Usually mondays stinks a bit, first day of work after the weekend,and a full week of chores ahead,it sure ain`t fun to wake up to something like that. The last months all my mondays have been like that, but not today. I had my last day at work on saturday. A hungry cat woke me up and I spent a few hours breakfasting realising I had no job this week. I lifted the curtain and saw that it was perfect digging weather, clouded,light rain and 14-15 degrees. 
Two weeks ago I spoke to a landowner and had got his permission to search the forests he owns. My research and recce trip showed promising things. The area had housed one of the german Heer/Org.Todt camps which had overseen the road and railroad construction going through the valley. In the liberation days troops which had retreated from the northern front capitulated and was interned here. These troops had walked most of the way from Finmark, all the way from the Norwegian/Russian border in the East to here, a few miles north of the Polar Circle.
It was time to see if there would be any traces of these units left.

With fresh batteries for the Fisher F5 and the Garrett pin pointer,good clothes and a supply of food  and drink I was ready for a whole day searching. I tried to dig every signal but it soon turned out to be to many, so I ruled out most of the iron signals going for dumping pits and super-signals to not waste the day digging only horseshoes and nails. Walking through the wet underbrush I felt the smell of autumn, I hope it will be a long autumn before winter arrives..

After a while I found the first dumping pit with something other than barrel bands and food tins. It was nothing really interesting in it though, parts of a iron cast oven,some bottles  and a couple of mystery bits :)

In the next dumping pit it was more scrap metal,a large piece of concrete with barbed wire inside, and a few nice bits. While I was digging and pulling stuff from the ground I heard some squeeky noises.. "Hm,No,bears don`t squeek,not wolves or moose either. Mr.Squirrell!!!" I looked around and spotted a movement between the branches on a nearby tree. It was a beautiful squirrell watching me while making noises. I kept digging around the same spot for about an hour and he was there the whole time.

I took a small break to eat and drink, then moved around again, this time I got prehaps six meters before I had a great signal again. A lot of broken glass was in this one so I had to be careful. There was a tree growing directly atop of the pit but I had brought my axe so removing one or two roots went smoothly.A lot of different stuff in this one. Broken porcelain and bottles, boots, tins,lamps and cast iron oven parts. But the best finds was a gasmask canister and a Luftwaffe beltbuckle. I got all the metal out and the whole bottom of the little ditch was filled with broken glass,it looked like it could have been from windows, maybe a meter lenght and 30-40 cm deep with only glass.

I was really happy with the belt buckle. It is not often I find stuff like that so it gave me new energy and within minutes I had another great signal from the detector. Here it was possible to see the outlines of the dumping pit so I started in one corner. First was a layer of rocks before metals and roots started popping out. Here was also alot of broken glass and porcelain parts and I was lucky enough to find a nice porcelain egg holder cup. It was getting late so I decided to leave half of the pit until tomorrow and search my way back towards the car.

I used the detector as I went back towards the car and found a few spots to dig tomorrow, large interesting signals and ofcourse a lot of "single signals" here and there. Then there was this interesting signal all of the sudden, a nice clear alu signal, it was not a big signal so I decided to dig it coz it would be difficult to find it again. Just under the moss I saw this yellowish color and a familiar shape,,could it be a dog tag?? Indeed it was. I couldn`t be happier. It was too dirty to see if it was a blank or a stamped one so I stuck it in my pocket and continued. Again,a few meters apart there was the same signal again, I dove down and found a second id tag, on this I could read "Pz.Abw." This happened four more times the next half hour. Six german Erkannungsmärke in one go. Best day searching so far!! I could see from a couple of the tags that they was from I.R 193, the unit that had capitulated here. Last year I searched in a small forest across the river of this spot and found one tag from the same unit, so it is a spot I need to search again. Also this patch in the forest is where I am starting next time I go here.

The last signal I dug before I decided to go home was a nice little coin, a Finnish coin dated 1939, maybe the last soldier that held this in his hand had walked on his feet all the way from Finland front..

The cleaned discs: