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Bark Up or Down? Firewood Splits Norwegians

Started by Syt, February 22, 2013, 11:53:32 AM

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Syt

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/world/europe/in-norway-tv-program-on-firewood-elicits-passions.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&hp&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1361372698-wCERYvd3hXDjYFAKvMX5cQ&

QuoteBark Up or Down? Firewood Splits Norwegians

OSLO — The TV program, on the topic of firewood, consisted mostly of people in parkas chatting and chopping in the woods and then eight hours of a fire burning in a fireplace. Yet no sooner had it begun, on prime time on Friday night, than the angry responses came pouring in.

"We received about 60 text messages from people complaining about the stacking in the program," said Lars Mytting, whose best-selling book "Solid Wood: All About Chopping, Drying and Stacking Wood — and the Soul of Wood-Burning" inspired the broadcast. "Fifty percent complained that the bark was facing up, and the rest complained that the bark was facing down."

He explained, "One thing that really divides Norway is bark."

One thing that does not divide Norway, apparently, is its love of discussing Norwegian wood. Nearly a million people, or 20 percent of the population, tuned in at some point to the program, which was shown on the state broadcaster, NRK.

In a country where 1.2 million households have fireplaces or wood stoves, said Rune Moeklebust, NRK's head of programs in the west coast city of Bergen, the subject naturally lends itself to television.

"My first thought was, 'Well, why not make a TV series about firewood?'" Mr. Moeklebust said in an interview. "And that eventually cut down to a 12-hour show, with four hours of ordinary produced television, and then eight hours of showing a fireplace live."

There is no question that it is a popular topic. "Solid Wood" spent more than a year on the nonfiction best-seller list in Norway. Sales so far have exceeded 150,000 copies — the equivalent, as a percentage of the population, to 9.5 million in the United States — not far below the figures for E. L. James's Norwegian hit "Fifty Shades Fanget," proof that thrills come in many forms.

"National Firewood Night," as Friday's program was called, opened with the host, Rebecca Nedregotten Strand, promising to "try to get to the core of Norwegian firewood culture — because firewood is the foundation of our lives." Various people discussed its historical and personal significance. "We'll be sawing, we'll be splitting, we'll be stacking and we'll be burning," Ms. Nedregotten Strand said.

But the real excitement came when the action moved, four hours later, to a fireplace in a Bergen farmhouse.

Perhaps you have seen a log fire burning on television before. But it would be very foolish to confuse Norway's eight-hour fireplace extravaganza on Friday with the Yule log broadcast in the United States at Christmastime.

While the Yule log fire plays on a constant repeating loop, the fire on "National Firewood Night" burned all night long, in suspensefully unscripted configurations. Fresh wood was added through the hours by an NRK photographer named Ingrid Tangstad Hatlevoll, aided by viewers who sent advice via Facebook on where exactly to place it.

For most of the time, the only sound came from the fire. Ms. Hatlevoll's face never appeared on screen, but occasionally her hands could be seen putting logs in the fireplace, or cooking sausages and marshmallows on sticks.

"I couldn't go to bed because I was so excited," a viewer called niesa36 said on the Dagbladet newspaper Web site. "When will they add new logs? Just before I managed to tear myself away, they must have opened the flue a little, because just then the flames shot a little higher.

"I'm not being ironic," the viewer continued. "For some reason, this broadcast was very calming and very exciting at the same time."

To be fair, the program was not universally acclaimed. On Twitter, a viewer named Andre Ulveseter said: "Went to throw a log on the fire, got mixed up, and smashed it right into the TV."

But Derek Miller, an expatriate American and author of the novel "Norwegian by Night," said the broadcast appealed to Norwegians' nostalgia for a simpler time as well as demonstrating the importance of firewood in their lives. "The sense of creating warmth, both symbolically and literally, to share conversation, to share food, to share silence, is essential to the Norwegian identity," he said in an interview.

"Solid Wood," the title of Mr. Mytting's book, has a double meaning in Norwegian, signifying also a person with a strong, dependable character. Its publication appears to have given older Norwegian men, a traditionally taciturn group, permission to reveal their deepest thoughts while seemingly discussing firewood. In this way they are akin to passionate fishermen roused from monosyllabic interludes by topics like which fly to use and how to really understand what a trout is thinking.

"What I've learned is that you should not ask a Norwegian what he likes about firewood, but how he does it — because that's the way he reveals himself," said Mr. Mytting. "You can tell a lot about a person from his firewood stack."

The book has proved particularly popular as a gift for hard-to-shop-for men.

