We had to make a trip out to the fields of rust before the stormy weather drew in over our heads. We had located a few more of the barrack foundations in the forest and stepped in between the trees. I armed with my detector and Girlfriend with her bug hunting gear. We found the spot easy enough but I was surprised over the lack of signals in the ground. The barracks were huge, but not a single nail which was really strange. After checking two more foundations with the same result we pushed through a thick forest heading towards a waterfall as the Bug Hunter wanted to collect some insects from there. It was a very nice view there, the Northern Norwegian nature is unbeatable when it comes to stunning views:) 
Next we followed an old no longer used forest road not too far from the empty barracks, and then suddenly the detector began making its happy duck sounding noises. I checked the signal and it was a German k98 round, and the next signal an aluminum food tin, and then the detector wouldn`t shut up. Signals were all over the place. I checked a few of the signals and it was all old German rust, and the metals blanketed a large area, ca 3 x 10-15 meters, a huge dumping site!! I spent the next couple of hours opening a small ditch to see what kind of stuff could be hiding underneath the grass. I dug out bottles, wires , nails, rusted cutlery, food tins, larger metal parts, burnt paper and cloth, all sorts of stuff really. It looked like it was a burnt layer, not very deep, covering the whole site, a place to spend the rest of the season prehaps. I didn`t find any spectacular things searching through the little starter ditch, but found a gaming dice, a porcelain egg cup, a very cool viking-decoration style bottle opener, a gasmask cannister with something inside it (will open it today), some signal flares, a Norwegian coin from 1902, a bunch of German vehicle fire extinguishers and a couple of razors.
The day moved towards evening so I finished the little test ditch and then did a little search in the surrounding area. Half hour later I had discovered several more dumping pits and lots of signals strewn around in the forest, one place I dug up a German gasmask, and another half of a large forge blower, and a few horseshoes.
Now it was time to call it quits coz we had some blueberry picking to do so we could have fresh jam for next days vaffel making when we`d be sitting at home enjoying the sounds of a rain storm outside the windows.
Enjoy the beginning of autumn (if you are on the Northern hemisphere).

After staying at home yesterday I had abstinences and in need of digging some rust, so I woke up the Girlfriend and dragged her with me to the forest. We found the dumping pit from the other day and continued the work there. After getting rocks and roots out of the way we had a coffee and then Girlfriend went off into the forest to collect herbs and whatnot so we can have some good teas for wintertime.
The dumping pit was full of broken glass, and it was deep, so when she came back several hours later I had become a mole and sat underground trying to pry loose the last relics from the bottom of the pit. Medical bottles seemed to be the theme today as I pulled out 14-15 intact ones, four of them some nice "Aether Pro Narcosi" (Ether for narcosis") bottles. A few reagens tubes, a whole bunch of both glass- and metal tablet tubes and a few lab bottles and jars. I found a very deteriorated Heer buckle, but after cleaning it up later it looks good enough so that I can use it for some artsy diorama project. A nice spoon with both the German eagle and a name engraved found its way to the pile together with a K98 cleaning kit, a field torch and some rusted surgical tools. Gaming pieces kept coming out from the soil and charcoal, many of them melted together which was pretty cool I think. I also found several surgical steel syringe needles, one of them found its way through my glove and embedded itself under my fingernail for a very painful moment. Luckily that happened when I had reached the last few inches of the pit so it was a perfect time to call it quits and get back home to find the disinfectants and later clean some of the finds.
​Happy Days and may summer last forever! :)

....

Syringe and needles.

