For the last week I have been in on the Vildmark course run by Bearclaw Bushcraft, Nordic Bushcraft and Preben Mortensen from the Nordmarken Kanot Centre in Årjäng, Sweden.
I booked the course wanting to expand my skill set further and to gain experience and confidence in practising bushcraft in a different environment and by gosh what a place to do it.
I arrived in Oslo, Norway, on the Saturday and along with a few others from the course we explored the city taking in a few of the sites and emptying our wallets on the heavily priced drinks. I cant answer for the rest of the group but I found it very strange being in a city with the mindset and equipment to live for the next week in the wilderness and therefore I was very much looking forward to the Sunday morning when we caught a bus over the border into Sweden and arrived at Årjäng two hours later. There we were met by Preben and one of his team who drove us down to the Kanot Centre where we were greeted by Gary and JP from Bearclaw Bushcraft and Johan from Nordic Bushcraft. After a brief induction to the course we were shown around the centre and taken to where we were to spend the night.
We were to spend the week split between two locations, the Kanot centre and 3 days at the beginning of the week in a remote location a little further south of the centre, so on the Monday morning after a brief introduction to the skills and techniques of canoeing (expertly delivered by Phil, Bambodoggy
)we packed our kit into the canoes ad set of onto the lake to our new location for the next few days where we would start the course.
The course content was excellent, and Id like to thank Gary, JP, Johan and Preben for the excellent tuition. We covered a variety of topics such as canoeing, safe knife handling and cutting techniques, camp hygiene, fire lighting, tree felling and shelter building (including an Indian sauna ), hunting and fishing techniques, utensil free cooking, and some tracking and plant identification/uses.
Preben, who is 74 years old and runs the Kanot Centre, and also heads up the areas Search and Rescue team, took us on several tours of the area and gave us unlimited advice on the topics we were covering and at the same time amusing us with his jokes and amazing us of stories from his past. I think the whole group agreed that if any of us achieve a 10th of the experiences that he had by his age we would have lived a full and exhilarating life.
The evenings we were left to our own accords and were able to have use of the canoes to explore the lake, or the forest on foot. The amount of fauna in the area was immense, even if some of it remained hidden from us (especially the fish ). Some of the group were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the wildlife including deer, beaver, badger, red squirrel and osprey to name just a few
Friday afternoon and evening saw us being treated to a day of luxury back at the Kanot centre and we were given access to the Sauna and hot-tub and a BBQ cooked by Preben, what an amazing way to end a week in the most beautiful location Ive ever seen.
I think myself very lucky to have been able to visit such an awe inspiring landscape and to share the time in the company of a group of like minded individuals.
Many thanks again to all the instructors and also to the rest of the group for such an enjoyable week.
Let me leave you with a selection of my photos from the week which you can access from Here
I booked the course wanting to expand my skill set further and to gain experience and confidence in practising bushcraft in a different environment and by gosh what a place to do it.
I arrived in Oslo, Norway, on the Saturday and along with a few others from the course we explored the city taking in a few of the sites and emptying our wallets on the heavily priced drinks. I cant answer for the rest of the group but I found it very strange being in a city with the mindset and equipment to live for the next week in the wilderness and therefore I was very much looking forward to the Sunday morning when we caught a bus over the border into Sweden and arrived at Årjäng two hours later. There we were met by Preben and one of his team who drove us down to the Kanot Centre where we were greeted by Gary and JP from Bearclaw Bushcraft and Johan from Nordic Bushcraft. After a brief induction to the course we were shown around the centre and taken to where we were to spend the night.
We were to spend the week split between two locations, the Kanot centre and 3 days at the beginning of the week in a remote location a little further south of the centre, so on the Monday morning after a brief introduction to the skills and techniques of canoeing (expertly delivered by Phil, Bambodoggy
)we packed our kit into the canoes ad set of onto the lake to our new location for the next few days where we would start the course.The course content was excellent, and Id like to thank Gary, JP, Johan and Preben for the excellent tuition. We covered a variety of topics such as canoeing, safe knife handling and cutting techniques, camp hygiene, fire lighting, tree felling and shelter building (including an Indian sauna
), hunting and fishing techniques, utensil free cooking, and some tracking and plant identification/uses. Preben, who is 74 years old and runs the Kanot Centre, and also heads up the areas Search and Rescue team, took us on several tours of the area and gave us unlimited advice on the topics we were covering and at the same time amusing us with his jokes and amazing us of stories from his past. I think the whole group agreed that if any of us achieve a 10th of the experiences that he had by his age we would have lived a full and exhilarating life.
The evenings we were left to our own accords and were able to have use of the canoes to explore the lake, or the forest on foot. The amount of fauna in the area was immense, even if some of it remained hidden from us (especially the fish
). Some of the group were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the wildlife including deer, beaver, badger, red squirrel and osprey to name just a fewFriday afternoon and evening saw us being treated to a day of luxury back at the Kanot centre and we were given access to the Sauna and hot-tub and a BBQ cooked by Preben, what an amazing way to end a week in the most beautiful location Ive ever seen.
I think myself very lucky to have been able to visit such an awe inspiring landscape and to share the time in the company of a group of like minded individuals.
Many thanks again to all the instructors and also to the rest of the group for such an enjoyable week.
Let me leave you with a selection of my photos from the week which you can access from Here
