Early Monday morning I was back to the site where I found the Lappland Schild. I wanted to continue a bit on the dumping pit and also take time to do some metal detecting in the surrounding area. The last few days the weather has become strangely summery again, with temps laying around 14-15 degree Celsius. Of course some of the gnats and black flies likes this and gets extra happy when I come around to feed them. 
I spent two-three hours working in the dumping pit and found a few interesting bits besides an ore of broken glass and burnt batteries. A few pieces belonging to communication equipment ,had survived the burning of this garbage, like plugs and connectors. Some of them were made from bakelite and can be made functional again, just luck they didn`t melt in the fire. A few radio tubes made it to the relic pile, so did a very nice Göffel and a large iron ashtray. When I had enough of this work I got up on my legs and found the metal detector to do some regular searching.
Quite near to the dumping pit I found a small hoard of coins, Norwegian ones ranging from 1933 to 1942. A T.Mi.Z.35 fuze missing its top plate was otherwise in very nice condition. Next to it was a MP38/ 40 magazine and a bit further a German canteen, and then I found another little coinspill, six German coins this time. Also there was a lot of junk left behind from modern day army excercises.
In the middle of a slope I got a typical "dumping pit signal". Here I spent the rest of the day, scraping and digging away soil. It was quite a nice result from the work as well. A lot of metal chess pieces, a good handfull of coins,a few Germans but mostly Finnish. The nicest one was a Finnish 10 Pennia from 1890. On the side of the ditch a denazified Wound Badge in Black had  been waiting to be dug out for ca 80 years. It had a few small damages but I am really happy with that find. I found three fishing lures, seeing that there is a good river nearby I guess the soldiers could enjoy that kind of foraging from time to time. Glass came out of the ditch in a steady pace, mostly pefume bottles but probably around ten intact wine and beer bottles too. I spotted a wavy pattern on a small silver looking item and thought it was a pendant in the shape of a sea shell, but when I turned it and wiped some soil from it I saw it was a panzer skull. These were worn on the panzer uniforms collar tabs. I was very surprised to find this as I know this place only as a Gebirgsjäger camp, and it was in general not too many panzer units here. A great little find that I for a long time hoped to get. When I had dug ca half the pit my shift was ending and I had to start thinking about going home. I swept the detector in front of me and found on the way to the car two German coins and a razor that a root had grown through and separated the three parts, quite funny, so I cut the root so I could bring it home for preservation.
The parking lot was full of hunters. They were all excited as it was the first day of the moose hunting, making the woods and fields a rather risky place to be for me in the coming days. Hopefully they will get their quota within a few days so I can get back to finish the dumping pit.
Until then I am going to clean relics, and work on a few diorama projects.
Enjoy the autumn days :)

Its been good days lately for being out in the forests and I have managed to make a few trips so far this week. I collected some berries and gathered a bit more rust for the winter. Early in the week the Girlfriend joined me and we walked around finding berries and digging the occasional signal given by the metal detector. We got a lot of nice berries but only a few relics. The best relics that day was a MP38/40 magazine, a tent peg and a couple of uniform buttons. We also dug up a M24 head, a few gaming pieces and a hatch or lid that could belong to a vehicle, so not too much.
On the next trip I went alone to a small dumping ditch I had started earlier this summer. Here I spent some hours digging the rest of it. A few interesting bits was in it, but it was a whole lot of work for them. A pair of field made rubber suspenders was the first item to be dug out. Those must have been popular because I have found many of them. Some broken bits of porcelain gave me hope that I had a cool 3D puzzle going but that dream got crushed when I only found unmarked bits. I found a small stack of metal dishes from a field kitchen, a big iron candle holder for three candles, lots of perfume bottles and a gasmask cannister. The best find in the ditch was a orange bakelite toothbrush cup marked "Odol" and another pair of combat boots cut down to slippers. This time I took another route back to the car and found a small interesting area that I ll check out more in the coming week. There I picked up a close combat knife, a car key, four medical scissors and some scrap metal. These scissors are cutting metal very well so I am hoping there will be some trench art bits laying around.