The last few days me and Girlfriend have been roaming around in the forests a bit. We have done a few recce trips to check out if rumors about some German camps held water, we`ve been doing some metal detecting and today we were out putting up an insect trap for her work, and found something interesting,,more about that further down on the page :)
 Yesterday the day began with a visit to the doctor as I ve gotten some inflamation in the legs after working on concrete floors the last weeks, old age creeping up on me I guess,,but, walking in forest and uneven terrain should be a good medicine apparently, so I rushed back home with the good tidings and off we went to the forest, loaded up with detector, coffee, food and insect hunting gear. We plotted the coordinates on the autopilot in the car, leaned back and relaxed our way to the German camp where we earlier had discovered the field hospital barrack. 
For a bit more than an hour I went around with the detector trying to find some good signals but the area is covered with not only metals but some rocky mineral that gives of very good signals, so the hunt soon turned towards frustration after digging the sixtyseventh rock. Luck started to turn when I found a small patch with lots of rifle casings, and when Girlfriend a few meter away said "I think this might be a dumping pit, it is metal sticking out of the ground here!", I knew what I was going to do the next couple of hours.
The pit was about two meter long and ca half meter wide, and the top of it had typically been filled with large rocks. As soon as I had gotten the rocks away, and could see relics starting to pop out I sliced one of my middle fingers on a broken glass, it seems to have become a thing for me that now :) With a fresh Hello Kitty plaster and new gloves I went back to it and continued digging out sharp and jagged shards of glass and the occasional piece of metal. After a while more and more metal began showing up. It was also clear now that the pit had been set on fire as it was lots of blackened bits and melted blobs of glass and aluminum. 
A few hours in I took a break and we went to the car to pick up the food, and while I continued making the pile of relics bigger, the Bug Hunter cooked us some tomato soup and adding some mosquito proteins to it. It was delish, and with a hot cup of coffee after dinner I was fueled and ready to take on the rest of the dumping pit. At one point I felt a roundish object and after ruling out it being a rock it could only be two things, a pee pot or a helmet, and I was a big smile when I pulled out the latter. One of the last finds was also very exciting. A closed medical metal box with something inside it, as it was getting late we decided to try open it once home.
In the end I spent 4-5 hours searching through it and between a ton of rubbish there were quite a few nice relics worth bringing home. In the pile was a nice Wehrmacht razor, several medical tools and bottles, enamelled pots and plates, some gaming pieces, a lighter, a Gebirgsjäger boot, a canteen and three different canteen cups, one of them the bakelite type that I always had wanted to find, and the list goes on. There is many pics further down showing the finds.
Back home we opened the medical box and inside it was a couple of scissors, scalpel handles, a plier, a piece of bandage and several syringe needles, alll in quite good condition,,a nice find and it was very exciting to open it of course!
Today we slept a bit longer than usual as it had been a long day in the forest, and after breakfast we went into one of the valleys to put up an insect trap for the Girlfriends work. In this area it had been very much German activity as the famous Lyngen line went through the valleys and mountains here. Next to the parking lot we saw some rusted gate looking thing in the forest. Of course I was on my way over before Girlfriend managed to stop me and in the little clearing there was tons of metal laying around.  Bits from engines and vehicle parts, ovens and parts of a field haubitze, buckets, jerry cans and whatnot splayed out across the forest floor! That was spectacular, but we had another mission today so we went ahead into the valley where thirsty mosquitoes big as birds was waiting for us...
​

Piece of a porcelain plate.

Yesterday morning, before I had to go to work, me and the Girlfriend went out to the forest. I wanted to complete the lazarett dumping pit and she to collect more bugs for her bug army. The weather was exellent and it would be a pity to not spend as much of it as possible outside when I was going to be stuck inside a factory hall for 8 hours. We strolled off between the trees and soon I was busy removing soil and rocks and to try not break any of the fragile ampoules in the dumping pit. The section I had left un-dug the other day seemed to hold less relics but still a steady stream of rescuable items found its way to the collection point on my backpack. I found a couple of nice and intact lab jars together with a good little pile of ampoules, a few stripper clips full of k98 rounds, a hook from a Y-strap, a broken toothbrush, bits of a large Kodak bakelite drawer. I tried to find as many as possible of the small broken off bits so I can try puzzle it together later, but it looks like Im missing bits to make it complete again, which of course is annoying. As I began digging the last "corner" of the pit I found a very small glass jar, a blue gaming dice and a big surprise, a Soviet Guards badge! That was probably the last thing I had expected to come across this morning. Very happy with the result of these two days of digging I closed up the pit making sure no broken glass was poking out from the ground as a risk for animals or trekkers.
Girlfriend had collected a few bugs and checked the forest for Chaga, and other potential dumping pits so she showed me those before we slowly strolled back to the car enjoying the warm summer weather.

