"Huts are a place beyond your normal life." Lesley Riddoch urges us, like the Scandis, Russians and Canadians, to build our own space in the forest
From the Guardian
The Scottish broadcaster and land activist Lesley Riddoch has brought out a fascinating and quirky new book titled Huts - A Place Beyond: How to end our exile from nature. Based on her PhD, the book explores how the Scandinavian, North American and New Zealand tradition of small, spartan buildings in forests and wilderness were a crucial component of wellbeing and citizenship for these societies.
Riddoch urges her fellow Scots not just to pick up this tradition, but revive their own - and of course, the message communicates right across these islands. This piece below from her own website sets out Lesley’s thesis:
Huts. No, I don’t mean sheds. And I don’t mean a borrowed week in someone else’s self-catering cottage.
Or ownership of a substantial second home that should really belong to a local family.
I mean wee wooden huts. Usually self-built, electricity-free and (deep breath) minus a flushing loo. Usually located discreetly in woodlands, belonging to the same family for generations and their much-loved, hugely valued, first, main, forever home. The home they don’t change over a lifetime despite changing their city home many times to suit family expansion and changing jobs.
The permanent home - the home of the heart - the place possessed by nearly every family in Scandinavia, Canada, New Zealand and beyond. The big bonus of living at a wooded latitude. The place folk really meet, relax and reconnect with nature, families and themselves.
The natural, outdoorsy, adventure-focused location for leisure instead of the pub, competitive sports grounds and commercial shopping malls. The place that’s there for you 24/7 without the need for deposits, booking conditions, sky-high weekly rentals, epic forward planning and stress.
The place to collect berries, spot squirrels, stack and chop wood, go swimming and immerse yourself in the passing seasons. The place to do your own repairs and make your own mistakes. The chance to immerse yourself in different and soon familiar surroundings that offer real release from the working week and constraints of city life.
Huts, a place beyond your normal life.
It’s an escape valve our Nordic neighbours wouldn’t be without - but it’s a pipe dream here in Scotland. Why?
I’ve spent much of my adult life (and the last ten years completing a PhD) in a bid to find out. This book - Huts, a place beyond - is the result.
It tells the story of my own hutting experiences in Aberdeenshire during the 1980s, my hytte-exploring years in Norway and the remarkable outdoor-crazy Scots who defied rejection and restriction during the inter-war years to build hutting communities that survived for generations - only to face eviction and gentrification today.
Characters like the thrawn, hut-loving socialist William Ferris, who founded Carbeth and the first youth hostel in Britain near Loch Lomond, only to be completely forgotten today.
Above all, the book shows how centuries of feudal landownership stifled hut development and improvement to leave Scotland the only hut-free country at a wooded latitude today. What are we missing?
Huts, a place beyond - tries to give a flavour of the leisure lives most Scots will never know. Without change.
More here. And also, check out this Guardian article interviewing Lesley about the book. An extract:
“There’s such a pushback against second homes in Scotland, because they are effectively other people’s first homes, while huts – modest, low-impact dwellings – have no impact on local housing stock.”
She again makes the comparison with Norway, where one in 10 own a holiday home, compared with Scotland where it is the preserve of the wealthy elite.
Red wooden rorbus fishermen’s huts in the Lofoten Islands, Norway. Photograph: Realimage/Alamy Stock Photo
The main reason for this massive discrepancy is the type of holiday home that is typical in each country: in Norway, 93% of second homes are purpose-built wooden hytte. There are almost 500,000 of these cabins in Norway, while in Scotland Riddoch estimates there are fewer than 600.
These weekend retreats are common at wooded latitudes from Canada, through the Nordic and Baltic states, to Russia, building on a tradition that began in the 1920s and 30s when working people escaped the disease and squalor of the inner cities.
They were normally built no more than an hour or so from the main family home, to maximise leisure time, and facilities were deliberately basic to spare expense and fuss.
Most notable in the UK were the “plotlands”, makeshift holiday communities that thronged with Londoners in the marshlands and meadows around south Essex.
If you’re interested to explore how to make your own hut, sign up to the Thousand Huts campaign.