I couldn`t wait to get off work today so I could continue my search on the Gebirgsjäger capitulation site. As usual I dug out a lot of wires and whatnot, but I have learnt that a crappy signal can proove to hold a dumping pit underneath, and that happened an hour into the search. The Fisher said wire or nail, but when I opened up the ground I found broken bottles and a couple of rusted food tins. I kept digging and the deeper I dug  the more metal came out from the sandy soil. Mostly rubbish ofcourse but there was a few nice little items as well. A scabbard from a close combat knife, a battery with all the paper label intact, several Doramad toothpaste tubes, a porcelain jar and a pencil found their way into my backpack. After an hour or so I had dug more than a meter down and on the bottom of the pit was a fuel funnel and two small bottles, a 4711 perfume and a nice Ether bottle.

On my way back to the car I dug a couple more signals given by the Fisher and found a small dumping pit with some M24 screw tops and a nice pair of stirrups and another signal I dug was a few pairs of rotted soldiers ancle boots, sadly the boots was too far gone to recover.
Tomorrow it is sunday and no work so if the weather is fine I think I might make a new trip out here.
​Have a nice weekend my friends:)

Yesterday I went picking blueberries instead of relic hunting, but after work today I went out with the Fisher to search. I continued on the site where I ve found the helmet and award recently in hopes there is more goodies there. I m searching the site quite systematically now, and digging every single signal. I dug tons of signals today but 99% of them turned out to be rubbish. To not dig the same signals over again I place all metal in a pit I ve dug earlier. I spent only three or four hours today and the only good find was the face of a Danish compass. I thought first it was a EKM, and was surprised when I turned the disc and saw the nice undamaged compass. It ll fit right in with the other compass parts I ve found earlier this summer. Other than that I picked with me some buttons, a couple grenade parts, a Finnish coin, a few K98 stripper clips and casings, a large bottle and a toothbrush.
Lets hope for better finds tomorrow and the next days as there is a winter approaching soon:)

The last two days I ve been out searching I found nothing interesting at all, so I really didn`t have big hopes for today when I went out after work.  I drove to a Gebirgsjäger / Heer camp but when I saw the forest was full of berry pickers I decided to not mingle with them and went to the Gebirgsjägercapitulation site instead.
I walked to the ditch where it was a lot of barrel bands and dug it, but it was only barrel bands and some horse shoes there. I strolled further into the forest and the Fisher picked up signals here and there, a few uniform buttons, lots of Zeltbahn rings and buttons and a few railroad bolts was all that the relic gods threw my way. I came to a small clearing and in the middle of it was a weak but good signal. Under the moss was just sand so it was easy to dig it. Almost a meter down I found a medic bottle, a  rusted food tin, a shoepolish tin and a cut down shell casing, a 37mm I think, made into an ashtray, nothing else was down there. I filled it back and swept the detector in the area around the hole and it picked up several strong and interesting signals, so it was nothing to do but dig them all. The first few was a some K98 casings and a stripper clip and a few bits of wire. The next one though was very nice,a 20mm casing made into a shotglass! The pinpointer told me it was something more under the moss, and it was a second shotglass!!

I was thrilled to have found these shotglass casings as they are personal items and I collect them. I did another sweep with the Fisher and 40 cm away it was another good hit. It was a third shotglass! I had a  whole set now. Amazing! The next signal I dug was also just a few centimeter away. Just below the moss I saw a jagged edge and knew instantly what it was and my grin became even wider. I carefully got it loose from some tiny roots and held a German War Merit award in my hand! It was in quite good condition too and will look lovely when cleaned up. 
A real nice cluster of good items, so I kept searching the area real well but the only other bits I found was some nails and a large axe head. It had gotten late in the afternoon and I had to get back home, but Thursday I ll continue in this patch of the forest for sure, who knows what else is below the forest floor:)
Stay dirty my friends, and Keep Smiling:)

As soon as the coffee pot had been emptied I headed out to the forest, again I went to the Gebirgsjäger capitulation site with hopes of a ditch full of goodies. As always I dug every signal and had soon found half a ton of wires and horse shoe ice cleat bolts and some chain bits. I made it up to a grassy patch where I ve found some good stuff earlier and had a good signal. Here it was difficult to dig because of a good layer of rocks beneath the surface but having those removed it was easier to dig in the sandy soil. I pulled out some nails and wire bits on the top but the signal was still there. A couple of signal flares came out next, but still it was a good signal. I checked the edges with my pinpointer but I had to dig deeper. Some 40-50 cm down the bayonet scraped against some metal. I removed more soil and rocks and saw a rounded thin edge, a barrel band, they always makes me believe I have found a helmet. It was stuck hard so I was sure it was a large piece of band and it had lots of rocks inside and around. I considered just leaving it and continue to search, but there could always have been something kool inside the barrel so I kept on digging to free it and get under it. I stuck the bayonet on the side of it and tried to loosen it and then I saw what it was. I just sat there, could not believe what I saw. Was I still at home in bed dreaming? No,the ants don`t bite in dreams, this was for real. I pulled it out, knocked some dirt of it and I was nothing but a big smile. I held my first helmet found metal detecting!! Overjoyed would be an understatement. I ve dreamt of this for years even before I got a detector, and every single signal I ve dug I have hoped for one. This one even looks like it ll clean up nicely and have some paint intact, it even looks like it has a decal on the side.
Back in 2006 or 7 me and a friend dug out a random ditch not having detectors, and he found a helmet that time and now I sat here with one of my own. Happy :)
I checked and double checked the hole but there was nothing more, so I thouroughly checked the surrounding area for a few hours but found nothing but rubbish so I decided to enjoy the day even more by slowly walking back to the car picking and eating blueberries and raspberries and it was just lovely.
Tomorrow I ll go to another forest and try my luck there.
​Keep Smiling my friends :)

