The sound of heavy rain woke me up yesterday. It was about 08 in the morning. Some would of course debate that 08 is no longer morning but more of a "daytime-hour". I tend to agree to that but sometimes it is good to sleep a bit longer and for sure to wake up by the sound of rain is far better than the anxiety inducing alarm clock. I wonder if I can make my own sound for the alarm..something like a loud shouty voice : "THE GERMANS ARE HERE!!!!" I will test it out on Girlfriends phone first when she is back from her fieldwork. But I am digressing.
Suddenly I was awake. I ate, I scrolled, I had coffee. I drove to my for the time being favorite place, the Gebirgsjäger camp I have been searching the last few trips. It is only a few kilometers from home but here it didn`t rain and the forest was quite dry, it is strange how local rainshowers can be. 

I began searching from where I parked towards the little dumping pit I had dug the other day. I wanted to go over the area around it once more. Very soon I had a good signal and it was a lovely Kraftstoff barrell top, and when I had attached it to my backpack I spotted another one leaned up against a tree. This one had the center cut out and holes punched around the edge. It had been used as a chimney roof plate. It will easily become a very cool clock!! 
 After checking the area and picking up a few small bits I found another dumping pit. This one was quite deep and was full of food cans and some bottles. If there is any dumping pits I hate it is such ones. But I need to search through them if not they will haunt me. In the end I had a lid from a coffee kettle, lid for a fuel tank, a frying pan, a brass jar with a lid stuck on (sounds empty, haven`t opened it yet) a small prism and a mystery item which I am speculating the prism belongs with. My first thought was that it could be some kind of trench  periscope. I might be wrong though.
The next few hours I dug signals. My pockets was not heavy when getting back to the car later but I had found a cut-down 10.5 cm brass casing, a M39 egg grenade and a small metal pennant. The pennant looks field made from zink, prehaps it was used on a vehicle, no colors left on it though so it would be hard to tell.

 Today was supposed to be for resting and doing some housework but feeling "the call of the wild" and all that I was soon back on place in the forest to continue where I left off. The first hour went by with just a few rusted and falling apart Göffels dug up. I had found what I thought was a big dumping pit but removing the top soil revealed a nice wooden floor, so I was standing in what must have been a small hut. Using the pinpointer I found the cause of the signals without having to strip the soil off the entire nice floorings, it was barrell bands and two padlocks.
​ A few signals later I found a big dumping pit, I could see at least two 200 liter barrells sticking out of the ground plus oven parts and wires. I got excited and jumped down in one of the corner. Unwise. Stingy. Thin cotton Russian camo trousers does not give adequate protection from stinging nettles. Swearing and squeeling it took a few minutes in what felt like a acid bath with needles before I had trampled and chopped away the bastards attacking my nether regions and making it possible to start digging. 
I dug up a small section of the corner to try find the depth of the pit and get an impression of what garbage it is made up from, and although it will be a difficult job I think I will dig a little bit of it each trip until it is done. Much of the contents I pulled out was food cans , rusted buckets, bottles, spoons, all the standard rusted crap, but I also found a handfull of Norwegian and German buttons, bits of porcelain and part of an engine. 

When I got bored of the nettle pit and needed a stretch I wandered around a little bit and on the bottom of a low slope I got signals all over the place. The joy! Here I spent the rest of the day and got a couple of very nice finds. The best one I think was a bakelite grip plate for the MG34! Oh believe me I searched for the other part of it. I did not find it now but I will do my best on the following trips here. I found several other MG parts, a bolt and different smaller parts. Two clock parts were hiding under a root, one rings in as silver on the detector so that goes in the treasure chest and the find of the day was camoflaging itself as a crappy signal. A great looking K98 bayonet and its scabbard! 
Now it was time to end the fun for today and get back home to do some housework and dry the boots for tomorrows expedition :)

As the title of this post suggests I have not had too much luck on the last few trips. Before the weekend I went to one of the camps I have been searching a lot of times. There were a couple of dumping ditches I was wondering about. I spent half a day on them but there was not much to find. The first ditch was mostly full of leather bits and the standard food tins and a few k98 casings The other two full of glass and yes you guessed it, food tins. Actually there were a few spoons and forks in it as well but they were far too gone.
 On Saturday a friend of me drove up here for some searching. He had this interesting photo from the end of the war and we had to try to find the exact place because there it will be treasures for sure. We managed to locate the background in the pic so we had found the correct area. The forests where the photo could have been taken from is quite large though and we walked for hours. We zig-zagged through the forests, up slopes, through plateaus and down slopes again, but we did not manage to find the site this time. We didn`t get too many finds either but we picked a few helmet liners, a MP40 mag full of post-war excersise ammo, the rests of two M39 egg grenades and lots of food tins. We have not given up this project and will continue searching for the spot when time allows.
Today I managed to get up early and I went straight out to the forest, to another camp I have visited several times. It is a bit of a stroll to reach it but the weather was pleasant and the detector gave off signals frequently along the way. A lot of them were post-war training ammunition as the Army and Nato have been playing war here for 70 years or so. When I finally reached the place I got a good signal from a marshy pit. Well, I was dry and had good gloves so I began digging the wet and smelly soil. Now that woke up all the mosquitoes in the area. I became like a magnet to them, luckily I had some left in the repellant bottle so I sprayed myself and took a good swig of it before continuing, it taste like poison,should be some kind of warning lable on it ;p .The metal that had given the good signal was several canned fish tins made from aluminum and a 7.5 cm LiG casing, and a lot of cloth came out from the mud. It looked like the remains of a tunic, a knitted sweater, mittens and socks. Too bad the jacket was no longer in one piece, it looked like it had been torn up before thrown away. I might go back to that hole later this summer when it has dried up a bit more.
A few meters away I discovered a dump that had been set fire to by the ones that cleaned up the camp after the German capitulation. Signals everywhere so it was little else to do than to remove the top soil and get to work. I spent hours going through it and a few nice relics came out from it. A Norwegian coin, two unmarked porcelain cups, a British medical tray, bottles, a Göffel made from aluminum, lots of gaming pieces and some kind of "trench-art" bracelet or small belt made from leather and red and blue wires (actually it was a razor strop. Thanks Geoff W. for the info). I also pulled out a powder charge bakelite box for artillery guns and then I found a zink tin that had held powder charge for Nebelwerfer, but it sounded like it was full of coins!! Excited I opened the tin to count my new treasure but I was a little gutted when it was full of Gebirgsjäger boot hobnails. Not a bad find though but I would have preferred coins :D 
Just as I picked out the last few gaming pieces from the fire pit it began raining hard so it was a perfect time to end my trip, and when I was back to the car I was completely soaked :D
If the weather clears up just a little bit I will go back there tomorrow I think as there is probably some more goodies hiding around under the moss.

For two days now I have been searching a small spot in the forest which were part of a large Wehrmacht camp stretching across a rather huge area in a valley between some beautiful mountains. On tuesday it was quite wet after several days of rain, conditions the mosquitos and the biting midges seemed to enjoy. After soaking myself with bug repellant I turned on the Fisher and went to work. In front of the foundations of a building there was a square on about 2 x 2 meters that was a bit sunken in the terrain and the detector gave off some good signals when swept across it. I removed the top layer and saw the lid of a box!! My imagination went a bit wild for a second but when I tried to lift it, it came loose so it was not a box filled with iron crosses, just the lid. Under it was a knife, some toothpaste tubes, leather straps and a tent peg. I searched through the pit slowly and carefully not to miss anything. When removing some of the soil I saw a familiar shape. An Eastern Front medal! It was not in a very good condition though.  I also found a helmet liner, bottles, a coat hanger, toothbrush, Esbit stoves, some buttons and a pair of stirrups. One of the stirrups had a rubber padding which I have never seen before so that was a bit fun.
 Several hours later I had went through the pit and filled it back before I took the detector around for a stroll. Now I found the rests of a Y-strap and the rear seat from a motorcycle. On a small grassy patch I had a strong clear signal and began digging. It took a while because of all the rocks and the hole got deeper and deeper with no sign of the metal but the signal was still strong. I became more and more sure it had to be the rest of the motorcycle, or a whole bunch of helmets or something else very treasury. When I finally reached the source of the signal the bubble burst, it was a large washing pan and a few iron rods only :D Why on earth did they bury it so deep and throw a whole bunch of rocks on top of it?? Silly :D The day had went and the rain started up again so I went back home to rest.

