I had to scrape ice off my Transporters windshield before going to work earlier this week, and the last two mornings the thermometer has shown it to be minus 6 degrees Celsius outside. What is worse is that the weather report is promising snow tonight, and lots of sub zero degrees in the coming week. I hope that won`t make this becoming the last trip report this season, but I guess there is a chance. 
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 If this is the end of it I did have a nice closure with a couple of trips to the Gebirgsjäger headquarter.
  Monday morning was spent walking up and down along the camps main road picking up signals. Lots of candy wraps from trekkers and some 7.62 Nato exercise casings from war games got put in the garbage bag and in two hours the only war time related find I had was a clasp from a Y-strap.
​ I moved towards a couple of still standing barracks and in the woods around them I had more luck. The first signal there was a Kriegsmarine uniform button, and near it was a Finnish 5 Markkaa coin. Sweeping over an irrigation ditch the metal detector screamed out. A nice mix of signals, iron, aluminum and brass. It was a small rubbish dump, with food tins, some 9mm ammo,a cabinet from a radio and a rotten M24 grenade. There were also a lid for a black butterdish in the soil and a very nice French soap box. "Gibbs replacement soap". The material it is made from looks and feels like plastic, but in luke warm water it became soft like rubber.
 For hours I searched the edge of the forest. Together with an axe and a pickaxe was a small square bottle embossed with "G.M.Müller & co Berlin". It had leftovers of blue ink inside so it will find a place in the ink jar collection. A Danish coin came out of the ground together with a simple, unmarked silver ring, and a nametag made of some synthetic fibre. "St.gefr. A. David" was written on it, but now barely readable.
 The weather had shifted and it started raining so I began to plan my escape back to the car. I tried to cut the route shorter by pressing myself through a thicket of birch sapplings. In the middle of it I got myself a bit stuck and while trying to untangle myself and the backpack I kept hearing the detector scream. It turned out some metal is buried under this wall of sapplings. Finally free I walked around the thicket and picked up a few more interesting signals. I tried digging one of them but it was a hole full of bottles. Broken and intact ones, with a good signal hiding under. Something to check before winter if the weather will allow it :)

Some days later the GirlfriendWife wanted an airing, so we went to the forest where I could search while she was running around.
 I dug up wires, radio parts and junk from the irrigation ditch, and GirlfriendWife had already became bored of nature so she grabbed the detector and started looking for signals. She indicated potentially good spots with piles of tiny branches for me to dig up and check later. We enjoyed this for the next couple of hours before the rain and drop in temperature herded us back to the car. We didn`t have many finds, but a few cream tubes, a Norwegian coin, a razor, a lid from a 7.5 cm grenade transport tube and its shell protector part, and lots and lots of the red Nato plastic casings.

Now it is time to put some more firewood into the oven and enjoy a good book in front of it while crossing the fingers for some mild weather and more searching :)

Thanks for reading, and enjoy your week :)

​Not many days after King Winter announced his arrival with laying the first frost last sunday he followed up with a good old snow sprinkling on the mountain tops, all the way down to the treeline. Down in the valleys the weather has mostly been terribly wet, cold and windy. So windy that two sturdy looking old birchtrees around the house snapped and fell. But on the two days when the sun peeked out between the clouds I grabbed the detector and went to check out two sites.

 The first site was the camp where I found the Kriegsmarine badge, plus two other badges, a few weeks ago. I wanted to finally check a potential dumping pit there. It is a hole in the ground with bits of a cast iron oven and a barrack stove of the triangular type sticking out from the soil.
 After prying loose the iron bits and lifting them out of the way it quickly became clear that this was the only metal present. I probed around a little bit with the shovel and the bayonet with no other finds than rocks. Well, at least I got it checked and out of the mind.
 I spent the next hours going over and across the place but with very meager results. I`d dare call it empty, but then you`ll see an iron cross or something turn up next time :D I picked up a few crate- and box parts, the remains of a field made iron chandelier, several uniform buttons and the reserve tip for a ski.
 In the entrance to a small bunker the detector gave a good signal, but it was a modern british teaspoon. Together with it were a pair of military rubber/canvas "shoes". Something to pull over the regular army boots in snowy- and wet conditions, I think. Definitely something forgotten by a soldier in one of the many Nato exercises the area has seen.