Yesterday I made a little trip to the site where the capitulating Gebirgsjägers had their stables. It is not a large piece of land but parts of it is at the moment heavily overgrown, so a trip here later in the autumn is neccessary. On the area I did search there wasn`t too much to find, but I made a few little finds. Someone had some fun throwing horse shoe ice cleat bolts around coz I found lots of those scattered around. I found a large hole with a great strong signal but it seemed to be full of wires and of a thickness my pliers had problems with so I ll return to that one later as well armed with some stronger tool. I found a small ditch where a couple of crates had been burnt and picked with me the carrying handles and a horseshoe tool which also was there. The next little pit I dug had nothing but a horse harness, but next to it I found a part from a Egg hand grenade. And a few moments later I found another one like it but without the ignitor pull.
As the afternoon approached I discovered a larger ditch full of signals and began digging it. Lots of wires and barrell bands lay just benath the surface and I kept removing them and when I tried to find a spot next to the ditch with no signals to place them I had a good signal. I opened it up and it was a small dumping pit with a few items. The first one I pulled out was the bottom of a soldiers Kochgeschirr (cooking pot) and a small frying pan. The rotted remains of a blanket came out from the pit and another horseshoe tool. On the bottom was a horse bit and a nice wine bottle with much of the label intact. Of all the hundreds of bottles I ve dug this was a first so I was pleased with tha find. By now it had started raining quite heavily so I found it best to retreat and I ll hopefully make it out there again tomorrow morning :)

A couple of days ago I visited one of the few remaining original POW  memorials in my valley. Most of the memorials were destroyed by the Norwegian Government in 1951 when the gravsites were relocated to Tjøtta War Cemetery.
This memorial is a very beautiful one, sitting on a small hill overlooking the valley. It was here the prisoners buried their comrades who died in the camp located below the hill. In the forest floor one can still see where the graves had been. The camp itself there is no signs of today as it is farmland. Some locals keep the memorial nice and tidy and there is signs showing the way up to it following a small tractor road and then a small path into the forest.
In 1945 when the camp was liberated it housed 506 Red Army soldiers, 17 was sick, 80 of them very weak and 7 had died during the camps existence. There is no known photos of the camp but on the museum there is a model of it, built by people who lived next to it.
For more about the operation in 1951 and the Tjøtta War Cemetery follow the links below.

​www.hobbyhistorica.com/forests-of-norway/operation-asfalt
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Inscription:
"To the eternal memory over the comrades who sacrificed their lives so we cold win over the nazi murderers.
Shot: 2 Soviet soldiers.
Dead by starvation and inhuman treatment: 7 Soviet soldiers.
Nedre Sndby POW camp was built on the area below here, and was in use between 1942 and atumn 1945. Ca 500 POWs lived a inhuman life in this camp. Those who died was buried here, but after the Liberation moved to the war cemetery at Tjøtta."

Some days digging is less than fun. Those days when all you find is trash, the rain is pouring down hard filling your boots with water. You struggle with thick roots only to drag out a rusted bolt. Dumping pits yielding nothing but barbed wire, which tears up your gloves, and the next dumping pit only holds rusted tins and broken bottles that slices your fingers. Swarms of insects and ants on a mission to kill you. But still, you manage to keep up the spirit and hope the next signal will save the day.
Today was such a day. The moment I entered the forest the sky opened up and threw bucket sized rain drops down on me, before I knew it I was soaked to the bone and when it finally stopped raining the insects went berzerk on me and I was trying to fight them off with some weaponized Deet but with no luck.
I didn`t get any good finds either except the first signal I dug which was a beautiful little flare candleholder. I dug three dumping pits but it was only rubbish in them. After five hours I gave up and strolled back towards the car and found a lonely stripper clip on my way. The boots had a good amount of water in them so it was like walking in a stream, but despite all this, I was in a good mood, happy to be out in the fresh air and having ruled out some more places in the forest and was looking forward to a warm shower, dry clothes and a cooold beer. Maybe the next trip out will give some nicer finds.
​So until then, Keep Smiling :)

After a long and lazy morning we decided to get out for a stroll and went to the Gebirgsjäger capitulation site to hunt for treasures. The Fisher seemed hell bent on only picking out wires and nails but after a while we had a good signal under some branches. A couple of cm under the forest floor was a battledamaged canteen which I think will look good when cleaned up, but the next hours it was again all the well too familiar rusted wire bits to be found. In a grassy patch of the forest there seemed to be several  dumping pits spread around. The two first was quite small and held nothing interesting. I got a little frustrated and almost shouted "Aaaah,give me something good!!A belt buckle, EKM or a coin!!" and swept the detector under a bush. It gave off a very good signal , and it was a coin! A Norwegian one from 1940! A few meter away there was again a great signal. I opened it up and a few shovels in I knew it was a large dumping pit. I kept digging it for hours while my girlfriend wandered around with the detector.
When the pit was emptied it hadn`t come out so many good finds, but a handfull of things was good enough to be saved and brought back home. A couple of stripper clips, a few small bottles, two bayonet leather frogs and a large headlight of some kind made from aluminium.
Girlfriend had picked out a few good signals like a K98 cleaning kit, a Doramad toothpaste tube and she located a dumping pit which will be dug one of the next days. We were both getting hungry so we strolled back to the car following a small river where we found a hot food container and a broken Stomatol bottle in a beautiful blue color, really sad that one was broken..
Although we didn`t find much it had been a very fine day and as we got close to the car it began raining heavily so it was just a perfect timing to call it quits.
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