This morning I was woken by the Cat attacking my toes, I guess he was hungry and wanted to go outside, very similar to me that cat, pure hedonist. After feeding us both I loaded up the car and went back to yesterdays site. I wanted to get a little overview of the area so I spent the first few hours wandering around looking for barrack foundations and rust poking out of the ground. Hours went by with little finds. Some ammo, food tins, fuel barrles and scrap was all I could find, but then I came across two small ditches that had been dug by someone else. That could mean there would be more dumping pits around, and soon I found an undug little ditch. Soil and rocks were removed and roots cutted away before old junk from the Germans began to pour out from it. Lots and lots of leather bits from horse harness, buckles and horseshoes. An ore of spoons got dug out from the corner and then a nice looking matchbox holder fell from the side of the pit. This one had the head of a German soldier as decoration stamped on it, so it goes straight into the collection :D 
Some paper bits had survived on the bottom of the pit, parts of a package with "Istanbul" cigarettes and a deck of cards. I found several porcelain skin cream jars and a cool little medical bottle together with an inkwell. Then some more horse related stuff, several different horse bits and a big wooden mallet. Now I had dug through almost the entire ditch but the last corner of it held something large that was very difficult to get loose thanks to a few massive roots going on top of it. Armed with a saw and a cutter, and the bayonet to pry loose some rocks I finally managed to lift a hot food container in rather good condition out of the ditch.
Sifting through the soil and stones while filling back the ditch I found a single gaming piece, a small bakelite container and a nice mine fuze.
When one is having fun the time really flies and the time had come to end it for today. I was out of food and water and I had dug on me a craving for icecream so on the way home I made a pit stop at the gas station :)
Tomorrow is a new day and if I am still around then I think I might do some more searching, although the housework is really piling up so we ll see :)
Until next time enjoy life the best you can :)

It has been a while since my last digging now but yesterday I managed to get back to the forest. The last week has been hectic with helping the Girlfriend preparing for her fieldwork project ( she is a biologist and a nature roamer) and when weekend approached my parents came to visit us. Yesterday morning the house was empty and me  and the the Cat left to fend for ourselves. The Cat snuggled himself up between some pillows on the sofa so I gathered my gear and drove to the fields of rust. My friends from the city was staying there with their caravan so when I arrived I got coffee and we began looking for treasures. 
My first find was a nice Kraftstoff barrel top with some paint markings on it, and my friend found another top that I got from him. After a while and little finds we moved a few hundred meters into the forest and found a massive dumping ditch where we spent many hours sifting through broken glass and rusted crap to find the occasional good bits. Around dinnertime we strolled to their caravan and ate hotdogs from the barbeque to get some new energy for a few hours more digging.
We found hundreds of boot heel irons, two bunkerstove tops, lots of small bottles and some intact and full medical ampoules. Where I was digging suddenly a small leather pouch fell out from the side of the ditch. A EKM pouch!! Frustratingly I could not find its dog tag but I found a nice catch for a belt buckle,,of course the buckle didn`t turn up though. But I did find another fuel barrel top!! So three of those on one day is a success :)
I also dug out a close combat knife scabbard, a tent peg and a small interesting bakelite token I hope to find more info about. Another interesting find I had was a small metal cup with Russian markings. It looks like it was made for pharmacy use and was made in Leningrad.
We called it quits after a few hours of digging as it had become late and my friends had a long way to drive home. It had been a nice time and we had a super weather all day long.
 Today it is a bit more grey and rain will come soon but since it is still early here I am strongly considering making a trip out after another few cups of coffee, unless I change my mind and stay at home working on cleaning relics and working on a diorama I have begun :)

A few days ago the Girlfriend and I drove ca 250 km north so she could begin her scientific fieldwork. She was gonna trek a few hours up a mountain to place some insect traps, while I was going to stroll around looking for old bunkers. Luckily for me the location she had chosen was relatively close to an old Atlantikwall installation, the Heeres Küsten Batterie 32/971 Ystnes.
​ Placed on the very tip of the peninsula there are very litte remains of the fort to be found today. Once it protected the entrance to the fjord, and a large fish oil factory which had been attacked by Norwegian and British commandos in 1941. Soon after that attack the construction of the fort began. 
Later in the war when Tirpitz was in the area the fort was attacked by british planes. In autumn 1944 the Germans were evacuating the area and the fortress blown up and the rest moved to Lofoten.
The fort was armed with
4 French 15.5 cm guns with a range to 18000 meter.
2 5 cm anti tank guns.
6 Machineguns.
1 Mortar
3 Flamethrowers.
1 3.7 cm Flak cannon
1 2 cm Flak cannon.
1 Searchlight
150 men was in 1943 reinforced with another 150.