Today I went out just for a small round on a new permission. I have found a few nice bits here already so I am hoping this place will deliver. What I first thought was a flat stone was in fact a Kraftstoff barrell top, a good start to the hunt. Nearby I found parts of a fuel pump, a fire extinguisher and a box for S-Mine parts (I think..) Some nails and bolts later a nice tent peg turned up. Followed by a interesting 12cm shell casing. It has the primer on the side of the casing, and its bottom plate is missing, I am hoping it is around there somewhere. I strolled towards the edge of the forested plateau and spotted a large moose slowly crossing the field in front of me. A very nice moment. As I had other things on the to-do list I began moving towards the car and found a huge pile of barbed wire. Large coils piled up and strewn around. Another small pile of some metal frame thingies within the barbed wires pile caught my eye. I didn`t know what it was really, but I was 100% sure it had something to do with MG 34/42 ammo boxes. I picked up one and it had roughly the lenght and width of a ammo box. It looked like one could hang the frame on to something. When these where attached to my backpack I could continue to the car.
Back home I took a ammo box and tried to put it into one of the frames. A perfect fit. Could it be for attaching ammo boxes to mules, or even front-dogs? I hope some of you readers know these carrying frames and can shed some more info :)
The weekend is still a day away so prehaps there will be a trip back there tomorrow.
Have a nice day :)
​

On Friday morning me and the Girlfriend loaded up the HobbyHistoricamobile and were before 09 in the morning ready for a roadtrip. We were gonna drive from home to Kautokeino in Finmark, a trip on ca 820 km tour-retour. Our main mission were to collect the last of her insect traps for her fieldwork, but we also wanted to visit the Tirpitz museum in Kaafjord just outside Alta. The trip north went very well and after collecting her trap in Kautokeino we ate dinner and drove back to the Alta area to find a nice place to overnight. After looking around for a while we just decided on a parking place outside the city. Here was a big pile of war junk laying. A couple of ship guns and some other bits from Hitlers aircraft carrier that never saw completion, the Graf Zeppelin. The guns had been sent north to become part of a coastal fortress. On a small hill was a large crater from a Tallboy bomb that had missed Tirpitz by just a few meters so it was a real historic site we had decided to spend the night which were lit up by a massive northern lights playing across the sky.
Next morning we drove a few kilometers to collect her second insect trap. While she trekked the mountain side to pick it, I found a hill and collected berries. Here I met a squirrel that took great interest in what I was up to and sat on a branch only three meter from me for a long time.
Before lunch we were ready and found our way to the Tirpitz museum. The owner of the museum, Even Blomkvist, has spent big parts of his life collecting items, photos and stories about the battleship, and opened the museum in 2005. 
In the lobby a huge model of Tirpitz is on display. The scale is 1/32 which makes the model several meters long, and next to it a 1/50 model of its sister ship Bismarck. The Bismarck model is completely scratchbuilt and is very impressive. Throughout the museum is several other models of these two and many other ships.
Hundreds of interesting pics and items is telling the story of the ship and the wartime in the Kaafjord- and Alta area, and the Allied attacks on Tirpitz attempting to destroy it. Here you will see everything from small uniform buttons to super-rare relics like an example of a Johnny Walker Diving Mine that were used to try to sink the German battleship that were stationed in the Northern Norwegian fjords to disturb the convoy traffic in the Barents sea.
A little later on the day there was also a book launch in the museum. The Norwegian artist, John Jamtli, has made a comicbook about the demise of Tirpitz and the Norwegian secret agents that helped the Allied with crucial information to make the operation possible. A really well made comicbook that both young and old can enjoy, and it will hopefully be translated to English at some point.
This is definately a museum I am going to visit again and I highly reccommend it.
 Link to the museum website: www.tirpitz-museum.no/

It is good days for digging, only some light rain from time to time, most of the bugs have completed their work for the season, and the temperature is still comfortable. It won`t be like this for long though. I have felt the ice in a few gusts of wind, and the snow on the tops is crawling closer to the tree line. 
Yesterday I spent 6-7 hours searching and digging. The digging here is mostly done with the bayonet and fingers. Since the soil are so full of roots, rocks and relics using the shovel is pointless. There is lots of barbed wire around as well. I still haven`t got an efficient cutter which would make the search so much easier. I began where I had left off on Sunday and the first find was a single unissued dog-tag. The next hours I made a pile of cream tubes, radio tubes, radio parts, small bottles, tools, a vehicle pennant, boots, gaming pieces and three fire extinguishers. After a little break, some food and a stretching of legs and back I dove in for a couple more hours. It was much the same stuff that came out from the ground between what must be hundred or more batteries. I dug up half of a porcelain deep plate with Luftwaffe markings. I kept finding bits of porcelain throughout the day which I collected with the hopes of getting all the parts for the plate. After having been snagged by barbed wire for the fiftieth time I ironically I found a rusted pioneers barbed wire scissors. Maybe it could work after restoring, it is allowed to hope. When I had uncovered more parts of communication equipment, two Druckzunder 35 boxes and a pencil sharpener of blue plastic, some keys and a cup filled with melted lead, I found a  Heer marked porcelain tea plate broken in half. At least it was a clean break so it ll glue nicely back together. It was a full back pack I waddled out of the forest with around dinner time.    
