Our family lived off-grid in the forest — then Mum died
Sometimes the smallest stories are the most powerful. In 2014 the Norwegian film-maker Silje Jacobsen started work on a film about Nik and Maria Payne, an unassuming British-Norwegian couple who went off grid with their family in the country's wild and woody north: living off the land, home schooling the younger children, escaping the money-go-round and the digital imprisonment that goes with it.
It doesn't hurt that the Paynes are photogenic. An early scene shows the family tapping a tree for syrup as sunlight dapples through the forest canopy. There is no television in the house; instead the children are encouraged to raise animals, hug trees (literally) and commune with nature. The whole vision is idyllic. Then it all changes. In 2019 Maria died of
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