​Too bad it wasn`t much to find of it now, but it was a nice trip and some spectacular views :)

Lately I have made two trips to the Wehrmacht vehicle workshop to hunt for some more good vehicle bits. It is a fun and at the same time frustrating area to search because there is signals all over, most of the items covered or entangled in tree roots. A good cutter and a small saw have come in very handy this weekend. I freed many kilos of old metal from the sandy grip of the underground but the good stuff was further apart this time, so the pile of scrap grew considerably. Some of the finds that I brought back was a vehicle window frame, a metal panel and some brackets. I found a strange triangular lamp of some kind and big and heavy sirene that might actually be a coffee grinder. One of the last finds was a rear notek light body, attached to the bracket together with a license plate!! I threw it directly in the oxalic acid when I got home, and although it wasn`t in much better condition than the motorcycle plate it ll do as a very nice display piece.
​ After a couple of days with heavy rain keeping me at home I was happy today when it seemed to have stopped. I had other things to do at home but I could spare a few hours searching for parts from Wehrmachts vehicles. The very first signal today was another license plate! A big rectangular one this time. The joy!!! Next I found a small dumping pit with mostly barrell bands and stove bits, but there were also a few good things like a helmet liner, field shovel and boot heel irons, lots of them. Also in the dumping ditch was a small token that there is many rumours about. Its been called a Luftwaffe cargo tag and "ticket out of Gumrak/Pitomnik"tag, but in fact it was a kind of cable or line marker used by pioneers and signallers apparently. Two smaller items were by far the nicest ones, a note holder for an instrument and a small brass ring. I will clean it up carefully to see if it can be engraved.
​After filling back the ditch I roamed around a bit and found the top and an inner part for a bunker stove, and a bit later the lid for the stove top. I found three different types of  rifle buttstock holders and spent about an hour digging out four different vehicle window frames!! It is like when I am clearing away a layer of relics a new one appears so I will be back to this site soon.
​Now I am off to check on how the license plate in the oxalic acid is doing.

The last few days me and the Girlfriend have been busy. We have been going for some searching trips and done some regular strolling without shovel and detector, but still managed to find relics. On one of the strolls we took through the woods we spoke about moose and encountering them, and with a perfect timing one of those huge creatures runs across the path some 10-15 meters in front of us, spots us and takes of in another direction! It was quite spectacular. We found a fallen apart shed and outhouse with a lot of rust strewn around. Mostly old farming equipment, but there were a few kraftstoff barrels there and the front bumper from an Opel Käpitan which also might be from the war. Later when we reached the seafront we found a big pile of burnt German signal flares, so there is traces from the war everywhere one look.
 
Our searching expeditions took us to an old ammo camp where we spent a few hours picking up shrapnel. Some of the ordnance had definately been detonated there because it was like searching a battlefield. Shrapnel in all sizes, everywhere through the forest. A few Brennzunders were hiding by a bunker entrance and inside another bunker we found half of a blown up Tellermine. Lunch was enjoyed on a bunker wall, listening to the birds and fighting the occasional mosquito. The rest of the hours spent there going through shrapnels and shell fragments. It gets boring rather quick, until one find that amazing looking piece, which we weren`t lucky enough to score this time.
A nice chat with Landowner gave us an even cooler score though, a quick rummage through a barn! Between the layers of old dust we found a few nice things from our former occupants. We ended up carrying home, a soup container, a sledgehammer, a small container which I think held grease and a few Bosch car parts which I think might be wartime era items !! :)
 
