Well, well, well, guess where I spent the day...yup, in the woods. I had to get back there to check if I had any more luck regarding the parts and tools I found yesterday. When I got into the car it was a bit grey and fresh weather, but having parked and getting ready to stroll the skies cleared up and the sun shone down on me and it quickly became a very warm day. I moved towards the ditch I had found the waffenmeister box in and picked up a few things on the way. First I found a single spurr and then a spoon and a göffel and several Blendax tubes. Together with a rifle cleaning kit were nine small porcelain jars for skin cream and a few perfume- and ink bottles. 
Sweeping the detector around the area where the backfilled waffenmeister ditch was gave off lots of signals, so after some crawling around on the ground with the pinpointer and bayonet I found several more tools and firing pins, and the last signal I had there was a MGg wrench! Super finds really..
 It wasn`t even lunchtime yet so I continued deeper into the forest, opening up the ground now and then to see if I had discovered a treasure. For a moment I thought I had found another silver item but it was a nickle plated box with lids on both sides. On one side it was engraved "Patent" and on the other lid some kind of monogram, and the next find was a brass fork.
 By lunch I hadn`t found any more relics worth saving so I had a rest and decided to check in another direction, towards the mountain. The area I moved into now had been well used by NATO forces exercising coz I found lots of the red plastic training ammo, 9mm, 7.92 and .50 plus  quite the amount of foil from the food and snack rations, which I picked up to dispose of in the garbage which the Army should have done in the first place. It was clear that I was still in the German camp coz here and there a rusted and broken triangular barrack oven laid half overgrown and I could see dugouts and building foundations. In front of a dugout was a short ditch with a great signal. I dug it open and picked up two old coke cans, but I stuck the pinpointer down there and it was still some metal there. I removed rocks, roots and soil and checked again with my hand. I didn`t really dare to believe what I felt, but it was the rim of a helmet!! I thought I had found my fair share of helmets already so this was unexpected!! I got it to the surface and it looked really good. A little cleaning and this will have 90% or more color left. The liner was gone though.
The ditch still gave off signals so I opened up the other end of it. Now I really thought someone was messing with me and stood up to look around to see if some friends were hiding behind trees to have a laugh, irrational, I know.. I had my hands on another helmet rim!! I pulled it out from the soil and it also looked really good. Prehaps a tad more rusted than the first one, but who cares??its a helmet! This one was also lacking the liner. I dug through the rest of the ditch but it was only food tins and some horseshoes left down there.
The next few hours I moved around checking signals given by the detector, sat down looking at a bird who was messing around with its nest, found a frozen dumping pit for another day and dug up 6 or 7 signal flares. 
At some point I got tired and hungry but I had eaten all my food and was out of water so turned my nose toward the car again. On my way out I only dug two signals, both were fired caliber 50 bullets, which will probably make some decent keyrings.
I have been searching and digging between 7 and 10 hours daily for more than a week now so tomorrow I am gonna rest but hopefully I am back searching on Saturday.. until then, Keep Smiling and stay muddy :)
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My lunch-view :) 

While detecting my way through the forest next to an old road I met an older fellow who was interested in what I was doing, and in WW2 history in general, and he sent me in another direction than the one I was headed. He meant I would have far better results "over there". I took his advice and began my stroll through the moose infested woods. It was quiet from the detector for the longest time but suddenly it began giving off signals again and I saw a whole lot of dugouts in a slope and the forest below it. A few horseshoes hanging on a branch told about other searchers being here before me, I could see that on some backfilled dumping pits also, so prehaps the old fellow had been sending other diggers here as well :D I found an untouched short ditch with a lot of signals and began digging it. German bottles and food tins were the first items to see the daylight again, and then some toothbrushes and "Blendax" toothpaste tubes. It took a few hours to go through the ditch while building a small pile of finds. Here was a few gaming pieces, a coin, karbid lamps, a Juwel primus, a silver fork, tent peg and a M24 potatomasher head, rusted but empty, maybe it ll clean up good.
When I had filled back the ditch I didn`t go very far before I had a good signal again. This time it was a gasmask container, still with mask inside. Then I found a PUMA close combat knife, with sheet and the wooden grips!! I dug up a bunch of signal flares all together under the moss and next to them some food tins that hid an unmarked porcelain cup and a clay schnapps bottle. The day had become warm and sunny by now and I only had a half full backpack so I had a quick lunchbreak, sitting by the river looking at the birds flying around before I continued. 