I also went back to the large camp where I found the Lappland shields last week. The first hour I tried moving around in a thicket near the river, but luckily there were no signals there as it would be very difficult to dig there. Some of the original wehrmacht barracks and garages are still standing so I wandered over and spent the rest of the day collecting metals from under the ground. The first signal was a nice Polish uniform button. I wonder how that ended up there,,possibly from a POW? 
 A strong aluminum signal got my heart racing. Was it a cache of lapplandshields? Or ten belt buckles, like Jimmy found earlier this summer (the lucky bastard)? Or was it a ditch full of food tins? Absolutely it was. Food tins! Enough of them for a lifetime :D I opened up another signal and found a bakelite cover for binoculars, but the reason for the signal was hiding in the grey soil. I could see a small ring and as I swept the sand away a KVK with Swords revealed itself! A very nice medal, my ninth or tenth find of these. They must have been popular, or maybe unpopular, since they turn up from the ground quite often. I followed signals around the medal for the next hours and the result was pretty good. Several well preserved coins, Finnish,German and Norwegian ones. And broken in two parts I found a very nicely decorated matchbox cover. The image was a vikingship with "Norge" underneath. It had much of the nicklecoating intact, and looking closely I could see specks of red paint on parts of the ship. I also dug up a small pendant, but it was too corroded to see any markings, some cream tubes, straps and buckles.

Another wet and cold week is starting tomorrow, and a few days later the hunting season begins. This will require me to wear my  bright red digging hoddie, make the livestok distinguishable from forest animals with brightly colored knitted hats and sweaters, and at least the first week or until they have hunted their quota, it will limit the options of where to dig, but I might know of a place or two where I wont risk any stray bullets :D

I wish it was summer again :D

​Thanks for reading and enjoy your week :)
 
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Last week I had time for a half-day searching and I found only one good thing. From the bottom of a small burn pit I rescued a nice ring decorated with a viking ship. In that camp some other diggers had been quite active since my last trip there, and they hadn`t bothered to fill back the holes they had dug. Relics- and worse, broken glass spread around the holes, making it dangerous for animals, berry pickers and other diggers. Such behaviour is so unnecessary and I hope that their metal detectors forever will give false signals and constantly run out of batteries.

 
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On tuesday this week I finished work before lunch and decided to go straight to the forest. An old dig had come back to haunt my mind lately. The radiobunker where I found a Lapplandshield in the autumn of 2021. I remembered there was a small part of the bunker I hadn`t touched. I had left it because of a thick layer of barbed wire that was filtered together with tree roots, relics, other kinds of wires, soil and rocks. 
 With the wire cutter ready I put on protective goggles and a pair of thick gloves I was prepared to make an attempt on this madness. The first find came already when I took off the top soil. In the clay was stuck a bakelite lid for a Gebirgs Geschutz powder charge tin. It took time and deciliters of sweat to remove the first section of barbed wire and get to the layer of relics.  When reaching the layer I found a couple of leather boots. One normal Wehrmacht boot, and one of the Gebirgsjäger type. Together with them were some cream tubes, bottles and an interesting thermos cup. It had the manufacturers logo and code under and also it had the material it was made of written on it, "Hulorit". I love items made with all those different synthetic materials and early plastics that saw light in the thirties and forties. 
 I kept cutting away wire to expand the digging area, so wire bits were towering up and the relic pile kept growing. Tools and radio parts, and some personal effects such as soap dishes, pipes, uniform buttons, and parts of a clock had survived the fire that had raged in the pit. Under the layer of relics was up to 50 centimeter with ashes, burnt wood and tons of destroyed batteries, large coils of thin electrical wires, bottles and broken glass and melted blobs of metal from all sorts of stuff.
 Under some barbed wire I could feel the shape of a mess kit lid, but I had to cut away lots of wire to get it loose. After a while I could grab it and it was really heavy. Metal must have melted and been collected in it somehow, I thought. And I was right. It was full of metal. But wait! Wasn`t there an imprint on it, looking a lot like the top of a Lappland Shield? `Na, my mind must be playing playing tricks`. I took out my water and poured it over the melted metal and wiped of some soil and dirt. There was an imprint of a Lappland Shield! I had a closer look and it was the mirrored imprint of a shield. The negative of a die stamp! I could not belive my eyes!! How rare is that??!

