Adventure
Camping
Lifestyle
Living in a Nordic tipi
The boy and his unicorn
3 Jun 2015
Raised in the deep of the Swedish forests, Sigurd has a playground not many of his four-year-old fellow country men even set their feet in. In this guest post we meet this lively kid from the perspective of his pro-blogger Andrea Hejlskov. Do yourself a favour and read more of her adventurous escape into nature at http://andreahejlskov.com/category/blog Alright then, here we go!
Almost four years ago we left modern society to go settle in the wild where we built our own log cabin. We wanted to start all over. We wanted to see if we could not find another, and maybe a better way, of being a family. We now spend our days raising kids and maybe awareness too, I don´t know. It´s a quiet life and a simple life. Primitive, yes, we do not have running water nor electricity (well, we do, we have a solar cell) but never without a deep sense of meaning and being connected… to the larger whole. To nature.
This post is about Sigurd. Sigurd is four years old. He grew up in the wild wilderness woods of Värmland, Sweden. This post is about his tipi.
Yesterday we had the first night of winter frost so we decided to move the tipi. It´s been standing down by the lake for visiting friends and family but we wanted to move it closer to the cabin so that we might have some extra space.
Initially it was decided that I should have it as a “writers retreat” (hi, I´m Andrea, I´m the mother, I also happen to be an author of this book for instance: http://www.saxo.com/dk/og-den-store-flugt_andrea-hejlskov_paperback_9788799537921 ) but it didn´t take long before little Sigurd decided that we don’t really need a writers retreat or a winter hut, no, what we needs is somewhere where he can play with his favorite play animal: the pink and fabulous unicorn called “Hjørni” So we went down to the lake to fetch the tipi.
We call this “the shitty bridge” or “the worst bridge ever invented by human kind” and you unfortunately have to cross it to get to the tipi.
And then we began to dismantle the tipi which I didn’t take any pictures of because it was not really interesting. Lunch was more interesting.
Then we began to raise the tipi which Sigurd found to be very boring work
So he went scouting for some wild sorrel which he eats with great joy.
Then he decided to climb some trees
For a minute there he thought about creating a spiderweb from the lines of the tipi but somebody yelled very loudly that he shouldn’t even BEGIN think about it.
So he went on a mission to explore and conquer the surroundings
After a good while he came back carrying with him a stone meant for further exploration
Then it was time to go fetch Hjørni!
Uh, cosy!
“I wonder if that mother person also brought some cookies?”
“Hjørni wants hot chocolate too!”
“Hey mom, is it ok that I rule the tipi from now on? You don´t really need a place to write anyways, right, you have me!”
And that was that.
So unfortunately I can´t write about our Tentipi or the reasons why we have it, but some time ago I wrote this https://andthepioneerlife.wordpress.com/2014/06/18/the-tipi/ I gotta go now. Sigurd wants to camp out by the tipi tonight “We´ll be like winter bears” he says, exhilarated. Oh, forest life, I do love you.
We are more dependent on light than one think in everyday life. There is a circadian rhythm in the body that is controlled by light. A rhythm that affects down to the cell level and is easily disturbed when daylight intake becomes too small. Research has shown that, among other things, sleep disorders can be reduced by camping and allowing the body to adapt to natural light and darkness.
For each holiday hike in late summer, it became harder and harder to the hiker Susanne to go home to everyday life.She wanted to stay out in nature with a backpack on her back and be able to pitch the tent where it suited the moment. Many small things over the years led to that in May 2020 she moved to an island in the river Indalsälven, in the neighbourhood of Åre, Sweden, to live there for a year.
Christian Reinwarth and Judith Senger live near Düsseldorf in Germany. They visited Tentipi, Sunne, a Friday in July to get a tent repaired, to buy a floor and to expand their tent range with an Olivin in cotton/polyester. That’s their fifth Tentipi tent and in an interview the couple told how it comes they are so fond of Nordic tipis from Tentipi. They gave some advice for camping as well.
The scents of nature always smell good, right? Well, that's a truth with exaggeration. There are such amounts of different smells, and they are experienced in different ways due to experiences, memories and circumstances that you do not always know. The sense of smell is more or less developed and this makes it difficult to know what others feel about scents. How much the sensory cells are exposed to a certain smell also determines how you feel about it. The olfactory cells can be tired by an intense scent and if another comes close, it feels much stronger. Now there is research that shows that you can feel well about different smells and researchers have managed to find out how some everyday scents develop.