 Today I was back on place early, armed with lunch and a pair of new gloves. I need to buy some high quality kevlar gloves I think, coz this pair had holes in them just a few hours into the digging. Not counting the hole a piece of glass made before it cutted its way into my nail and finger, making todays digging a bit painful. The first hour I dug lots of the usual stuff and then I found ca half of a porcelain plate which would fit perfectly to the Luftwaffe plate from yesterday.
​ I was working my way in under a tree root, pulling out bits of rust and metal when I noticed some details on a aluminum fragment. My mind blanked out and rebooted itself once or twice. Could it really be? The item I always dreamed about having in my collection. My "Holy Grail". I got on my feet to find water and clean the metal piece, but first a swig for myself just to make sure I was not dreaming, man, that would have pissed me off. A branch from a pine bush did a good job as a scrub and my system was pumped full of adrenalin and endorphines. Now, hours later when writing this I keep looking at the item in partly disbelief. Still uncut from the sheet of metal it was stamped on was a Lappland Schild!! The Lappland arm shield was the last officially instituted campaign shield of the war. It was authorized in February 1945. The Lappland Shield was often produced in the field by different units. There is still lots left to dig in the pit and I am now fantasizing that there might be more of the shields there, or prehaps the stamp itself. How crazy would that be? I said just a week ago to a friend who showed me his two Lappland shields (different variant than mine) that if I ever found one I could quit metal detecting and go for Lego instead :D So now when I have found what I believed for the longest time would never be found, I need to find something else to dream about finding :D
​I dug on for a few hours more finding some empty rifle grenades, a few small wire spools, and a small chess piece made from thin sheet metal.
Tomorrow is supposed to be nicer weather, the Girlfriend will be home so I think there will be a little expedition to the fields of berries and relics then. But first some rest and sleep :)

Windshield wiper engine.

Last night King Winter said a brief `Hello`. It is always a little shock when looking out the window in the morning and seeing the first frost of the autumn covering everything. It is really beautiful though. All the autumn colors and the white cover that is sparkling in the morning rays, truly spectacular. The sky was all blue and the sun warmed a bit, melting the frost rapidly. Soon after the morning coffee we went looking for treasures and berries in the forest with the vehicle workshop. We found the dumping pit I started before the weekend and I continued digging there while Girlfriend strolled around to get an overview of the area and try find some good berry spots.
Almost immediately I had a nice find in my hand. A cloth chevron in really good condition. The black cloth triangle had the silver/aluminum tress sewn on, which had gotten a hint of green color from some copper wire that laid next to it. I think the chevron is either for a WH Panzer Obergefreiter, or a SS Rottenführer, either way a very nice find :) I found some remains of a book, a metal plate with a paper label with French writings on and a bakelite box full of safety pins for ZZ35 igniters. A smashed field radio took some time to get loose from the ground and in the process I found three intact radio tubes and several destroyed ones. Then I uncovered the tip of a boot, dug it out, and got a funny surprise. A pair of German ancle boots had been cut down into a comfy pair of slippers, now thats an unusual find :) When I removed some soil I got all excited. I saw a dog-tag, and then another, and a whole bunch of them!! Three seasons ago was last time I found a dog-tag, and have wanted to find more ever since. Now I had 16 of them, and of course they were all blank and unissued. I should have been more specific when I wished for finding tags :D
​ I dug up a couple of lighters, two were rusted but a third were made from finer metal and had survived far better. A Luftwaffe marked teaspoon was a first for me. I have never found aluminum teaspoons marked with the eagles before. Sadly this one had rotted in the middle and broke in two. Three small ampoules with something inside was also something I have never seen before. They were a little bit bigger than matches, made of brown glass and filled with a dark fluid thicker than water. A little mystery. One of the last finds today was a small hand held wire spool. We had other things we should have done today so it was time to end the digging fun. The Girlfriend had no luck finding berries, but had located several possible dumping ditches which we ll check out sometime soon.