Having calmed down a bit, I continued to cut wires and dig through the soil and rubbish and half an hour might have passed before my mind had a short circuit again. As I flicked away a piece of a broken bottle with the tip of my bayonet, a happy clanking from brass sounded as an item hit the ground. I stared down at a small brass plate with a Lappland Shield stamped on it. Shocked I poked around some more and soon I had found another uncut shield and a couple of small brass plates that probably had been next in line to be stamped.

The next two-three hours I was cutting wire, digging and searching. Checking everything twice in the hopes of finding the shield stamp itself. But it was nowhere to be found. Perhaps it had never been thrown in the pit, but brought with the unit for their next destination after they left this camp. Maybe it melted in the fire, or it is still somewhere in the undug parts of the bunker. If I was very lucky I would find it the next day coz at this point I had to get back home.


Shortly after sunrise I was back to the site, ready to wear myself out cutting through another few kilometers of pointy and sharp barbed wire. After finding the shields yesterday, I had dug- and cutted free the dashboard of a Ford Studebaker, partly dug free the hood of the car, and the first find this new and fresh morning was one of its hubcaps.

 The second find was mind-boggling.
As I grabbed a loop of barbed wire to lift and bend it a bit out of the way I heard the friendly clank from brass again, and looked down through the pokey wires on a Lapplandschild! This was of another type than yesterdays. It was of heavier brass and constructed in a different way. The clearly field made shield was made up by a backplate with the shape of the shield, then a separately cutted eagle and a piece with the map of Lappland had been attached to the backplate. A small plate which would have had "Lappland" on it was missing. On the back it could look like it had been nickle plated. The shield had clearly been touched by flames but had survived without any damages. 
 I spent the whole day going through the rest of the pit as thoroughly as possible, but there were nothing more related to the campaign shields to be found.
 On the end of the day the pile of relics to bring home was smaller than the day before, but there were a few good finds in it. A wooden sign with "Heereszeugamt Güstrow", a switch for a Notek light, pieces of a book with stories,crosswords and puzzles, a woolen glove, some gaming pieces, a small wirespool and a thick leather glove, probably for working with barbed wire.​ A very fitting last find from this pit full of sharp metal points.

Several days later I can still feel all the hours of cutting wire in my shoulders and arms, and through the many small cuts I got. Some of my clothes will need some stitching and patching, but it was all worth it. It is the most spectacular dumping pit I have ever dug. Four Lappland Shields, of three different variants, plus the die stamp piece. I am still in a bit of a shock, and Jimmy is already ordering himself wire cutters, moomin band-aids and a winch, coz we know of other barbed wire pits in the area that needs a checking before snow falls :D

The rest of the week was spent at work, and one afternoon the GirlfriendWife and I walked up to a nice viewpoint where we had dinner outside in the warm sunset.
This morning we got the first little `hello` from King Winter in the form of night frost, so after breakfast we went to catch some berries before it is too late :)

​Thanks for reading, enjoy your week and Keep Smiling :)

Earlier this week by some cosmic coincidence the GirlfriendWife and I had a day off work at the same time. If that wasn`t enough the weather was also very nice and summery, so naturally we decided on a roadtrip. A few hours drive away is the large island Senja with its beautiful nature and many WW2- and Cold War installations. We were up and awake even before the morning mist had lifted off the  yellow fields, and after coffee we joined the morning rush on the road. We soon left the main road and had the asphalt more or less for ourselves the rest of the way to our destination, the old German coastal fortification Skrolsvik Fort on the south-western part of Senja. Here we spent the day bunkercrawling, climbing over rocks and getting stuck in old barbed wire and checking out the old buildings within the fort.
 Even though the fort is in decay and could use some serious caretaking, and despite the risk of injury moving outside the main trail it is a very exciting place to visit and I highly reccommend it. If you are not that into falling apart old bunkers the spectacular views from the place should be reason enough :)

 The germans began the work on the fortress in winter 1941. By early summer the first cannons were on place and the fort operative. Other than Flak and MGs it was armed with four 10.5 cm french Schneider guns ( 10.5 cm 332 K (f) ) and it was named Heereskusten-batterie `Senjehesten` ( HKB 16/973 ).
 In 1943 this batterie was moved north to Nordmanset near Nordkapp, and Skrolsvik were taken over by marine units and renamed Marinekusten-batterie Skrolsvik ( MKB 6/511 Skrolsvik ). The four new guns were fresh from the Skoda factories, 15 cm. SKC/28 (`Schnellade kanon C/28`) with a range to 23500 m and they are the ones still standing there today.
 After the war the Norwegian Army took over the fort and it was in use until 1989. For a short time in the early 2000s it looked like the place would be restored and used as a museum but sadly that project collapsed as soon as the money ran out.