​Today the Girlfriend was busying herself with work so I grabbed the backpack and went out to the relic fields. I went to the place where it had been a vehicle workshop and garages. I spent much of the day there with rather good results. It was warm as heck, the sun was really throwing it at me today. For starters I dug up a flag holder, a Notek headlamp, a pocket knife and a motorcycle license plate. I have wanted to find a good license plate for a while now, but sadly this one looks like it will be bare metal after cleaning. Still it was fun to find it :) The next item I liberated from the grip of the roots was a floor plate from a vehicle, with the rifle buttstock holder attached. I wonder what vehicle it might be from.. Then I dug up a Notek rear light, a bit damaged but hey..and besides it was the internals for a headlamp! When I removed soil and moss from the next signal I realized the trip back to the car would become extra fun, a Kraftsoff barrell top, with the metal ring, heavy as they come. Todays most interesting find was laying next to the barrell top. It was something as simple as a karbid lamp, but the bottom of it wasn`t original to the lamp, but a 7.5 cm LiG casing. I really love "trench-art" and "trench-made" stuff so this goes right into the collection. The hours went by and the pile of rust didn`t grow smaller so when I found Notek rear light number two and headlamp internals number two I turned off the detector and began to pack it all up and plod my way back to the car.
​ Fuelled by these finds I might go back there a little trip tomorrow:)

Yesterday I spent most of the day walking in difficult hillside terrain trying to find any old metal. I did not have much luck in the rust departement but I got a whole lot of excersise and sun which is sorely needed after the long winter months. I found proof of German activity there in the forms of barbed wire fences, smashed stoves and lots of food tins, but very little other things. On my way back after many hours I got lucky and found a small coin hoard. 9 coins, 4 Finnish and 5 German. Two Flak casings hid under a few centimeters of soil but that was it. It is an area to get back to at some point I guess. 
Today was also spent outside, in a slope, digging, gathering old war junk. Girlfriend and I had went out quite early to this site. Because she had forgot her magnifying glass, she couldn`t mess with the bugs, fry them or whatever science she does with them, so she got bored rather fast and went for a trek to higher altitudes, leaving me all alone with the ants. I tried to be quick, check the signal and move on to the next so that their little armies didn`t have time to swarm me and take me down. A few weeks ago I had found a bottle dump here, seeing the ground there had thawed I could dig it out now. It held many intact bottles but probably more broken ones. Most were wine, champagne and beer but I picked with me two cool vinegare bottles and two perfume ones. 
​Mid-day had passed and it was getting really warm so I tried searching the areas under the trees, of course the ants were way ahead of me. While I was digging out a couple of K98 Mauser parts I saw the metal detector an armlenght away, brown and covered in ants. They were trying to drag it away!! Almost too late I realized that just was a flanking manouvre by them. I looked down at my leg and they were grabbing on to the tip of my boot!! I got up grabbed the detector,shovel and backpack, which naturally overbalanced me and I tumbled down the slope like some noisy rock. 
Having cleverly outmanouvered the dumb ants I continued the search along the bottom of the slope towards the car. For another hour I picked up a pair of ski goggles, a helmet liner and a cool little tea strainer. By now it was too warm for me to want to continue digging, so I found a nice spot by the river to wait for Girlfriend to return.
​Tomorrow there might be a new site to check out :)

The coins cleaned up.​

One can be led to believe that summer finally has hit here north, the temperatures are around 20 degree celsius and the mosquitoes have begun building their attack fleets. Oh,and the pollen season is full on,, there is always something to hate about the weather, right??!!
I went to check out the area where I found the last two helmets, to make sure I hadn`t missed any lids hiding under the moss. Sure there were no more lids there but I picked up some small stuff any way. In a still partly frozen dumping hole I dug out some medical ampoules, three gaming pieces and three coins between some crushed cast iron oven bits. Not far away I had another rather deep signal which after a lot of digging got brought back to the surface. Here was 30-40 7.92 rounds still in their stripper clips, and a fully packed leather ammo pouch. It was also a few bottles and a bayonet leather frog there.
Now several hours went by with not many finds at all, of course I was digging all the time coz the area is packed with signals from wartime metal trash. Next to the foundations of a long building there was a earthen cellar/dugout and in there I had a good find. The lid from an Agfa film roll. Prehaps the long building had been used as a soldiers cinema, and the agfa roll a film showing the latest Wochenschau or some other popular movie. For sure such a find gets the imagination rolling.
After yet another hour or so I began my return to the car and on the way there I picked up a couple more relics. Two parts from the potatomasher grenades, a metal handle of some kind and an empty gasmask cannister, must be the fifth or sixth cannister so far this season :)
Today it is much warmer than yesterday so Im just gonna relax around the house, pretending to enjoy summer like a real person, but I guess tomorrow I am back out where the bugs swarm :)
​Enjoy life my friends, and if you dont, be sure that there are always ways to change bad things into good :)

The spiders are placing their webs in face height..