Monday evening I went out for a wee stroll with the Fisher. I only managed a couple of hours before the word got around any every mosquitoe in the district came to feed. The finds were far apart but I did find a mess kit, a very nice and large padlock, some k98 rounds, a toy gun and a silver plated cigarette box before I evacuated.
Yesterday morning I woke up early to yet another warm and sunny day. I contemplated mixing some Deet in the coffee to help keep the tiny vampires away but I guess it would taste too nasty so I chucked it into the digging kit instead.
I wandered around in the forest picking up signals which mostly turned out to be modern rubbish which I put in the bag to dispose of later back in "civilization". I dug out a couple of headlights again, one of them had the glass still intact, and I also found an ashtray,  of the field made kind and a 40`s tourist plate with a Viking ship and "Norge" stamped on it, I like to find those, they are pretty kool.
I moved into a section of the forest I haven`t searched too much and after hitting two smaller patches of nails and wires I stumbled across a small dell in the ground where the Fisher gave of some crazy signals. It had to be a dumping pit, but would it have anything good???
 I threw my backpack away and opened the forest floor and I very quickly began pulling interesting stuff from it. I spent around four hours searching through it making sure I didnt miss anything. It was lots of stuff in it and when I reached the bottom it had become a pretty deep hole. I had found lots of the small porcelain skin cream jars, some medical- and some alcohol bottles, several pairs of boots and coins and gaming pieces kept coming out from the sand. Lots of toothbrushes and different cream tubes together with a few pioneer demolition charges was down there too. When the pit was empty I dug a deeper hole on the bottom and placed the charges there before I filled it back up, so they wont be found again anytime soon to present a threat to anyone.
Several razors and soldiers metal cups saw the daylight again, a couple of the cups had engravings. I dug out some nice bakelite bits, a few field torches and a bunch of coins, mostly Finnish ones. One coin was extra large, but it turned out to be a Eismeer Front medal when I got it cleaned up later in the evening. Continuing I found four pocket knives, a butterknife carved from wood, a smoking pipe, some porcelain tourist stuff probably brought back from Finland and a nice big porcelain bowl marked with a blue Wehrmacht eagle, produced by the Norwegian Porsgrunn Porselen. In a rusted food tin I pulled from the roots fell a deck of cards, and a familiar looking brown paper bag, a War Merit medal with swords, with the ribbon still intact!! What an amazing find that was!!
 When the show was over I was warm, sweaty, sand everywhere and covered with mosquito bites so I filled the pit, covered it up so the forest looked clean and untouched again and I went to buy a few cans of cooold Cola and a big icecream before I drove back home. In the evening i spent two hours cleaning some of the stuff before I finally collapsed after dinner.
Hopefully there will be more pits like it this season :)

I had an idea to go searching again today but I took a lesson from yesterday. I was out in the forest quite early but as the hours went by it got hotter and hotter, and not even the slightest whiff of a cooling breeze, and the mosquitoes,,oh man.. It is difficult to do any digging when the temperature crawls towards 30 celsius for a northerner used to half that temperature. An hour or so in I was out of water but I fought on for another three hours just to spite the weather gods. Well, that paid off nicely coz today it is getting even warmer.
I tried to stay out of the boiling sun but it seemed it was in the sunny spots the good signals lay. I found another pre sorted dumping pit, it held a whole bunch of door paraphanalia, locks, hinges and key hole covers of all things. I brought the key hole covers with me as that can be used for some artsy stuff. I dug out a big metal rod which might be a track link pin, together with it was a rusted göffel. Walking through the forest a Thrush nearly gave me a heart attack as I walked by its nest with a few centimeters and pissed it off by doing so, I hastily retreated to a safer distance and then found two muzzle covers for the Norwegian Krag Joergensen rifles, in pretty nice condition. Other than that I dug out the bottom of a detonator box which I ll be using for a diorama, a few horseshoes, the usual kilometer of different wire bits, a Norwegian coin, a mystery part and a crushed cast iron oven spread out over several meters. The best find I had was a really cool military grade looking pencil sharpener, marked "Granate", I am going to restore it by putting on a new blade and screw so it ll be good as new again.
As said I had plans of more digging today, but I am going to spend the day around the house together with the cat, we have already had coffee in the hammock between a few trees in the garden, we ll be cleaning some headstamps on the spent casings I found the other day to make more cufflinks and in general just chill out. 
​So enjoy your day wherever you are in the world :)

Video of the mosquitoe situation below: 

