Norwegian culture, heritage and woodstacking

RNZ News

11-05-2025

In the 1860s and 70s two Norwegian settlements were established in the lower North Island. As the name of one of those today suggests - Norsewood - Norwegians were invited to settle here to clear a huge swathe of forest known as Seventy Mile Bush. Which makes the arrival of Norwegian novelist Lars Mytting this weekend diown the road at Wairarapa book festival Booktown in Featherston rather apt. He's there also ahead of literary events in Christchurch and Auckland. Mytting is still best known internationally for his 2015 non-fiction book Norwegian Wood: Chopping, Stacking and Drying Wood the Scandinavian Way. Considered one of that region's greatest publishing successes - as you read it, you really can smell the freshly-cut wood. But Lars Mytting is principally a novelist. And since Norwegian Wood he has published a remarkable historical fiction series The Sister Bells Trilogy. Set in a remote valley in central Norway, the three novels tell the story of a small farming community and take place over three generations - from the 1880s through until the end of the second world war. The novels track the tension between long-held ways of living and modernisation, and between Norwegian culture and the influence of others. The Sister Bells Trilogy has been enormously successful in Norway - 400,000 copies sold, it's said, in a country with the population of New Zealand. The books have also been acclaimed internationally, and the last of the three books The Night of the Scourge has just been published in English translation. Lars is speaking in events at Auckland Writers Festival May 16, 17 and 18 and in a Word Christchurch event May 21.