Today was so nice weather that we decided to drop all other things we really had to do and spend the day outside instead. For all we know there will be snow next weekend so such a day needs to be taken advantage of. We packed the bags with our gear and added a thermos of coffee and a bag of food and took off towards one of the many mountains surrounding us. On place we found ourselves in an old German camp for a little relic hunt. While I roamed around with the detector, Girlfriend alternated between taking photos of bugs and fauna, and sitting in a tree reading.
My first find today was something I have found hundreds of while searching in Latvia, but only a few of here in Norway, a Soviet PPSh round. The next find was a really nice one, an empty M24 handgrenade head, one can never find enough of those, and they are easily missed if one is searching such an area as today, a place filled with food cans, as the next hours would prove. Few times have I been in forests with so many signals all over as today. The soldiers here must have been very well fed as more than 90% of what I dug today was different kind of food tins and oven parts. I did find a few other things too though, a gasmask cannister, a deactivated k98 round, and of course lots of fired and unfired ones. One signal was a compass,probably from the 80`s. I found a Wehrmacht axe, a medical tray, a couple of signal flares, one of which a brass Kriegsmarine type, a cap from a Soviet canteen and in a small dumping pit I found a bunch of medical ampoules, a few of them containing medicine against Tetanus :D 
After a coffee break and some more searching we decided to call it quits and relax the rest of the day, so we found an idyllic spot and made a fire where we cooked hot dogs for dinner while we enjoyed a spectacular view of the autumn clad mountain forest :)
​Happy autumn my friends:)

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:)

Winter is slowly approaching here north. The last few mornings fresh snow has been spotted on the tallest mountain tops and the temperature is rapidly declining. Yesterday morning it was only +6 degree Celsius when we had our morning coffee and prepared to go to the forest, so an extra layer of clothes was put on. We went to the forest where the plan was to find some rust, and some berries. I walked right on a small dumping pit where I found a nice ink jar and a few gaming pieces between a bunch of rusted junk, and during the time it took me to search through the dump, Girlfriend had filled half bag of Cloudberries. We made a little basecamp in the middle of a barrack foundation in an old German camp and spent the next hours roaming around, getting leg training while picking berries and checking signals from the detector. We met up now and then for a warming cup of  Chaga or some food. The day went on but I had no luck with my searching. The grounds were full of metal but I couldn`t find the good stuff. Only a few items I felt was worth saving. A broken entrenching tool, a nice enamelled bowl, a little bit rusted enamelled cup, a RAD marked karbid lamp, a belt made of tyre rubber and two small ashtrays with some embossed nature scene. I found a whole bunch of K98 rounds which I buried, a few engine parts, a few rusted kraftstoff cans, kilometers of barbed wire and bits of a cast iron stove, all left where I found it. The last signal I dug was a cigarett case which I saved even if it had been broken in two. Even if I didn`t have any luck with the relics, Girlfriend had luck with berries and mushrooms :)
The rest of the day we spent together filling a couple of bags with big and juicy blueberries so we can have some jam for the winter, and when we got back home we ate a bowl of it with sugar, a really nice pre-dinner snack :D

Today Girlfriend went early to work, so I got up and prepared for another day in the forest. My plan was to start a dumping pit I found a few weeks ago, a big one. I stocked up on some food and water and took off as soon as the coffee jar was empty. I had gps marked the place so it was easy enough to find back to it and I went to work. A few hours in and I had dug out a whole lot of bottles, and even more rusted junk and the pile kept growing the more I dug. Now and then a nice looking relic was placed in another pile that didn`t grow as rapidly as the junk pile. I could feel the fresh and sharp autumn air everytime I took a few minutes break, and it was quite cozy with the rays from the low autumn sun penetrating the yellowing canopy, but as soon as I began searching through the dumping pit again all that was forgotten. I pulled out a lantern of the type often used on airfields and with panzers, a big vaffel iron (!), a pair of ski boots, a civillian field torch, a giant vinagre bottle which is quite rare, a few coins and a whole bunch of gaming pieces. I also found a bakelite butter dish lid which was quite nice as I`ve found two bottom parts earlier so now at least one of them will be complete, a leather K98 ammo pouch and a whole bunch of 7.92 rounds. I was struggling a bit with a large piece of metal I couldn`t really identify before I had it up on the surface, and to my surprise it was a rather nice and almost intact bunker stove. I have earlier found a few of the parts that it was missing so thats a project I have for winter now, cleaning it up and making it look presentable again. With the backpack now filled to the point of bursting, and afternoon creeping up it was time to fill back the hole and find my way back to the car, barely able to walk under the weight of the relics :D As soon as I get the time I ll be back continuing this dumping pit as it is large and might take 5 or 6 more visits, maybe I ll manage it before King Winter is upon us..
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Soon after Girlfriend went to work this morning I headed out to the forest for some searching. I went to one of the dumping pits I had located earlier and got on with the digging. Sadly it was only a small corner of this pit that was possible to dig, the rest was filled with a deep layer of barbed wires, but between the rust and broken glass I pulled out a nice schnapps glass, several cognac bottles, a cigarett case and a very cool little Finnish map tool. From time to time a red and fluffy squirrel came down a nearby tree to check on me which was very funny.
Next I went a few kilometers further in to the forest where I was going to try locate the site of three-four barracks I knew should be there somewhere. On the way there I checked the occasional signal picked up by the Fisher F5 and I kept looking at the birch trees for the Chaga mushroom which makes an exellent and super healthy tea, and I did find a few chuncks of it. I reached the hillside and began looking around for the barrack foundations and soon the detector began giving of some signals again. Over a few hundred meters I picked up a whole bunch of German 5 cm mortar tail fins, a few of their fuses and lots of shrapnel and fragments from them. I wonder whats been going on there as I don`t think this site saw any fighting.. Another half kilometer of strolling and I found the site with the barracks and began searching around them. Here were lots of signals. Mostly nails, food tins and bits from cast iron ovens. Near a large rock I found a Zeiler field torch and not too far from it a very nice looking MG34 cradle!! Together with the cradle was a bolt of some kind, long, spiked in one end and the other end machined to perfectly fit into the cradle, prehaps some trench-/field mount set up.
I spent some hours around here digging signals and hoping to find a dumping pit or two but when heavy rain moved in I had not had much more luck. I had found some small items like belt support hooks, an Esbit burner, an Odol mouthwash bottle and Odol toothpast tube, a Norwegian coin, a 4711 bottle and a pair of Gebirgsjäger ski goggles. 
The rain didn`t make any signs of stopping so when I was wet all the way through I gave in and started my little journey back to the car, but I am going back here pretty soon as there is more rust to find and lots of blueberries to pick:)

