Yesterday morning began with me checking the dumping pit I located just when it got too dark to dig anymore. It was full of trash from some modern army exercise, food wrappers mostly. I continued to dig signals in the slope but I did not have much luck. For the most part I dug out bolts, food tins, rifle casings and the usual junk one finds in an old German camp. A couple of the finds saved the day though. First I found the second bayonet scabbard from this place, one more karbid lamp spare parts holder and another sight mounting block for the Granatwerfer 34, a really nice little find actually. Then I found a small dumping pit, but except a toothbrush, a fork, a few meter of film negatives and some kind of radio reciever it was only wires in it. I found the lid from a mess kit, some kind of plier and an axe head. And again, just as it got too dark to see what one was digging I moved into an area with a high concentration of signals and another dumping pit which I could dig for about ten minutes before it really didn`t make any sense to continue. But it was a promising pit, I managed to pull out a bucket, several bottles and a broken porcelain plate.
This morning the temperatures had dropped to a few degrees below zero, but I could not get the dumping pit out of my mind and for all I know this is the real onset of winter so there was only one thing to do, get ready for digging. Girlfriend had the day off so she was happy to join me, it is always nice to have company from her in the forest and some help to carry all the rust back home :) So we got to the site and I cleared up the pit from yesterdays backfilling and continued the work. Not even a handfull of minutes into it I started to see that it was not another bucket I was clearing sand from as I first thought. The familiar shape of the brim of a German helmet drew a nice line in the wet sand holding it in a firm grip. I freed it from the ground and was super happy holding my 22nd or 23rd helmet of the season. I also found a red enamel cup and a green glass electrical insulator, but the rest of the pit was all rust and buckets, and a few broken bottles so I continued searching along the slope. Tons of wires, bolts and food tins later we sat down and enjoyed a hot tea and followed the travel of Mr.Squirrel through the tree tops, what little ninjas those creatures are, it was really funny and amazing watching him fly in the air from branch to branch.
The next couple of hours we could feel it was getting colder, and soon the dusk began to creep in around us, but before it got too dark I managed to get a few more finds. Thanks to the good signal of a food tin I found a small dumping pit holding the bakelite chassis of a Volksempfänger, more precisely the Deutscher Kleinempfänger (DKE 38) I really always wanted to find one of these so even if all the internals were gone I was chuffed!! The little pit also contained a broken K98 ammo pouch and the relic gods really outdid themselves by placing two leather bayonet frogs there, so now I have two complete bayonets from here!!!
Cold and happy we loaded up the backpack we strolled back to the car. When we got home we saw on the thermometer that it was a cool 7 Celsius below zero so this might really be it my friends, I think the season is over now, even if there can be some mild days ahead the "daylight" is rapidly disappearing and with soon just an hour or so of enough light there is really no point continuing, and I could have asked for a better season ending than this. Now it is time for sorting and cleaning a couple of boxes of finds, making some miniature dioramas and cleaning up the digging gear so it is ready for spring.
Thanks to all of you who follow my expedition reports, who have helped identify finds and supported me!! :)
Have a nice winter!! :)

Digging in December, that is something I haven`t done before, until today. Living as far north in Norway as I do this is quite out of the ordinary, usually there is a good coverage of snow by now and the ground frozen deep and hard as concrete. But this mild weather allowed me for yet another day of searching the Heer camp for old war junk. Ca 0945 it had become light enough so I fed the cat and went out there for some rust hunting. The temperature was just above 0 degree Celsius, and as I was going to check the first signal given by my metal detector I noticed that the night frost had already had some effect and made the ground harder. To begin with I pulled out a couple of food tins and a lamp shade, just too bad it was so rotted because I know someone who makes old ground found lamps alive again.. The next signal made my day, it was a nice and empty M24 grenade head, hopefully with some paint left! Not even 10 cm away under a branch I spotted a familiar shape and dragged out a quite ok looking gasmask container, what a start of the day! The next half hour of picking up signals also paid off, first a Soviet army PPSh submachine gun magazine and a little further along the slope I found another one of the Finnish LS M/26 magazines. In the next couple of hours I managed to make sure the backpack had a decent weight to it by digging up a handfull of padlocks, some sporks, part of a helmet liner, a few K98 rifle parts and a scabbard for one of the bayonets I found recently. I also dug up a big block of rusted together boot hob nails, a few heel irons and a big soup ladle with a repair on it, and of course kilos of rusted junk.
The day passed along fast and soon there was too dark to see much, just when I discovered what might be a dumping pit a few meter in front of the slope. Prehaps I will take a trip out there tomorrow to check it, we will see how the weather and tempereatures will be. Again I fear that it might be my last chance of having any more digging done this season as it is reported cold weather coming in and then the ground will be impenetrable very fast, but then again maybe the global warming is finally kicking in making winter for us northern diggers enjoyable :)