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Quite instantly the detector picked up on something in the ground. With barely any roots or rocks the ground opened up easily and presented to me a small dumping pit. Leaning towards the sidewall of the hole was a triangular vehicle pennant made from a celluloid covered metal frame. Inside it was a hint of cloth left. Imagine having found it fifteen - twenty years ago, the flag would probably still be recognizable.

Some relics came out together with the stones. A pair of Maskenbrillen, a primus, a rifle cleaning kit, a pair of tent pegs and a five kilo weight. Broken bits of porcelain plates and an intact, but sooted civillian tea cup hinted that better and more interesting stuff could have survived. A little deeper underground I thought I found several TNT blocks. They had the same shape, size and color, but I spotted the logo of a well known norwegian soap maker on one of them.

For once the weather was sunny, but it wasn`t that warm, only 13-13 Celsius. Enough to get the insects interested once I had worked up a sweat. The Nokta showed me a good signal and I believed I was off to a great start with an Edelweiss badge, but as soon as I got the small item out from the soil I saw it wasn`t the gebirgsjäger badge. It had similar size and shape,and was of same type of alloy, but the badge ( if that is what it is ) was in form of a pine branch with two pi

In one part of the camp I had many small aluminum signals, so I hoped for a bunch of tags. Instead they were tiny bits from some kind of trench-art production. A few of the bits had patterns or letters engraved. Like if the artist had done tests before applying it to his project. A brass signal stood out in that spot and I let out a ghasp when I dug it out.

In the early days of the week I went out to cross a few spots off my list. On the end of a long day searching on the end of last season I had picked up a few interesting signals that I suspected could be dumping pits. I made a note of them in my notebook until now when I found the time to go back there. I was eager to check what could be hiding underground there so I wasn`t discouraged by the watery clouds hanging just above the roof of my car

The following day the rain came in sideways but I had to get out there to try find at least one treasure, and I had to test my new boots. For the last ten years I have been on my second pair of M77 boots from the Norwegian Army, but lately they had been taking in water faster than a torpedoed convoy ship. The last time I wore them on a wet day my feet were soaked within the first ten minutes. My new footwear was a pair of Haix boots with the fancy name Black Eagle Athletic

Three meters away from the Blendax pit I struck upon another little garbage dump. This one was filled with broken glass from bottles and windows. Tons of it. But also a few other relics. It had the third rifle cleaning kit of the day, another gas mask canister, a very interesting bottle I have never seen before, a half rotted K98 ammo pouch and a pair of goggles. And a to me very interesting find.

Last summer we had localized a slope full of garbage. An old landfill with German stuff from the large camp on the bottom and gradually more modern stuff up until the early nineties had been dumped on the top. A slope one can read like a history book. It was our plan to open up a section of this slope, but as we were walking around with the detectors warming up on some single signals Baard discovered a large burn site full of relics just below the vegetation.

I had begun walking back to the base camp to collect my stuff and go home when I dug a good signal. It was a fragment of a Nahkampfspange! The needle was twisted, so force had been used to break it in parts. I spent the next hour trawling the spot, piling any finds onto a rock so as to not dig them twice, but the rest of the badge was nowhere to be found.

Most of this week the weather was wet and nasty and I had to work a bit, so the only summery day I spent searching in the gebirgsjäger camp. I usually dig on most of the beeps given by the metal detector, and have found many treasures checking bad signals, it is an exhausting strategy though. Having found so many erkennungsmarken on my last searches I decided to go exclusively after good ones on this trip.

A little bit later the detector presented me with another strong and good signal. I cut open a piece of the ground and made eyecontact with half of an Erkennunksmarke. That was a surprise! It was dirty and looked a bit deteriorated so I couldn`t read it other than that I could spell `Geb`. I stuck the pinpointer into the ground and

Signals everywhere. Crate parts, creamtubes and food tins seemed to litter the place, but the best find I had before my allotted time for detecting was up I spotted with my eyes even before the detector came near it. A metal pipe stuck out from the ground near the edge of the marsh. I grabbed it and pulled it straight out. A rifle!

Another hour went by with nothing to show for before the Fisher again found a good signal. This time it was something under a line of three medium sized birchtrees, so I got to use the saw for a while getting through the horizontal fence made of roots. Here were the best finds of the day. First I pulled out a Finnish knife, the Pukko. It was in great condition, still sharp even! Toghether with it were a few German coins, a small medical bottle and a Göffel with a name engra

The first signal the Fisher F5 picked up was a helmet! It was even visible as part of the back rim was sticking out of the ground by several inches. I got it out of the ground and shook out the soil that had accumulated inside it through the decades. In the helmet-shaped mass of soil and roots I could see parts of the leather and aluminum liner, but most of that had rotted away, only the chin strap was still intact.

I had to scoop out a ten centimeter layer of gravel, and on a meters depth I found what I belived was the corner of a crate. I knew it would take at least another hour of work freeing the box, so I took a short break for lunch and refreshed my energy. The box was about a meter long, and when I finally managed to wriggle it loose and get it to the surface I felt it was something inside it.

On wednesday morning it was nice and sunny so I got ready to go searching, so very early I drove off towards a piece of land that had come up during research. A small Gebirgsjäger unit had supposedly camped up there for several months and I wanted to see if they had left anything behind. I found the place marked on the map and went in between the trees letting the metal detector lead the way.

Today it is Winter Solstice and the Yuletide is upon us again. Here in the house of HobbyHistorica it will be a calm and cozy celebration. I have a couple of weeks more or less off work, and am planning to use some of these days to catch up on some diorama making since the nice and snowy holiday weather seems to have been replaced with a grey sky, warm and rainy days, so I guess I can forget about any skiing.

A signal from the detector had me opening up the vegetation and soil, and I found a small fire pit. It had mostly rubbish of course, but I picked out a couple of Finnish coins, a 10 pfennig coin, a candle holder, a brass ring, a nail file and a compass, so not a bad start.

I got the box to the surface and it was of the type that had held optical sights for machineguns. And it was heavy. I gently used my blade to open it, hoping the sight would have survived, coz the box was pretty rusted and had probably been cooked in the fire.

When we got to the large square pit, I swept the detector around the edge of a corner of it, and got a good signal. It was coins. A relatively large spill with 19 coins. Mostly German 5- and 10 pfennigs, but with a few Finnish coins mixed in. None in very good condition.