The last couple of mornings it has been frost and sub zero degrees but today the temperature was back up to a "normal" +4 Celsius, so it was time for a small trip to the forest. I wanted to check out a place so I detected my way through the forest. On my way I found a pick axe with the handle intact, some buttons, a ski binding, a gasmask canister with mask inside, a box missing its lid and a bunch of k98 casings. I came across a small area with lots of good signals and there I dug out a Norwegian 25 Øre coin from 1943, part of a Esbit burner, a stripper clip and a small "viking" sword letter opener, marked "Norge 1941". Sadly it had been broken in three parts and I didnt manage to find the handle part. I also found a couple of small ashtrays. Then I found the place I wanted to find. It had stood a couple of German barracks there and the whole slope next to them was full of signals, metal poking out here and there, and a few ovens  visible through the undergrowth. I checked a few of the signals and there were buckets, oven parts, horseshoes, casings, and trash. Here might be some good stuff hiding, but I became aware of some hunters coming in to the area, so we greeted each other and I withdrew as I was unarmed and their season for hunting is shorter than mine and I wouldn`t disturb them or their prey :D Definately a spot I am going to come back to though, but that might not happen before next season..

Today the hunting season began here north so it was a bit more exciting going out to the forest for some relic and berry searching. Luckily the hunters were spread out in other places in the valley and not in the thick woods where we were headed. We saw them while driving in, posted around open fields, marshes and small tops, sitting on their chairs with rifles across their laps. Hunting sure has lost some of its intensity since man Hunted the animals with spears or arrows back in the days when one had to track down the animal.. But they looked like they were enjoying it and thats one of the most important things with a hobby. Doing the things we love makes us not notice being wet and cold, like that we rust hunters and moose hunters are the same.
 We found the dumping pit deep in the forest, which needed to be completed, and while I dug into it the Girlfriend disappeared to go forage some berries for us to enjoy come winter. She returned about the same time as I was filling back the rocks and soil into the pit and sorted out the finds worth keeping. She had much better luck than me, she brought back a few kilos of berries! My haul was more meager, a bunch of small white plastic buttons, several cream tubes, a few bottles, two rubber muzzle caps and a razor. 
I roamed around a bit with the detector and soon found a patch with a bunch of signals. Under the moss was a whole bunch of full K98 clips spread around, broken porcelain, two rifle cleaning kits, some 9mm rounds, a field shovel, a spoon, a Göffel, a couple of small bottles and a few buttons.
After some eating and a cup of warm Chaga we slowly strolled towards the car, but we stumbled upon a couple of dumping pits on the way. The first one held nawt but rubbish and a small silver bracelet. I found an exact same type of bracelet in another part of the forest earlier this summer. The other pit was a bit of a struggle. It had some big items in it, but it was overgrown with rather thick roots and a lot of rocks had been dumped atop it. After a good while I had managed to fight both items back to the surface. One was a fuel barrell top with some text on, "200l Kraftstoff Feuergefarlich Wehrmacht". The other was the seat from a vehicle, a Kübel- or Schwimmwagen, it was in quite good condition so I guess it ll find its way to someone restoring a vehicle.
After filling back both these pits I took a round with the detector checking single signals spread around. It wasn`t a meter without a beep from it. One place I found a 20l fuel can, I found half a iron cast oven thrown around, bits of zink and other sheet metals, a vehicle flag frame and quite a lot of nails. Starting to get tired I fell down on my knees for checking yet another patch full of signals and there it was, a find I hadn`t dared dream of having again. A Finnish-German Nordfront Cross!! (After clean up I see now that it is one of the Lapplandfront variant of this cross) It was a totally amazing find. The cross was in quite good condition and of another variant than the one I was lucky enough to find last year, precisely one year and one day between the finds. Around the cross was a few other items as well, a gold plated brooch with some red stones, a named aluminum tag, a dice and a gaming piece and some buttons. With this find in hand the winter can just come tomorrow, I have had a crazy season this year!! (but of course I hope it`ll still be a few more weeks of season, the thrill of the hunt os better than any finds :D )
Now it was time to call it quits and we picked berries on our way back to the car and spent a couple of hours when home cleaning and sorting them to make jams and syrup :)
Happy Hunting my friends :)