Have a great week :)

The rain was still pouring down when I got up. My clothes and boots were still wet, but I just had to get it all back on and go finish digging the dumping pit. It was not very pleasant stepping into the cold and dripping forest in my already soaked gear but a few minutes into the digging I got warm and happy again. After some wrestling with big bits of iron and rocks I finally had the last of the rims dug out and moved to the surface, or so I thought. I soon discovered at least one more under a huge rock in the corner of the pit. I wasn`t able to move it an inch so I left it there. At least I know where it is should I ever need it :D I wonder if the rims could be for an RSO (Raupenschlepper Ost). Other than the rims I found four pairs of soldier boots, a enamel cup, a dinner knife with Heer markings, some broken car pennant frames, a few vehicle parts and a strange steel ball with a wooden core, holes on each "pole".
 I strolled around for a bit picking up signals and the area had to be the camps workshop. It was full of bolts, nuts, spark plugs and such rubbish. These low quality signals were all over the place so I moved towards the main camp area, looking for more dumping pits.
In a blown out "cellar" or bunker in the hillside I got lucky. Lots of signals, metal poking out, rolls of barbed wire, bottles and food tins strewn around. I opened up a little spot in one of the sides and had a small painted sign in my hand all of the sudden. In poor condition but it had a pointy end, white and blue with a red "T". Some digging later I started wondering if this had been a radio bunker. I was digging up lots of radio related bits, radio tubes, batteries, wires and cables, plugs and pieces of headphones and mics. I also found the front panel of a reciever or sender, lots of papers with some text visible, like a signallers log scheme. It looked to be in nice condition but crumbled and "melted" when touching it. I dug up two buttons, a standard uniform button and what I think is a WW1 Reichsmarine button. I made a few more cuts with the shovel and found a very nice box for the Druckzunder 35 and a fire extinguisher. One of the last things I picked out from the mud was a great little gem. Gustav Barthels "Little Wonder Torch", a miniature alcohol torch. Its handles had broken off but easy to replace should one want :)
​ I am hoping for better weather soon so it ll be a little more comfortable being outside because this dumping place is very interesting and I cant wait to get back here.
At home I hung all the gear for drying, cleaned myself and then the house. Hehe, it took me half an hour to carry all the war junk I had piled in the hallway downstairs to my work station, but now it is all clean and nice and the Girlfriend can return, any minute now I guess so I better start preparing her some good dinner:)
Have a nice weekend, enjoy it the best way possible :)

The Girlfriend is doing the last week of her fieldwork and will be back home this week so I have been busy out in the woods digging up rusted relics to impress her with.  The floors have been dragged full of sand, vegetation, mud and rust so I have a big job cleaning the house before she returns tomorrow evening, if not there is a chance she will be less impressed. And knowing myself, I will probably go searching tomorrow, leaving me with only a few hours left for panic-cleaning :D
I have been doing quite a lot of walking and digging the last week, mainly in a large Heer camp, but didn`t find huge amounts of relics. Most of the time it has been raining but there were some moments with partly blue sky and a warming autumn sun. One of the days I found a ditch along the top of a slope. It had some really promising signals so I had no other choice than to get sweaty, well, if it hadn`t been just easy sandy soil I would have dug on me some heat. I like such easy digging conditions, sandy soil often it preserves relics well too. The reason for the signal was the top of a large parafin lamp, nice blue lacquered steel. Next to it was two gasmask containers, one had the lid open, but the mask looks to be ok, the other one was closed but also have the mask by the feel of it. Other than that the ditch held some cream tubes, bottles and food tins.
After searching in the slope where I could only find stove parts and rubbish I was back to the top of the slope and got a very good signal almost immediately. Ca 20 centimeters down I had contact with metal. I suspected it to be a fire extinguisher, as I have found many of those the last seasons and my fingers seems to have memorized the extinguishers configurations quite well. The soil was so loose that I could just pull the item out and it was an extinguisher. Mounted in the bracket, and in an amazing condition! The text and logo was all super clear and clean. Probably one of the best preserved items I have ever found. Having it on the surface I scooped around in the sand with my hand and suddenly had hold on another one! This one too in great condition and in the bracket! Both the brackets had some small damages but I am so pleased with this find. Now I spent some hours searching the rest of the edge of the slope but the luck had ran out.