After some boring rusted food tins I dug up a small tag with "Bella" and some numbers on it, maybe a horse or dog name tag, and then I found another little dumping pit. First I pulled out wires and nails, and broken bottles, before I realized I was cleaning soil off a metal box. The lid was open so if anything was inside it, it could very well be ruined. I carefully opened the lid and gasped.. jawdropping.. The box seemed to be full of Mg34 parts and tools!! I struggled with it for a while before I got it out from the ditch, managing to loose its lid in the process. The thing was really heavy! When I had taken a breather I started dragging it with me back to the car, which was faaar away of course. It took quite some effort, but dripping wet from sweat I got it into the van and drove home as fast as the wheels could spin.
On the lawn I emptied the box and sorted the finds. Definately a Waffenmeister crate with a lot of really interesting bits, most of them rusted and some caked in rocks and soil but some cleaning will make them presentable for an exhibition. This is one of the craziest finds I have had and something I have dreamt about finding... it seems some dreams come true sometimes :)
Now I need a good long night rest before Im heading back out to the forest again tomorrow :)

After the weekend where I was digging while the Girlfriend working she was ready for an airing yesterday, so we prepared tea and some food and went out to the forests together. We stopped in one of the Gebirgsjäger camps and walked to a few of the building remains. Here I began opening up a dumping ditch while she strolled off between the trees towards the river. When she returned I had dug half the ditch, and given up on the rest of it where a large cast iron oven was still held in a firm frozen grip by the black forest soil. In the part I had dug I had found two items which really "saved the day", a small porcelain jar and a porcelain toothbrush holder, with Luftwaffe markings!! Next to the ditch I found a car wheel.
On her stroll the Girlfriend had discovered several very interesting sites and excited she dragged me along to some pits filled with rust and several dugouts and barracks and hut foundations, she really is a keeper:) In the rustpit I spotted the top of a German fuel barrel, marked with "Krafstoff.Feuergefarlich.Heer" which I collected and attached to my backpack. Next we searched across a little section where hundreds of bottles had been smashed and broken. Not my favorite place as those sharp shards easily cuts through gloves and clothes but we found a Notek light, two tent pegs and a K98 ammo pouch. Not far away we sat down for lunch and just in front of us I spotted a broken porcelain bowl sticking out from the moss. I opened up the ground and found a dumping pit with some broken porcelain, a few rusted spoons and food tins but it was still frozen so it has to wait for another day to be dug, when I covered it back up a gaming piece and a bakelite fuze protector for the M39 egg grenade fell out from the moss.
After a few more hours of searching with no finds we headed back home to relax with a good homemade dinner.
 This morning she had to go to work so I got up with her and soon after she had left I skipped town and went out to the camps again. I wanted to check out a couple of places and spent half the day searching. I found the places I was looking for and several interesting looking dumping pits for digging this summer. On my way through the forest I dug out two more fuel barrel tops, one from Shell, and one from Wehrmacht. Under the wehrmacht top was a tiny dumping pit holding some perfume bottles, zeltbahn buttons, three toothbrushes (glad I have the toothbrush holder from Luftwaffe now) some cream and toothpaste tubes and a small ashtray with some tourist motive from outside Narvik. After digging a lot of junk I found another shallow ditch with some relics. In this one I found a 10.5 cm leFH18 casing, A large battery with bakelite body, a few ampere meters, parts from a bicycle, parts of a headset, two bakelite boxes without lids, two German compass houses made from bakelite and a quite funny find, a flattened football, patched up several times, and I read "Continental" on one of the parts that made up the football :) 
It is going to be a warm day tomorrow so I might be ready for another little expedition after the morning brew :)

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Yesterday and today I have been searching a large German camp together with a friend. I am happy I was invited as the camp was very interesting and it was a good company.
We spent the two days roaming across the area, trying to map it and get a feeling of where finds might be concentrated, but it looks like the relics are strewn generously all over the place. It is almost June but the ground is still frozen in many places so some of the dumping pits we found will have to be dug later on in the summer. Luckily many finds are laying almost on the surface, like two compasses I found almost instantly. Those were not in the best condition but for me those are lovely little finds. We dug out a whole bunch of ammo, Mauser rounds, some empty rifle grenades, 9mm`s and two smaller pistol calibers. Signal flares and padlocks crawled out from under the moss in a steady pace and I found a couple of the flares made into a small container, prehaps to keep a soldiers cigarettes dry.