The last week its been raining a lot so I took the opportunity to work some shifts at my temp job to make some extra money. Today after work the weather had cleared up a bit so I decided it was time for some digging. I went out to one of the German camps where it had been a hospital building. There I was lucky and almost at once stumbled upon a quite large dumping pit. It had been burned so 90% of the metal had melted into blobs or just turned into rusted dust, and most of the glass in the pit had suffered the same fate. Now and again I found an intact item and as the hours went by the pile of small relics grew. I mostly rescued small medical ampoules and bottles, and some metal tubes for ampoules. I found a pair of glasses, but both the lenses had gone missing, and I found a somewhat broken porcelain plate with nice markings, even if it is a bit broken and a few bits missing from it. I ll glue it together and make something from it. A twisted and partly melted syringe was a bit amusing find, and so was the intact medical rubber glove that lay  on the bottom of the pit. I pulled out five medical tools, three blades, one plier and one flat spoon like thing, some kind of spatula I guess. I also dug out a pen in very good condition, a few k98 rounds, a lamp and a tiny metal box which will be interesting to open to see if there is anything inside it.
After ca four hours the sun disappeared behind a heavy layer of dark clouds and just as I arrived back to the car the flood gates opened and it is still pouring down. Hopefully it have stopped until tomorrow coz I really want to get back out there:)

​

Small metal box.​

Last night I was chatting with a friend, and when he asked what I had for plans tomorrow I replied "Going out in the forests again trying to find the Motherload." Little did I know how prophetic those words were.
I started early as usual and went into the forest where I had been told there could be some leftovers from a German Heer camp. I strolled for a good while with no luck at all. Then I found the first few evidences that the Wehrmacht might have been here, a few food tins scattered around, and then a  top ring from a large field stove with small hooks to hang the mess kits. Then for a long while I couldn`t find a single signal again, not even the typical wire bits or nails, none of it.
I had almost given up when I came across a small burn pit just below the moss. Except half a ski-goggle and the fixture of a Notek light there were only rotted food tins and unrecognisable bits. Now I had walked for hours and it was warm and full of horseflies, mosquitos and other flies trying to eat me alive so I decided to go back home and enjoy the sun instead of tormenting myself any longer. Then I see a few dug outs between some trees and I ran over there and the detector picked up lots of signals. Finally something. I saw it was a dumping pit because some metal stuck out from the ground. I searched around it first and dug up a few horseshoes, a toothpaste tube and a k98 rubber muzzle cap. Then I began digging up the pit. It was hard work, lots of large rocks mixed with bits from a large cast iron oven. On two of the sides of the pit I began to see the shapes of two 20 liter fuel cans, then another rather big round can. But now I could see the square top of a crate down there!! It took a bit more work to pry it loose from the grip of mother earth but I got it to the surface, and it was heavy!
 I carefully opened the lid, and all the images of what I hoped was inside it flashed before my eyes, medals, guns, porcelain, uniform, money, you name it.. When I opened the lid I burst out laughing, probably some insane sounding madman laugh, because I looked into a chest full of nails! Big nails, small nails and medium nails. All the nails that ze Germans had forgot to throw around in the forest for poor rust hunters to go crazy over. It was the Motherload! It was so funny and at the same time deeply disappointing, but its a find I will look back on with a big smile for sure.
​I went on for another two hours or so and found just a few more bits, two transport case parts for 15cm shells and a Panzerfaust! All three of those look to have good chances to bring back some of the original color on, so now I was pretty happy, very tired and fed up with the bugs trying to consume me, so I went home :)
​Happy Days :)

I got up really early today as I was eager for some digging. The weather report have been whispering about lots of incoming rain so there was no time to loose. After a little bit of driving I could step into the forest and meet with the mosquitos that were waiting for me. Almost instantly I had some good signal from the detector and spent the next hour mostly crawling from signal to signal. I dug out a German coin, a couple of tent pegs, a uniform button and a small dumping pit with several smaller bottles and a field torch with a battery next to it. After a while the landowner came to say hi and see what I had found. He pointed me to a shrubbery on a small rise behind his barn where it should be a Norwegian position from the fighting in 1940. There I found a whole pile of spent 6.5 mm Krag Joergensen ammo in great condition as they lay under a rock and had been protected from the elements all those years. Other than a ashtray , a piece from a ski pole and a few rusted food tins there wasn`t anything else to find there so soon I was back searching the camp site. Now I found a rather large dumping pit that I spent many hours digging out as it was pretty deep. It didn`t hold as much finds as I had hoped for but between a lot of champagne- , beer- and wine bottles was a nice MP38/40 "schmeisser" magazine. Another field torch battery, and a couple of Norwegian 7.92 excersise rounds, a losantine box, a bike tire pump  and what looks like a half made trench art ring came out of the pit before it was empty. 
The dumping pit was in an open patch in the forest so the sun had been boiling me good so I spent the next hours strolling around between the trees. Here I found a bunch of nails, wires and rusted crap, before a very good signal broke the monotony again. I just had to laugh when I saw what it was, I ve become familiar with those pointy edges by now...It was a War Merit Cross, a Kriegsverdienstkreuz, my third this season! Filled with a bit of new energy I searched an hour or so more but all I could find was a big engine starter crank, so at this point I decided to get back home for some food and a rather cold shower:)

