a whopping seven huts. Two hytter – a convenient hour’s drive from Hammerfest – are used for weekend jaunts. Several more-remote family homes, that were built by great-grandparents and are now owned jointly by siblings, are used for Easter, summer and special occasions. When I raised an eyebrow at hearing this, the Svendsens became curious. “So where does your whole family gather for Easter, or weddings and funerals?” they asked.
Ahem. The truth is that in hut-less Britain, special occasions and family gatherings usually mean BBQs in crowded back gardens or rented space in anonymous hotels. We meet, greet, chat (a bit), pay (a lot) and then go our separate ways. I believe Norwegians have a better way of reconnecting because they have an ideal place to do it in: a holiday home that needs no booking or deposit and doesn’t change to accommodate new family or new jobs. Home is where the hytte is, say the Norwegians.
Across the wooded latitudes Scotland shares it’s the same story. Stuga, mökki, sommerhus, dacha, hytte and cabins – low-impact weekend huts are common everywhere at wooded latitudes, from Canada through the Nordic/Baltic states to Russia and even New Zealand in the southern hemisphere. Everywhere you find trees, you find wooden huts.
Except in Scotland. In Norway, there are almost 500,000 wooden huts, which is roughly one per 10 Norwegians. In Scotland there are fewer than 600 wooden huts – one per 8,035 Scots.
WHO OWNS THE LAND?
Why the big difference between these North Sea cousins? Put simply, the vast difference is access to land. In Norway, feudalism never really happened and there are tens of thousands of landowners – mostly local farmers who are easy to contact and happy to sell small parcels of land. In Britain, it’s very different. Half of England is owned by just 0.04% of the population; in Scotland the number of landowners is even smaller. This land scarcity puts a very high price on the rare pockets of land that become available – too high for working families to afford.
But for one short period in our history things were different, and that’s when most existing hut sites began in the UK. After the First World War, land values crashed, soldiers
returning from the trenches were determined to build better lives and the British Government raised taxes on land, prompting the break-up of large sporting estates.
Roughly one-fifth of Scotland and a quarter of England changed hands between 1918 and 1921. Some was bought by farmers happy to diversify into chicken farms, market gardening and huts. Seton Sands – near Edinburgh and once Scotland’s largest hut site – began in 1922 when Boys Brigade members asked agricultural lecturer and farmer William Bruce for permission to camp on his land. Others applied, land was cleared and family huts soon followed. Barry Downs – the hutting site near Carnoustie on the North Sea coast – probably inspired the “but ’n’ ben” holiday cottage owned by famous cartoon family, the Broons. Barry Downs was established in 1939, months after the Holidays with Pay Act 1938.
During the interwar years, enterprising Scots squeezed themselves into marginal bits of land at Soonhope, Carlops, Lendalfoot, Cloch, Rascarrel, Glen Devon, Eddleston, Dunbar and Carbeth, 12 miles north of Glasgow – Scotland’s largest remaining hutting site.
It was the same story in the “plotlands”, a large area of tiny subdivided hut sites around London which peaked in the 1920s, before growth was abruptly halted by 1947’s Town and Country Planning Act.
The act raised building standards far beyond anything makeshift huts could ever reach, introduced a presumption against development in the countryside and gave powers of compulsory purchase to councils. Basildon was once entirely a hutting community; by the end of the 1950s, hardly a hut was left.
But even at their peak, Britain’s hut sites catered for only about 10,000 people. Most British families became day-trippers or packaged tourists – first in Butlins, later in foreign package holiday destinations. Of course, Scots do have youth hostels across the country, but Norway has more of them, plus more boats, mountain huts and even more caravans.
So, while Norwegians were building, repairing, enjoying and bequeathing their own family huts in beautiful individual locations, British hutters were restricted to fairly crowded hut sites that lacked basic facilities and became rundown and vandalised, or converted into caravan sites. Once again, the big difference was land ownership – 80% of Norwegians own their hut sites and can invest time and money in their propertywith total security. In contrast, 80% of Scots can only rent their hut sites and thus face rent rises and eviction, no matter how much love and effort has been poured in to the building and the land. Who wants to face such a predicament?
Yet the lack of a mainstream hutting habit means it’s easier for folk to get ‘out of their heads’ than out of the city, and it seems that chemical not natural highs are now the norm for ‘nature-averse’ city kids. This has to change.
A BETTER FUTURE
With coronavirus restrictions gradually easing, the best reward the Government can give is a green light for hutting, so stressed citizens can build back differently and share the Nordic delight of weekends away from the rat race, immersed in nature. Of course, basic hut-building skills will have to be taught and shared. Woodland owned by councils, landowners and forest agencies will need pilot sites, linked with city community projects, so those on low incomes aren’t forgotten and there is collective responsibility for all the new hut sites.
Hutting is still on the increase across northern Europe, and despite the difficulties, waiting lists in the UK are full. So, one century after Britain’s first hut sites were founded, maybe it’s finally time to get back to the future.
“Basildon was once a hutting community; by the end of the 1950s, hardly a hut was left”