"Where no one would believe someone could live"

[bilmo-p5]

Found this and thought it might be of interest to some here. My apologies if it has been posted before.

"Der ingen skulle tru at nokon kunne bu" ("Where no one would believe someone could live") is a documentary about Jenny Endresen, an American woman who started a new, extremely low-tech life in an inhospitable part of Norway. Voiceover and questions are in Norwegian, but the woman answers in English.

http://www.nrk.no/nett-tv/klipp/454076/

 

[sandbender]

That looks good, I will watch it properly later. Loved the spinning wheel.

NRK allow you to download high quality versions of their programs, the page for this series is here...

http://www.nrk.no/magasin/1.6508621

A Google translation of that page is here...

 

[rik_uk3]

Good link, very nice place, must have cost a fortune, I wonder where a woman who turns her back on modern society and all it offers raised the cash?

 

[rancid badger]

Good link, very nice place, must have cost a fortune, I wonder where a woman who turns her back on modern society and all it offers raised the cash?

Amen to that one Rik, I suspect that it's generally only those of "independent means", who can do this sort of thing.

It does look wonderful though.

 

[bilmo-p5]

I suspected as much from the prog intro.

Look here.

 

[Toddy]

Well, yes and no. Enough means to buy the house, lands and beasts and see her through until her 'domestic economy' is working.
Basically she's crofting. I'd like to know how she kept her hens laying and cows in milk in Winter though, because that doesn't happen in traditional farming societies.

Being bitchy here, her carding, spinning and weaving is dire and it must take her a month to knit a sock at that rate.
Braids are nice though

thanks for the link

cheers,
M

 

[Tor helge]

Actually, a farm out in the norwegian countryside could be bought quite cheap. Unless it lies in a popular "holiday area", and is categorized as a "fritidseiendom".
Most local governments have something called "boplikt". This means that if you buy a property more than 100000 square meters large (about 25 acres) (or 20000 square meters of ithe property is farmed land) you have to actually live there for a minimum of 5 years.
This law was made to uphold the rural population (didn`t work) and to make sure that farms would be used as farms (also didn`t work), and not only as a holiday house or "fritidseiendom".
Consequently the demand for such properties are low and thus the price of it.

Tor

 

[rik_uk3]

Good luck to the girl but I am a sceptic of many folk of her type. When mom lived in mid Wales in the 70's you would occationaly find a few from the local hippy/tipi commune in the pub for a pint or breast feed the baby in the warm and they all seemed to have rather good accents and come from solid middle class backgrounds. I suspect that for many, after a while playing hippy they went off and used their degree's to get a good job then buy a nice house.

 

[sandbender]

"...very nice place, must have cost a fortune, I wonder where a woman who turns her back on modern society and all it offers raised the cash?

Having watched the episode I do get the impression that she had the readies to set her self up, this from looking at some of the stuff she had about the place and also because I don't get the impression that any of her animals are going to end up in the larder. I may be be wrong though.

Lots of people live like this in this part of the world, more so in Transylvania, some of my relatives even. It is a hard life at this womans age, but becomes so much harder as the years wear on. If you don't have a community around you and if the young have all fled to the city, you can look forward to a very bleak last few years in this world.

"...I'd like to know how she kept her hens laying and cows in milk in Winter though, because that doesn't happen in traditional farming societies..."

In these parts pigs and geese keep us going through the winter, its that time of year now, lots of pigs being dismantled and turned in sausages and hams each and every morning.

The couple in episode 4 are also raising goats and working their land, possibly a little more efficiently than the couple from episode 3 we are discussing here.

Download any of the other episodes from here...

http://www.nrk.no/magasin/1.6508621

These are torrent files supplied by the program makers. The files are supplied with an .srt file (subtitle file) in the Norwegian language, although not a perfect solution for English speakers it is possible to translate the text in those files to English using Google translate.

 

[Toddy]

Thanks Andrew

I did wonder. Crofting is a community lifestyle to a large extent (well, it was before mechanisation) and I couldn't see how a small family could thrive without that infrastructure.

We're inclined to eulogise country values, but all too often those very values as the ones that only thrived when the countryside was where most of the population actually lived.

I'm really not well just now, living her lifestyle with this ? No wonder life expectancy for the majority wasn't even my age

cheers,
Mary

 

[sandbender]

"...very nice place, must have cost a fortune, I wonder where a woman who turns her back on modern society and all it offers raised the cash?

Land suitable for this kind of thing can be surprisingly cheap in some parts of Europe, it is often the paperwork and local prohibitions which stand in the way. In Hungary we have a problem with rich Hungarians or Austrians buying second homes in picturesque villages and when there numbers are enough petitioning the local council to ban the keeping of pigs, chickens and such with the village area. Thus elderly people who have lived in a village through wars and revolution and have managed to keep their smallholdings running are being told that they must give up their animals because there neighbors do not like the noise and smell.

Of course it is not entirely impossible to move somewhere and simply take over a piece of land to work it, I know of several places in Northern Spain where this has happened, villages abandoned and falling into disrepair are being rebuilt by people of all nationalities looking for a better life. This video shows one...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbIHwvSP9mM

Of course this video shows life in the warm months, a Spanish winter can be very harsh.

 

[v-ness]

Her husband was obviously Norwegian, so maybe the farm was in his familie's possession already.
I love watching people live their dream, although I personally like a bit of comfort in my day to day life, LOL.
The problem I always have with thinking about the reality of living these kind of lives is the man- hours involved. Having a little experience of small-scale farming I think its almost impossible to make a success of it with only 2 people working and not killing your health in the process. I know they had help for the haymaking, but what happens when the friends cant come because the weather has been too bad, work commitments etc. And one year of no hay- what happens to the animals in the winter. The film didnt say about any other income, as it is- thye're living rather precariously. Just my opinion of course
Cheers
Ness