A Luxury Norwegian cabin for $50 dollars?

by Danielle Steller | DanielleSteller.com

Have you ever found a place almost too special to share? Well, for me, this is one of those places.

It’s no secret, I’m a little obsessed with the idea of living in the forest. Something about it just makes me feel so excited – finding serenity in the wild – finding the perfect balance of cozy and crazy.

Truth is, I’ve never found any cozy refuge huts. They are rustic, I’ll give them that. But without beautiful decor, internet – you know, the necessities that any modern-day girl needs – I couldn’t picture myself actually living in one. Until a few months ago, when we drove 30 minutes North of Oslo (Norway) for some cheap CAD$50/night accommodation we’d booked on airbnb.

With limited gps signal, we drove through the woodlands in the dark following a hand-drawn map. Tealight candles appeared in clusters by the roadside. Shit, we thought. We’re headed straight for some cult meeting!

No idea if we were on the right road, we just kept going. Then, more candles. This was getting weird. I did mention that we were on our pre-honeymoon, I thought to myself. This couldn’t actually be for us, could it?

The road led to a cleared area with a cabin, candles by the door and a lady waiting on the porch that looked just like the airbnb host, Monica. “My god, this IS actually for us!!” I cheered, as we parked the car.

Catching onto our Aussie accents, Monica became concerned about the cold. She said the cabin was stocked up with wood, coffee and tea facilities, woolen jackets, boots, throw rugs and plenty of blankets to get us through.

We rugged up and settled in. Ryan put the kettle to boil on the fire, made us some tea and we sat there trying to soak it all in. “This cabin has been here through 3 generations”, Monica explained. “My grandmother used to come here for tea to rest a while in the afternoon”. There was a lot of history here. This place had a feeling about it. It was so warm and inviting. Such a blissful escape.

There was even an acoustic guitar, capo and a jar full of picks. So I couldn’t help but play some Norah by the fire. No radio signal or power, so we had to make our own music.

We had a little mini-drama in the night. I let the fire get too big and we woke up in a room full of smoke. If we didn’t wake up then, we may not have. Having said that, even though we had a slight brush with death, I’d do it again. Just maybe not get as carried away with the fire next time, hehe.

Morning came and our host told us we could leave whenever we wanted to, as there was no one else expected to check in the following day. We hung around for as long as we could justify and then headed off on our next adventure.