"People buy it for their dads, their uncles — 'I don't know what to get him, but he has always liked wood,' " said William Jerde, a clerk at the Tanum bookstore in downtown Oslo. Tobias Sederholm, a clerk in a different store, said that one customer came in after Christmas having received copies from seven different family members.

Petter Nissen-Lie, 44, a lawyer in Oslo who every morning before breakfast lights a fire with wood he has chopped himself, said he understood perfectly what all the fuss was about.

The other day, he said, one of his three axes broke at his vacation home in the mountains, and he took it to the store where he had bought it a decade ago. When he tried to pay for repairs, he said, the storekeeper declared that "this sort of thing should not happen to our ax," and insisted on doing it free. "It was very important for this man to carry quality axes," he said.

Where does Mr. Nissen-Lie stand on the important bark-in-the-woodpile question? (Do you have an hour?)

"I like to have the bark facing down," he explained. "That's the way I learned from my grandfather, and I believe it's drier that way. But I respect that there are different ways to do it — and basically the most important thing is how much air you leave around the logs."

Despite the chance of barking up the wrong tree, I'm glad this burning issue gets properly logged by the media. :)
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
—Stephen Jay Gould

Proud owner of 42 Zoupa Points.

fhdz

I actually - without a hint of irony - want to watch the 12 hours of TV they've created.
and the horse you rode in on

derspiess

Maybe I'm part Norwegian.  I love chopping firewood & I would not buy a house that didn't have a wood-burning fireplace. 
"If you can play a guitar and harmonica at the same time, like Bob Dylan or Neil Young, you're a genius. But make that extra bit of effort and strap some cymbals to your knees, suddenly people want to get the hell away from you."  --Rich Hall

Jacob

Quote from: derspiess on February 22, 2013, 12:06:39 PM
Maybe I'm part Norwegian.  I love chopping firewood & I would not buy a house that didn't have a wood-burning fireplace.

I think we have finally found a subject where we are in agreement.

Grey Fox

:ph34r:

I had one, I took it out & walled off the Chimney. Put a TV & video games in it's place.
Colonel Caliga is Awesome.

11B4V

You see, your're not prepared now........tisk...tisk.
"there's a long tradition of insulting people we disagree with here, and I'll be damned if I listen to your entreaties otherwise."-OVB

"Obviously not a Berkut-commanded armored column.  They're not all brewing."- CdM

"We've reached one of our phase lines after the firefight and it smells bad—meaning it's a little bit suspicious... Could be an amb—".

Syt

You guys are missing the important part of the discussion: bark up or down?
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
—Stephen Jay Gould

Proud owner of 42 Zoupa Points.

Admiral Yi

Quote from: Syt on February 22, 2013, 12:25:51 PM
You guys are missing the important part of the discussion: bark up or down?

Bark down if the wood has a roof over it, as the white wood looks more attractive.  Bark up if uncovered to keep it drier.

11B4V

Quote from: Syt on February 22, 2013, 12:25:51 PM
You guys are missing the important part of the discussion: bark up or down?

Irrelevant to me. Either works just fine.
"there's a long tradition of insulting people we disagree with here, and I'll be damned if I listen to your entreaties otherwise."-OVB

"Obviously not a Berkut-commanded armored column.  They're not all brewing."- CdM

"We've reached one of our phase lines after the firefight and it smells bad—meaning it's a little bit suspicious... Could be an amb—".

viper37

Quote from: Syt on February 22, 2013, 12:25:51 PM
You guys are missing the important part of the discussion: bark up or down?
bark up, so the rain will flow around it instead of penetrating the wood.
You either put planks at the bottom of your stack, or you put the first row bark down.
I don't do meditation.  I drink alcohol to relax, like normal people.

If Microsoft Excel decided to stop working overnight, the world would practically end.

fhdz

Quote from: derspiess on February 22, 2013, 12:06:39 PM
Maybe I'm part Norwegian.  I love chopping firewood & I would not buy a house that didn't have a wood-burning fireplace.

:thumbsup:
and the horse you rode in on

garbon

Quote from: 11B4V on February 22, 2013, 12:24:36 PM
You see, your're not prepared now........tisk...tisk.

Unprepared for what? Sleeping in front of the hearth?
"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."
I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

11B4V

"there's a long tradition of insulting people we disagree with here, and I'll be damned if I listen to your entreaties otherwise."-OVB

"Obviously not a Berkut-commanded armored column.  They're not all brewing."- CdM

"We've reached one of our phase lines after the firefight and it smells bad—meaning it's a little bit suspicious... Could be an amb—".

garbon

"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."
I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

fhdz

Quote from: garbon on February 22, 2013, 01:05:12 PM
Unprepared for what? Sleeping in front of the hearth?

Or if the power goes out for an extended period of time during the winter.
and the horse you rode in on