Yesterday me ,Baard and Skule went to check out a forest a landowner tipped us about. He had told us that it had been both a German camp , and a camp for Soviet prisoners of war there. It was relatively early on the day but it was already pretty warm and the flies and mosquitoes soon got word around that humans were on the menu. Just a few minutes in we had proof of wartime activity as the detectors pointed out the usual food tins, K98 rounds and stripper clips. We found the foundations of a burned down house or hut having signals all over it so we spent a while checking that out, but most of the stuff that saw daylight again was destroyed, a couple of losantine boxes, a coin and a few bottles could be worth saving though. Checking out the area further showed the foundations of several  barracks and buildings spread out across the small hillside and there were signals everywhere.  Beneath a big old pine tree a small dumping pit was found. A few large rocks had been dumped on top of it but a few nice relics came out of it after struggling the rocks out of the way. One surprise from that pit was a Firestone ashtray, sadly the rubber tire around it had rotted away though. Other than that was a heap of 7.92 rounds, the rests of a watch, a few tent pegs, a french toothpowder tin, a dice, a can opener and a few other of the usual bits. 
Several hours went by picking up some of the single signals that covered the place, but nothing out of the ordinary came out from the forest floor. Around lunchtime I managed to stick my hand under a rock and slice a finger open on a broken bottle, so again the little medic kit I always carry with the digger gear came in handy. Having lunch somewhere in a forest, away from the sounds of "civilization", enjoying good food, hot coffee, a chat and prehaps even a cigarett is such a bliss that it is hard to describe. Having new energy we spent another few hours searching the forest, sometimes peeking up at the sky when hearing the ravens` scream and the brush of wind through their wings. 
We had planned to visit a friend that lives nearby the site so when time came we headed slowly back to the cars. At this point I found a small dumping pit and began searching through it. It held some rubbish and broken glass but suddenly the first of many gaming pieces peeked out from the sand, and next a rather rare red bakelite 7.92 round. Suddenly I saw blood dropping on to my gloves and smock sleeve. I looked at the guys asking who is bleeding, or is it the Predator lurking in the trees above?? But the blood came from an insect bite on my ear, which I hadnt`t felt at all. Now there were so many flies on my arm and back it was creepy, so I kept on digging the pit so we could get out of the forest. In the end my pocket was full of the gaming pieces, when I counted them later I had 71 of them, including 5 dices!! A rather great little haul.
We made it back to the cars and went for a coffee at our friend`s place and made a halfway plan for another dig very soon.
Keep Smiling, and stay dirty!! :)

 A few days ago my friend from somewhere in mid Norway contacted me. He and his family had arrived to their summer paradise in the North and he was hungry for rust. I wasn`t hard to bid of course, so soon I had packed the car ready for a few days of digging and was heading some miles southwards. Early Sunday morning I met up with Baard and his son, Skule, and we took aim towards a forest road where there could be German dumping sites. Soon the detectors rang out and sure enough the info Baard had gotten was solid as gold. In the marshy ground to one of the sides of the road one could see rust poking out. Piles of barbed wire and 200 liter Kraftstoff barrels laid everywhere. In between those some smaller items were dug up, like a crushed triangular 20 liter fuel can, a few empty k98 casings and some helmet liners, two of which were worth saving. As the ground here was very wet and the mosquitoes began massing around us we strolled towards drier ground between the pines. Here should be a huge ammo storage, used both by the Germans and for a while the post-war Norwegian Army. When the army signed back the land to the private owners they did a great job cleaning up, coz it was far between the signals. Here and there we dug up modern training ammo and some trip wire signal flares. We did find a small patch in the forest with some German relics, some signal flares, rifle casings, horseshoes and a few karbid lamp blinders. Further in we found the emptied ammo storage bunkers, large dug outs in the forest floor, once covered with timber roofs. The ones we checked were mostly empty, but on the side of one of them we had great luck, we found two 105mm M4 casings, stamped 1945, and an American "dog-tag" probably from the 1970- 80`s, plus a German pioneer axe.
We looped back towards the starting point and spent a couple of hours searching a big German garbage pit, but except a few intact bottles and cream jars it was all burnt and crushed rubbish. Now we had been active for about 10 hours and evening approached, so we decided to call it quits and do the rest of the pit another time.
Back at the cars Baard couldn`t find his car keys. They were nowhere to be found! That`s a digger`s nightmare! Luckily we had stopped by the cars before starting the garbage pit so we knew they had to be there or on the way to it. So the search began. Me and Baard started sifting through what we had dug out while Skule checked the grounds around us. Suddenly he yelled out: "Found them!!" and became the hero of the day.
We agreed to meet up early next morning so I installed myself in the mini camper and had a relaxing, but somewhat cold night before the morning sun and the sounds from a squirrell or a large tree tarantula running around on the roof of the car woke me up.

