Simone Abram

Hytta
Four walls surrounding a dream

Norway is a country of cottages. Even though the cottage is used perhaps only three or four times during the course of the year, it is extremely important to Norwegians. What makes it so important? This book is about everything that does not appear in the glossy interior photos in cottage magazines. It is about people and memories. How one’s whole life story can be gathered into a simple view or a shabby cottage chair. It is about all the time Norwegians spend with painting and upkeep, and about who will inherit the cottage and why. About how generations and family create life in a cottage, but also about how the cottage creates bitter family feuds. HYTTA is written by social anthropologists Marianne E. Lien and Simone Abram. They travelled through Norway talking with ordinary people about their cottages, and how these cottages became meaningful, and why one has to -- at one point -- let go.