We found the top of a Tellermine and several tent pegs. In one place we found the rests of a larger building with a dumping pit next to it. Someone had been digging there before but had missed a few coins and a small pile of gaming pieces. Here was also a lot of porcelain but sadly everything was broken. Not too far away we came across a very nice spot. At first we saw a few zink lids for Field Haubitze powder charge containers and when we lifted up the moss it was like a tsunami of M24 potatomasher parts, the screwcorks, porcelain balls and the top of the stickgrenade where the head should be screwed on, hundreds and hundreds of them. Most of the wooden handles had rotted away and we did not find a single head, but I was very lucky and pulled out a perfect shrapnel sleeve and a 2cm flak casing. On our stroll back through the forest I found a very nice matchbox holder with "Norge" and a polarbear picture. It was broken in three pieces but I found them all. A bit farther away I found a M24 head, at least two parts from one, exploded and twisted but still a cool find. Other than this and enough barbed wire to reach the moon if we laid it out in a line we found some Gebirgsjäger boots and several 7.5 cm LiG casings, long and short ones.
The time just flies when one is having fun and soon it was time to move towards home and dinner, but we ll make more trips back out there soon!!

Today my plan was to make a little sweep in a forest where it had been barracks for German soldiers and some horse stables during the war. I found a place to park the car and followed an old road through the pine forest. It was not yet 10 in the morning but the forest was warm and it smelled fresh of spring. Around a turn the idyllic mood was no more. Just in front of me was a huge moose nibbling on a tree. With no more than 10-15 meter between us we both had frozen still and the one or two seconds we were staring at each other felt like an eternity. I didn`t really know what to do next so I just cleared my throath and said "Good morning mr.Moose" and with that the enormous animal took of silent like a ghost. It was such an amazing sight watching it move fast through the forest past me. As I strolled further and took of into the forest I saw moose behind every tree and began worrying that I would walk into a Mother Moose and her cubs, then my searching days would quickly end I think. With the growing paranoia I decided it would be best to come back to this site later together with the Girlfriend as moose bait. 
 I drove back a kilometer, to the forest with the flak casings and spent some six hours there combing it for brass. I found 5 or six coins, one German the rest Finnish, and in total 19 empty 2cm casings. I did find several live ones as well and the forest seems to be littered with all the live heads that had been pulled off the casings so for now I think I am done with that little patch of forest - it is too big a risk with those unstable explody things.
I did find a few other bits as well, a nice little dataplate, a gasmask cannister, a 7.5cm LiG casing and a firing pin for a K98 rifle and some other "standard" relics.
Now it had become afternoon and I had to get back home to get some food and go around the house and tap some fresh and nice Birch juice from the trees, that is some tasty and healthy stuff :)
If the weather holds up I might make a stroll to the site where I ve been finding Notek lights and vehicle parts, hopefully there will be no moose, bears or other relic-hunters` eating animals there :)

Spring has definately settled now and today was a perfect day to make a trip to the forest to check if the frozen ground is thawing nicely. I went to a place where it had been two small camps, a Heer camp and a POW camp, and a storage area. From when I did the research more than a year ago it really looked like a promising area to check out but I hadn`t gotten to it last season. The layout of the camps was still a bit of a mystery for me but when I parked the car I saw lots of larger dugouts along a slope and some large barrack foundations, so I found the storage area rather quick. After an hour I was ready to go hunt for the camps as I could only find barbed wire at this spot. 
Along the road trenchlines appeared and a few hundred meters further I began to see earthen dug outs, foundations of some buildings and metal sticking out from the ground here and there. At first I found some food tins and a few tools from the war time but the next two-three hours the only thing I had found was a large amount of relatively modern garbage buried in each of the dug out, ditches and pits I tried to dig. Of course the ground is still frozen from 10 cm down so I will have to get back here later to see if there can be war time era junk under the modern stuff. Seeing how idyllic the place is, and close to the road, I think this place was a popular camping area some time ago.