Early next morning I went to the gas station in the village some 10 minutes drive away for fresh coffee, and an hour or so later Baard arrived. Skule was tired after yesterdays 10 hours and had more important things to do. We started off soft by checking a small stretch of forest next to the road and Baard found there a small dumping pit with some nice relics. Sadly the two bakelite items in the pit were destroyed, a butter container and a small red Rosodont box, but he also dug out a nice harmonica, five hammerheads, a small coin, a few pocket knives, a small red ink bottle, a soldiers shaving mirror and a scissors. When the roadside had been cleaned up we crossed the road and went into the forest there. Here had been a German storage area and later the place was used for Nato- and Norwegian army training until the landowners got it back.
The first section we metal detected us through had clearly seen some modern mock wars. It were signals all over the place, lots of plastic training ammo, some rests of camo cream tubes, food tins etc. One massive signal turned out to be a modern dumping pit filled with large caliber shell transport plugs and bands, used wooden training mines, and a hoard of fuze tins. Further along we finally found the German storage area and began searching around one of the spots where barracks had been. After a while it became clear that this particular barrack must have held skis and ski poles. All over the place we picked up ski bindings and pole spikes. One of the last signals dug this afternoon was Baard finding an old pocketwatch, so definately a place we ll visit again at some point.
By now we had been searching more or less non stop for 6 hours and we were both getting tired, eaten by insects and wanted to get home to our respective Dears and warm dinners. Back at the cars we met a local guy which Baard knew, and like that we suddenly had invitation and permission to search a very promising area in the near future, looking forward to that!! :)

Most of this last week has been very wet and rather cold so not much digging was done. I managed to get out last Saturday and today though.
The saturday search became a very warm one, with little finds. I roamed around mostly picking modern garbage, a few old german tools and a dumping pit filled with a broken stove, food tins and a spoon. One of the signals I dug was a very nice little matchbox cover, with the motive showing a person skiing through a forested landscape. I also found a small box of 9mm rounds, a toothbrush and some k98 rounds, stripper clips and a uniform button.
​

Today the Girlfriend wanted to join up for a trip, so we went to check out a rumor of dumped helmets. After a bit of a walk we found the spot and began looking around. The Fisher picked up a fair amount of signals but none of them a helmet. After a while I dug a good signal and it turned out to be a single broken liner from a german helmet, but still after checking a bunch more signals we had no luck on getting any lids. A small ditch had some promising signals but it turned out to be a bucket, several iron pipes, a whole bunch of bottles and a lighter. 
Moving on we found a small dumping pit with rubbish left behind by a 1960s or `70s army excersise and lots of pits filled with barbed wire, but not having gloves or tools to deal with barbed wire pits with us we left those for another time.
In a small opening in the forest the detector picked up a signal, "k98 casing, or scrap metal" I thought, but dug it anyhow coz one never knows.. and behold, I saw the pointed corner of a Kriegsverdienstkreuz - a War Merit Cross. Wow!! I could hardly believe it, the second one this season. It was in very good condition too! Happier than ants in a sugar pile I began a systematic search of the nearby area, and checking one of the other signals I suddenly heard the Girlfriend while she rushed past me: "Fliegeralarm!!!" I grabbed hold of the piece of metal I was trying to dig out, yanked it with me leaving the detector behind in a whole Jagdverband of bumblebees. We had probably stepped on or around the entrance to their nest and man were they pissed off. Letting them cool off before retrieving the detector I could see what relic I had grabbed from the soil, a bent and broken Göffel :)
We moved a bit away from the angry bees and continued the search. We found another small dumping pit and from it came a few nice relics, a gaming piece, a tent peg, and two belt buckles, one of them a Heer buckle, in rather sad condition but still..
By now it had gotten late and we both were quite hungry so we decided to leave the rest for another day and went home for icecream and a dinner-lunch in the sun :)

​Have a great weekend everybody!!:)