Another day I spent some time in another part of the forest and found a rather big dump. I did a little probing and it is very possible it is good stuff there. It is a lot of metal, barrels, fuel cans, food tins and barbed wire, lots of wire. I didn`t do any digging there, I only pulled out a German leather boot and realized I will need a good wire cutter that can eat through the barbed wires so I can access the other stuff, whatever it is. Later on the day I wandered into a huge patch of raspberry bushes and swapped the detector for a bag. When I had filled it with the sweet red berries I went home to make jam.
Today the weather looked like it was going to be decent enough for digging so I went out quite early. I followed another path in the forest this time, and found the remains of two or three buildings and searched around them for a while. It was plenty of "building shrapnel" but I did pick up a small ashtray of the souvenir kind. It had a viking ship and "Norge" engraved on it. Too much rubble and roots made it difficult to dig there so I grabbed my backpack and went strolling again. Not long after I saw a metal pipe sticking out of the ground. It has some strong signals around so I was back to digging. After a little while it had become clear that this was a massive dumping pit. Filled with oven parts, pipes, tubes, vehicle parts, wagon parts and rocks. Big rocks. It was a real heavy day. After a while it began raining hard too, not the fine drizzle that had come from time to time. Oh,no, this was big heavy angry-rain. The nice rich soil quickly turned into mud and I was soaked to the skin. The water pooled in some of the relics I had brought to the surface. After several hours of that joy I had to stop. I had no more space in my backpack and I was getting quite tired and hungry. I had placed in the "bring home pile" two krafstoff barrell tops, a car jack, a lug wrench, window glass for a car,a porcelain cup, a bakelite box, a vehicle horn, some other vehicle parts and four nice Notek lamps!!   
I made it home safely and everything is hung up to dry, and there is mud everywhere, man, how will this go, and I have one-third left of the pit to dig, so it ll be a busy day for me tomorrow. Its gonna be wet too looking at the weather report :)

Snow is covering the mountain tops and it is wet days here in the valley. Yesterday it was raining so much, and the weather report promised that we could expect similar today. After the morning coffee I peeked out the window again and I didn`t see much rain at all. I had a few errands to run but after that had been done I drove to the forest. The dumping pit from last trip was todays primary objective. It had of course been constantly on my mind since I left it.
When I reached it I searched around it and picked up a couple of Finnish coins and more of those brackets, which I now know what are. It is the rubber pads on halftrack/RSO tracks, just minus the rubber, that could have been burnt away or cut off for recycling at some point.
In the pit I began by removing the loose stuff from previous visit, making sure to have a good look through it not to miss anything. A difficult task when the soil is wet and sticky. When that was done I started searching through the un-dug part of the pit. I pulled out a food tin and my jaw dropped! I laughed out loud and could not believe my eyes! I couldn`t tell which of the variants but I was looking at a Nordfront- or Lapplandfront Cross sticking out from the soil! The two last seasons I have found two of these awards, with a year and a day apart, now this one some twenty days early. What a trip :D I freed the badge from the soil and noticed the enamel had a little damage and that the front plate was missing. That sucked, and it would be difficult to find the small flat part in this mud,  but I was so excited by the find anyway. Then I looked down and saw the part laying there! It must have come out together with the food tin. Now I was even happier. I placed it in a safe spot and got back to searching.
The hours went by and I had dug through the pit. I had dug up a lot of the track link brackets, a lot of food tins, some small bottles but only one large bottle this time, toothpaste tubes and a few padlocks. I also found a knife, an axe, a field torch, some rifle ammo and several medical ampoules, all empty.
Having backfilled the dumping pit and stretched my back I searched around for a while. First find was a pick axe with "73" engraved on the side, then a pair of medical scissors and a pair of ski goggles.  Then I moved towards the car and alternated searching and picking blueberries. It is probably the last of the blue gold that will be picked this season, but next week we can begin picking the red and delicious lingonberry.
The last signal I dug today was another pretty good find, a German fire extinguisher for a vehicle, and the holder for it.
As I was driving home the rain came pouring down. Hopefully it won`t last too long. 
After dinner I gave the badge a light cleaning and it is a Lapplandfrontkreuz variant I did not already have. It came in 12 variants and the three I have found are different from each other. 
​Happy days my friends. Enjoy autumn as best as you can :)