I wanted to try my luck on the other side of the road and then things began popping up. I walked right on to a big coin spill. I spent some time combing through the soil and ended up with 31 coins!! A couple Finnish ones, one Norwegian, one French and the rest German pfennigs! Very happy with that. A few meters away the detector gave off a lot of signals again. The metal coming out from the soil this time was a bit scarier than coins. As I lifted away the moss and the roots I saw a live 2 cm Flak casing, and then I found two more near it. I carefully continued searching and now more casings showed up, but these were empty. The pile of casings grew as I wandered around, all of them empty. I did find a few of their projectiles so  maybe kids after the war had emptied all these rounds to get to the gunpowder which was popular to play with for the post-war kids. In the end I dug out 30 empty casings!! A great result I think as I ve only found one or two of these before. But by now I was tired and hungry so I packed up my treasures and found back to the car.
​Maybe I ll make another little expedition tomorrow since the Girlfriend probably needs an airing :)

After a very short and quick winter the nature is preparing to explode in a cascade of green, smells, sounds from birds and the buzzing from insects. More than a month earlier than last year the ground has begun to thaw and almost all the snow has gone, so you can believe I didn`t waste much time and started gathering my digging gear. I soon had everything ready but my digging bayonet, it was nowhere to be found. I searched high and low and began suspecting that the Girlfriend was involved in its disapearing somehow, playing a prank on me, something she firmly denied. Last week I grabbed another old bayonet and headed out to the slope where previous season ended. I chose this site because it is in a place that recieves a lot of sun during the day to thaw the ground and so the best place to begin digging.
It was so great smelling the forest and the freshly dug soil again, and to sit down for a rest just to have to flee in panic the next moment when you realize you have sat down in the middle of the great ant trek.. But despite several days with around +15 Celsius the ground was still pretty solid. Most spots where I tried checking a signal it was possible to dig only the top 3-4 centimeters of the soil, but I found a few places where the ground was quite sandy and not so concrete-like as the rest of the slope. In one such place was a small dumping pit. I pulled out a couple of bottles, two large chains to put on tyres in slippery weather, a pocket knife and a heavy booksupport made from rock, prehaps one of the strangest dumping pit find I have made. It is simple yet elegantly made so I think it is some kind of soldier "trench-art" as it has that handmade look to it. Another nice non-metal find from that pit was a big wooden bowl, it is crazy that the thin wood hasn`t rotted away long ago. I have cleaned it and am preserving it with oils so it ll look quite nice and have new life, it is nicely produced and has a makers mark on the bottom.
A few days later I went back to have another go. I spent half the day walking up and down the slope collecting rifle casings, signal flares, toothpaste tubes and food tins, but I had to leave so many signals for another day because they were impossible to dig down to through the ice.
Yesterday I went out for a third trip and was out there around seven hours. I had quite a bit more luck on this trip. After a few signals that I couldn`t dig, and a few with the usual rubbish metal in a sandy section of the slope, I took off the surface and thought I could make out a swastika on a round-ish object. I was very careful in case it was partly frozen but it came loose with no problems. I had found my first Allgemeines Sturmabzeichen (General Assault Badge). It had a part of it rotted or broken away and missing the needle but otherwise in pretty good condition. This award was issued to those who had taken part in three separate assaults. I think that in the early years of the war, before the Tank Destruction arm stripe was introduced, the Allgemeines Sturmabzeichen was also awarded to those who single handedly took out an enemy panzer.
Such a great find really fills one with new energy and goes to show that the signal you are getting from the detector can be anything.
After this I moved across the slope and discovered a place where lots of bottles and hopefully intact porcelain is dumped, but it was too frozen to dig so it will be for another day. I kept on checking nearly every signal the detector gave and suddenly I had found a pistol magazine, not sure yet from what pistol though. A few other nice items I found was for example a large scoop for the field kitchen, a few parts for the GrW34 mortar, a big ashtray and something I have wanted to find for a long time, a Mg34 barrel which Im gonna use to make a lamp. I had been working the slope for 5-6 hours and turned around for a slow return to the car and I moved past the dumping pit where last season ended to check the ground frost situation there when time froze and the item in front of me was like glowing. On the edge of the filled-in dumping pit my bayonet was sticking out of the ground, sad and rusty looking!! I was overjoyed! My favorite digging tool and I was rejunited!!  
I reached back to the car without finding anything interesting except a part I think might belong to a motorcycle.
The first few digs of the season done, but it ll be a bit slow still as the ground is quite frozen. The weather forecast reports warmer night temperatures from tonight so in a week it ll be better conditions for digging and I can start getting around a bit :)