The last week I ve been out and about nearly every day. I checked out some places rumored to hold rust with no luck at all, so I write them down as rumors. Then I went to try locate a german camp and a POW camp. The landowner had mentioned it could be wet in the forest, well he was correct. The river had flooded so the forest had become an extention of the river with mid calf deep water, so no luck there either. On the outskirts on a dry patch I had a good signal and got a quite good find, the outer cup from a S-Mine, looks like it can clean up nicely. 
The last two days I ve been back at the site I very successfully searched in fall and have brought home a few bags of rust and gotten a fair share of exercise. 
I ve had some strange luck though, I ve found several small dumping pits and all of them containing the same items!! The first one held a hoard of toothpaste tubes, German and Norwegian made, and it was three padlocks with them. I brought home ca 50 of them and half of that was quite decent looking after cleaning. In the next pit I only found rusted food tins and broken bottles. Today when I was out there I came across a small dump of K98 ammo, loads of it, and a few meter away another one with only spent casings and a small hoard of 9mm rounds. The last dumping pit I found this afternoon was full of unbroken beer, wine and champagne bottles, a few of them with labels intact.
​Strolling around trying to find these dumping pits I ve picked up a few items here and there. A couple of blinders for a karbid lamp, a large headlight for a vehicle,looks like it is French made, a small light for a motorcycle or bike I think, a nice tent peg from a producer I dont yet have in the collection. I found some ski wax, a couple of pocket knives, a rotten soup container and a peep hole or something like that for a door and three PPsH rounds. The last thing I picked up today was a strange item with a green cross outlined by a row of small openings, very strange:) (edit: a friend told me it is an earpiece insert for the field telephone handset..Thanks Chris C.)
Im a bit tired after a week with miles of walking, sitting down and getting up, Im getting thighs as a long distance skier by the feel of it, but I hope to get back out there tomorrow again :)
Have a great weekend my friends:)

Yesterday the Girlfriend dragged me out of the comfort and into the nature for a bit of a trek. It was exellent weather and we had some stunning views and a great time, we even found a few interesting WW2 sites we ll revisit and make some article about. 
This morning my muscles was all aching but shortly after breakfast and some scrolling of that there internet I went back to the slope full of relics for some digging, hoping to find gold. After a few hours I hadn`t seen any gold,but I had dug out a bit of brass. Some k98 casings, a 9mm casing, part of the chain from a pocket watch and a few meter of wire. 
Nothing out of the ordinary was found but I was quite happy with a full SVT-40 magazine and a few small bottles and jars for the glass collection. I dug out an axe head, part of a front Notek light,a red enamelled steel canteen, part of a big fat door lock, a few M24 screwcaps, a very interesting little pocket knife made by Maggi the food producer and lots of the usual bits. 
When I had worn down the gloves I had brought, seriously,they lasted some 5 hours!!! I walked around to other parts of the forest looking for barrack foundations and dumping pits with not too much luck. I did find two small animal skulls though, a kitty and some rodent I think.
We ll see what the weekend will bring, we have a couple of plans,maybe a digging trip or prehaps visiting a coastal fortification :)

Not too long after the morning routine was out of the way I was back in the forest. I had a plan today to check more of the forest but as a fool I began the day in the slope covered with relics and rust, so I didn`t get time to stroll around much. It looks like the whole camp on the top of the plateau was just bulldozed over the side and set fire to when they cleaned up after the war. Most of the steel stuff is rotted but now and again something nice gets uncovered from between the junk. First find today was a nice looking toothbrush, which I now have a big collection of, together with it was a handfull of 7.92 casings. 
I pulled out a very nice belt hook, with markings I don`t have in the collection from before so that too put a smile on my face. On the very bottonm of the section I dug today I found a very nice looking car battery, marked "Nbl", maybe short for "nebel"? and the top of another 200 litre fuel drum, in better condition and different markings than yesterdays one. The last two finds before I went back home after hours of sweating and enjoying the day was a blue enamelled cup and the front of a Notek light for the rear of a vehicle, seems that one will clean up nicely so I ll chuck it in a bath of oxalic acid as Im probably staying home doing some miniature modelling tomorrow.
On Sunday though the plan is either checking out another forest or maybe visiting a coastal fortification not far from here :)
​Enjoy your weekend:)

Very strange clouds here today :D 

The new season is on!!!
It has been a looong winter this year. Northern Norway havent seen so much snow for some 60 years but luckily it wasnt a cold winter so the ground is not frozen deep as it usually is, but spring came almost a month and a half later than usual. The melting snow is flooding the forests so the ground is wet and muddy.
In october when I got back home from Latvia we had to move, so now I have new territories. I ve done my research during what seemed to be a never ending snowstorm so today I could finally step out into a fresh and nice forest. Seemingly untouched by diggers.
I had fresh batteries in my shiny new detector, my old one was kept together by gaffa and luck and has done its duty for nearly 8 years now, but it still works so I ll keep it as a back up or train the Girlfriend how to use it so I can cover more ground :D
 The new Fisher gave signals everywhere, and here and there metal poked out from under the moss, trenchlines and earthen dug outs scattered around. I spent the first hour just wandering around checking for signals and when I reached the side of a small hill the detector really went berserk with signals. The whole hill side, hundreds of meters had signals everywhere and also a rather wide belt on the bottom with bits of ovens and coils of barbed wire sticking out between the sapplings, here I can dig until Octember brings snow again!! :D
I dug for about 5 hours and gathered a little pile of relics worth saving. Didn`t find anything spectacular but it being the first dig of the season it didn`t bother me one bit. The best find for sure was a small Polish silver coin from 1923. Other than the usual rubbish one find in German camps a small bakelite container was of interest. I thought it was a Soviet ID-paper box, but this one is smaller and is marked "Thalia" so I wonder if it can be some hygenic product prehaps. Anyways, it is great being back in business and I think I ll be back out there early tomorrow, I just need a shower,some food and a kip first:)
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