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The days here North are getting shorter and the forests and mountainsides are rapidly getting dressed in yellow, red and orange and the digging season is soon over. Thats why I really try getting out there every day now. On Tuesday I spent 7 hours or so exhausting myself while trying to cover a lot of ground and at the same time checking all the signals, a near impossible task of course given the amount of old war junk in the ground and the wastness of the forests, but one have to try :D I didn`t get any great finds but there were enough to put some weight in the backpack. I also discovered several dumping pits that I would love to have time to search through before winter is finally here. I picked up a few tools from underneath the berry covered forest floor, a full RG34 rifle cleaning kit, a few Esbit burners, a couple of M24 parts, a artillery shell cannister lid and a gear shift stick for a vehicle. The last few hours I opened up one of the dumping pits and worked my way through 1/3 of it but it was a very difficult one as it was full of rocks with roots grown over and across and lots of big horse bones. It didn`t give much of a result relic wise but I managed to build a little pile of bottles, cream tubes, a Finnish porcelain plate, a fork and a small metal cast miniature model of the cathedral in Trondheim, probably a soldier stationed there at some point picked it up as a souvenir.
Wednesday it was raining buckets so I did some cleaning of relics and worked on making cufflinks where I use rifle casings I have picked up on battlefields over the years.
Today Girlfriend could join me so we took the car and went to the fields of rust and berries together and spent some 5 hours digging for rust and filling several bags of berries. There is little better in life doing what you love, together with someone you love. Again I didn`t have a great lot of luck on the finds but that is really not the most important thing either, the hunt is the bigger joy, and getting the good finds is a blessed bonus when that happen. That said there was at least one find that I would classify as very good, and that was a M24 head, empty from the potential dangerous stuff so that can go straight in an Oxalic acid bath once I get some more of that. I also found a gasmask filter, a gasmask cannister, a few tools, another rifle cleaning kit, a Heer axe, a enamelled kettled with several porcelain cream jars inside and two helmet liners, so somewhere around there should be a couple of helmets unless someone already found them ofcourse. Other than thats I dug out some rifle casings, both live, empty and exploded ones, a couple of field batteries and of course some 378 kg of nails, food tins, barbed wires and unrecognisable trash. As dinner time approached I was just closing up a small dumping pit when the first raindrops fell. The sky had gradually become something that could hang above Mordor and as soon as we got ourselves, the rust and all the berries into the car the skies opened up and its been pouring down since. All I can hope for now is that it stops before tomorrow coz I wanna go out there again :D

​Stay dry but dirty my friends :)

On Thursday we went to the city for Girlfriend to have an exam, which she passed brilliantly, and when we were back home we took a stroll up a hill near our house. To my surprise we stumbled across quite a few trenches and dugouts overlooking the fjord, so now I need to try find out who the landowner is to do a little search there. But we weren`t out for old war stuff, we hunted cloudberries because Girlfriend wanted some for winter. After a while we found a patch in the forest where the berries lived and soon we had a bag filled and could stroll back home to make jam. 
On Friday after lunch we headed out to check on one of her insect traps and when that was done we went to a German camp on the other side of the forest for some searching. I searched for relics while she began filling a couple of bags with blueberries. I found a large spot between some trees where lots of rubbish had been dumped and set fire to sometime after the war, and began checking it in case a few nice relics had survived. I picked up a few food tins, a losantine box, a couple of gaming pieces, a rifle cleaning kit, some cutlery and a pair of icecleated horseshoes. I began digging out what looked like a large metal crate, but it was the bottom of a stove, which was both funny and annoying, but next to it I found a Luger magazine and a big enamelled pitcher. At this point we were half eaten by blackflies and biting midges so we escaped back home with our findings to make pancakes with fresh blueberry jam!
The rest of the weekend was dedicated to work and relaxation but this morning I got up quite early to continue last weekends dumping pit. I spent nearly six hours there today, constantly digging and cutting roots so now there is ca 50% left of the pit to dig. It is one of the largest dumping pits I have found, but definately not the one with most rubbish and relics in. Most of the stuff having come out of it so far is rusted food cans, bottles, lots of bottles, and a big amount of rotted steel buckets. In between all this I did find a few relics worth saving though. I found several bakelite items, a canteen drinking cup, toothbrushes, two large bowls, a few jar lids, a pen and the mouthpiece from a pipe. I dug out a few coins, a Finnish, a Norwegian and two German. A very nice glass oil lamp had managed to not break so I rescued that together with a metal shaving cup with some trench-art engraved on it. A pocket watch face and the partly melted box lid for it were found meters apart, and I found a small brass viking ship, prehaps a decorative ashtray. I found a large roundish item which I first thought was a bakelite bucket of some kind but when I got it out it was a red enamelled soup kettle in perfect condition, that`ll please the Girlfriend I bet :D Inside the kettle was pieces of a burnt book, a small mysterious brass capsule, and a bunch of white/black-green striped cloth laces which I really wonder what is. Around the kettle were lots of porcelain bits which looks like will build 2-3 coffee mugs when puzzled together and one intact large coffee mug. Now the backpack was filled to the brim and I was itching and bleeding from an unknown number of insect bites, the little bastards really had a feast on me today so I filled back what I had dug out and made a hasty retreat back to the car and went home.
Tomorrow I will arm myself with some insect repellent and go search for more rusted treasures:)