 We have been out in the forest hunting rust and berries again. Raspberries this time, very tasty. There is more rust than berries in the forest though. In places the signals were as many as needles under a pine tree, it is almost frustrating. Lots of the signals seems to be just rubbish though, unrecognisable pieces of metal. Sheet metal, iron bars , bolts, coils of wires etc, but in between there are the occasional interesting bits. One of the first finds I had worth saving was a fire extinguisher, a smaller one that all the others I have found. Under a tree I saw a M24 carrying rack, but it was in a sad condition, and next to it under some roots was a bracelet. Under another tree was a large mudguard from a vehicle, with some paint left and the fixture from a Notek light. Some of the items I dug up were horseshoes, parts from vehicles, and some other bits the rests of smashed up cast iron ovens and a whole bunch of boot heel irons. This is definately a place one can spend years digging up stuff before it is clean.
While fighting with some roots I heard noises from the treeline 50 meter away and noticed a few squirrels running up and around a tree, jumping between branches and having a great time. Such moments is a fantastic bonus to get while being in the forest. 
A few of the good finds today was the frame of a unit insignia flag for a vehicle, a RAD spoon, a flattened late war canteen and a RG34 rifle cleaning kit box. Near a treestump I had three signals half meter apart, it was the Notek headlight and two parts for it. At this point I was tired and hungry for lunch, so I collected the girlfriend who was crawling around under the trees taking photos of plants and insects. We strolled through the thick forest back to the car trying to avoid the Moose that is also roaming these parts and which we have seen the resting places of, huge flattened spots in the grass, we think it is a mom with two calfs.
​If it is not raining tomorrow we might be back :)

It has been a terrible weather lately but this morning it had cleared up and the rain stopped. The sun did its best to dry up the forest floor but it was still quite wet when I entered the forest shortly after the morning coffee. I walked a trail I`ve walked many times now since spring, but today I noticed a small square ditch between some ferns. I swept the detector across it and had a strong aluminum signal. I dug it open expecting a couple of food tins to peek out from under the roots, but it was a canteen and its carrying hook. I checked the sides of the little hole I had dug and down fell a few rubber muzzle caps for the K98. I expanded the hole and  there were more muzzle caps hiding, lots more. For about 20 minutes I kept scooping them out from the little ditch, and when it finally was empty I had a small mountain of them, more than 500 of them at least! After checking the area around I strolled on into the forest, stopping now and then checking signals, or for eating blueberries.
I found another small dumping pit but the only thing worth saving from it was a shotglass or candle holder from glass, and two long glass tubes filled with graphite sticks like the ones inside pencils, really strange. 
​I spent much of the day looking for treasures but except some k98 ammo, a messkit with bits cut out from it and a small ashtray it was all rubbish for me today. Anyway I had a very nice time and I might have discovered a dumping pit when I was going back to the car, but we ll know if Im right about that another day :)
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After the spectacular digging yesterday I was early on my feet and eager to get back out there to check the rest of the ditch. Excited as a fat kid in the candy store I checked it for signals and began digging. Almost immediately I pulled out two canteens, a big scoop, a food tin and a small wrench, but no helmets. I guess I got them all yesterday and it might be a while before the Relic Gods throw such a bone to me again :D I spent the next two hours following the ditch but nothing very interesting came out from it. I found parts of a burnt uniform where I managed to save a bunch of buttons, a pair of keys and quite interesting a small fishing lure and a lump of hooks, a piece of string and a spinner. By the way, one of the uniform buttons was also a bit interesting as it was made of bakelite or early plastic. I also dug out a silver plated bracelet. The rest of the ditch was fairly empty except from a pair of rotted boots, the lid from a crate, a karbid lamp and a bigger wrench.
The rest of the day I spent roaming around picking up signals here and there, and I located two-three dumping pits for a lazier day. I test dug a little bit in one of them and found a few coins and a bunch of gaming pieces. Before the mosquitos managed to drive me out of their forest I also managed to sit down and eat a whole bunch of blueberries, and on my way back to the car I found another vehicle fire extinguisher :) 
​Enjoy the week my friends:)