Norwegian Holiday
In Norway, people are fast to adopt new technology. A typical Norwegian home will have broadband Internet, a flat screen TV, perhaps a Jacuzzi and at least one car in the driveway.
But when it comes to relaxing, outdoor toilets, as well as no electricity or running water is the choice of many.
Anne Marit and Karl Petter Brun, for example, wouldn't trade their small wooden cabin for the world. The Brun's drive for two hours from their home in the city of Trondheim and then walk another 20 minutes to get to their cabin.
Surrounded by wild moorland and the mountains, the couple relaxes with no cars, no electricity and no running water. Candles and oil lamps light the inside of the cabin, whose sole source of heat is a wood stove.
For Karl Petter, it's a total break from his everyday life as a headhunter.
"It's tradition," he says -- and isn't bothered at all by having to haul water in buckets from a nearby stream.
"And we can relax, both in body and mind," Anne Marit adds. " I think this is the best way to relax, and to really load our batteries."
Luxury is nowhere to be found
Thousands of mountain cabins dot the Norwegian countryside, from the very south to the high Arctic north. Many of them are family-owned and handed down from generation to generation.
But, of course, not everyone is lucky enough to have access to a family heirloom like that of the Brun's. For them, the alternative is the public tourist cabins, such as Jøldalshytta.
Tourists checking in at Jøldalshytta have often spent the entire day walking across the mountains from other tourist cabins. But they're not expecting any luxury or intimacy here.
"We provide simple accommodation and they have to share a room," says cabin supervisor Ann Synnøve Handeland. Meals are eaten at a long table in the dining room. On the breakfast table, guests find products from the small mountain farm just next door.
"Everyone is talking to everyone," Handeland says. "You don't have cranky people in the mountains!"
People are focusing on health and environment
Many of the cabins in Norway's remote mountains were originally summer farms. They turned into holiday homes as farming modernized and needed electricity and water.
Handeland says that people choose such a down-to-earth holiday because they want something genuine, which is not so busy.
"It's pure nature," she says. "The Norwegian people have always been like this, but to a greater extent now, with more focus on health and environment."
Today, anyone has the right to roam and even set up their tent wherever they please in Norway's wilderness. But strict regulations prevent new construction or any motorized activity in these areas.
People here hope this will never change, so whatever happens in the modern world, they can still escape to the remoteness and basic standard of a simple cabin.