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The amount of yellow leaves on the ground has increased rapidly lately, the green hillsides are getting more and more yellow and red, and the days are growing shorter. I think it is safe to say that Summer did its job and Autumn has taken over. Even though summer is my favorite season, the periode from now till snow falls is incredible. The colors in nature are changing day by day and sunrise and sunset are spectacular shows. In the dark nights we`ll also be able to observe the green and purple Aurora Borealis waving across the sky. The North is certainly a lovely place to live.
 In the old Wehrmacht camps searching is getting a bit easier too during autumn. The vegetation is wilting away, making the ground with its traces of barracks, dumps,ditches etc visible and the ground becoming wet from rain and dew is actually making signals from buried metals stronger.

 Early in the week me and the GirlfriendWife went to collect more blueberries. After a while I needed a break from that so I went back to the car and took out the detector for a quick run-around. I ignored all the crappy metal and opened up a couple of nice and clear signals. The first ones were food tins and a large bolt, but I ended the short search with a great find. Next to a pine tree was the one half of an Erkennungsmärke! I looked around for the second half but I only got a pair of belt support hooks and another food tin. On my way back to the berry collection point I found laying on the surface the transport frame for a HHL magnetic anti-tank charge. This is just a simple metal triangle that were removed from the strong magnets before use. This was probably dug up by some other digger and discarded since they didn`t know the rarity of the item. Good for me :D

A few days later I drove to a forest where the Gebirgsjägers had a vehicle workshop to look for Notek lamps. I have found several of them here before and would love more of them as they are very cool. I was soon digging a signal which were a bit stuck under roots. It was a large and heavy wheel chock in very good condition. I have never found such one before so I was pretty surprised. The next signal was also a great find. A Tetra fire extinguisher! 
 Like any other camp, this place is also full of wires, bolts and junk which all gives of interesting signals and makes the day pass while digging them, so it probably went an hour or two without interesting finds. Just when the motivation was getting low enough so that I began noticing my wet feet and the cold air, a very strong and big signal rang out from the Fisher. This piece of metal was stuck a bit deep under a tree, and some glass and rubbish came up with the soil, making me hope it was a dumping ditch. Unfortunately it was not, but the metal was a part for a Krupp Protze, a lightly armoured vehicle often used for towing guns.
​ Before I got too hungry to continue I found a pair of speakers, a small lamp, the lid from an ammo container and closed the day with a german coin.

 I had another day off work and went back to the workshop since I didn`t manage to find any Noteks :D This morning began with the first signal being a small dumping pit, or more like a fire place. Here were parts from a gasmask, stripper clips with full rounds and some with empty 7.92 casings, a Norwegian tobacco tin, a partly melted silver or Neusilber spoon, the handle from a mess kit and a pink toothbrush.
 A few signals later I dug up the top from a S-Mi 35, the anti-personell mine the allied nicknamed "the Bouncing Betty", so now I ll have to try find the other parts from it :D 
​ Along the fenceline of the camp I picked up a few uniform buttons, a toothpaste tube, a pair of D-rings and buckles from a Y-strap. Before I reached the corner of the fence I had added a Heer axe, an ashtray and a rifle cleaning kit to the collection.
 I walked back towards the area where the vehicle parts seems to grow like potatoes and there I dug up a grease pump, a battery box, some wrenches, a mystery part and a large `winker` (early turn signal). The winker was in very good condition with no rust and all color intact.
 On my way back to the car I took the route along the fenceline again I grabbed with me another ashtray, a Finnish coin and an inkwell,and found an empty M24 head. It had a large rusted hole, but the half of it that had faced into the ground was intact and seems to have paint left under the rust. 

Tomorrow looks like it will be sunny and I am planning another day out in the woods, and later in the week another interesting trip is already being planned together with the GirlfriendWife.

​Thanks for reading, and enjoy autumn. And remember that if you see something you could use for your restoration project, or for your collection/museum, feel free to reach out :)
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