The hytte is more than just a cabin — it’s part of Norwegian national identity. In 2023, one in six of the country’s inhabitants owned one, according to Statistics Norway (SSB). They can often be found next to a lake or deep in a forest, where Norwegians go to escape urban life and reconnect with nature, skiing in winter, hiking and biking in summer. A cabin trip (or hyttetur) can be a solitary ritual or a social gathering with friends or family, with both having a special place in the national consciousness.
Traditionally built from wood, cabins originally featured torvtak roofs made of birch bark and peat, covered with sod. Most didn’t have indoor plumbing or mains electricity, and many still don’t, including some of the network of 500 public cabins run by the Norwegian Trekking Association (DNT). Even in prime ski resorts such as Geilo, small spartan huts mingle with swankier glass-fronted interpretations.
Architect Wenche Selmer was the most well-known cabin designer of the postwar era. (In 2026, her Modernist homes will be the focus of an exhibition at Oslo’s National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design.) Contemporary designer cabins include sharp-edged glass boxes cantilevered over slopes and fjords.
The paradox of retrospection and modernity in Norwegian cabin culture is explored by Robert Ferguson in his recent memoir The Cabin in the Mountains. The British writer moved to Norway in 1983 and, with his wife Nina, built a cabin in the Hardangervidda national park in 2016.
“I’d had quite a romantic vision of a cabin,” says Ferguson. “I envisaged pulling a sledge [of provisions] through deep snow to reach a tiny shack lit by oil lamps, and skiing to a nearby lake to break the ice for water.” The reality is far more convenient: “we actually turn on the underfloor heating with an app on the three-hour drive from Oslo to our cabin.”
Cabins became widespread in Norway’s postwar years. Ferguson likens the phenomenon to the 1890s gold rush in Canada’s Klondike region: “There was a frenetic wave of cabin-building in the 1970s when farmers got rich selling off sheep-grazing land. My wife’s family built a summer and a winter cabin.”
Only 2.5 per cent of cabins have overseas owners, according to SSB. Yet a pandemic-induced quest for isolation has helped fuel an uptick of interest: July saw the highest number of bookings for Norwegian cabins since records began in 2018, according to the rentals analyst AirDNA.
“Until two years ago, I didn’t think we’d ever sell to a foreigner. But now we’ve sold cabin plots to British and Czech customers,” says Martin V Vollen of Mivo, a company that sells plots for cabins and rents out properties in Ålesund, western Norway. “Fifty per cent of our rentals this summer were from the Middle East — people there tell us they love green forests and rain — and one family viewed plots [for sale].”
Norway has been a beneficiary of the “coolcation” trend to escape to colder climates. With the snowline moving north, skiers are looking to the country as a long-term alternative to the Alps — a trend reported by Norwegian Air last winter after increased demand from Germany, the Netherlands and the UK.
Christina Norborg and her family bought a three-bedroom cabin in the ski resort of Kvitfjell, three hours north of Oslo, in 2021. The teacher lives between Copenhagen and Singapore, and visits her cabin 10 times a year.
Norborg’s cabin is high-spec, with floor-to-ceiling glass windows, a double-height living room, bespoke fireplace, staircase and parquet flooring. Nevertheless, it’s made using traditional Norwegian lafte (jointing) methods, with sheep’s-wool insulation between logs.
“I am truly in love,” Norborg says of her cabin. “It feels properly like a home, with space to get together with our three grown children and hike, ski, mountain bike . . . In just a few days I can relax and reload.”
Custom-made to a buyer’s requirements, these cabins are constructed by LMH Group in a Lithuanian factory, then taken apart and reassembled “Lego-style” in Kvitfjell. Since 2021, there have been Danish, Swedish, Dutch and German buyers, according to co-founder Laurynas Mitkus. “By precutting and prepainting the materials there’s very little waste,” he says of their modus operandi. Prices start at NKr10.4mn ($947,250), through Savills.
Since 2019, the krone has lost 25 per cent of its value against the pound — making cabin holidays and purchases more affordable for foreigners. Good-quality four-bedroom cabins can be found just north of the ski resort of Geilo for £350,000, or a traditional two-bedroom one for £70,000 in Kvitfjell.
For a brand new cabin, you need to find a hyttefelt (a cabin field, with planning for huts), then pick your plot, along with a cabin manufacturer to build it. Louise Astley and her family custom-built their four-bedroom cabin in this way. They visit several times a year, despite having to take two flights and a ferry from Surrey to the Sunnmøre Alps in western Norway.
“When I am there, nature instantly dispels all the knots and worries my mind has been holding on to,” says Astley, who discovered cabin culture while ski touring with her husband. The cabin cost £550,000, and is rented out when they are not using it via Mivo.no. They’re now ready for the winter season: “We mark the road with sticks for the snow plough and leave the shovel outside ready to dig out the front door — there’s always so much snow,” she says. “In October it’s also customary to see families re-staining their cabin together — it’s a traditional ritual.”
Cabin sales among foreigners may be increasing, yet Norwegian sales are “flat”, according to locals. Vollen cites “high interest rates, the weak krone and an increase in the cost of living” as contributing factors.
Higher taxation on cabins and higher electricity costs are also being felt, according to Jarle M Lunde, general manager of Ølsjølitoppen, a community of new cabins priced from €240,000 in Valdres, eastern Norway. “Cabin manufacturers and landowners have almost exclusively focused on the Norwegian market, which is fine when demand is there.” More recently, the company has started to market in Germany, where “there’s an awareness of cabins’ revenue-generating opportunities,” he says.
Yet there’s an ambivalence about the influx of foreigners in Norway. A tourism campaign was stopped over concerns about the impact on the natural environment and on the scant infrastructure in locations such as the Lofoten archipelago. Some municipalities are reducing cabin fields. “There are now so many in some areas that people are realising they have completely ruined the nature that they came to experience,” says Finn Arne Jørgensen, a professor of environmental history at the University of Stavanger.
But for those who have already fallen in love with hytte life, the turf cabins and their romantic setting provide a life-enhancing refuge. As Robert Ferguson says, “I always feel like I’m entering a different world up there.”
At a glance
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Buyers of second-hand cabins pay 2.5 per cent tax on the purchase price.
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Cabin owners pay an annual municipal tax on assets over NKr1.7mn for individuals (NKr3.4mn for couples); resident owners are also potentially liable for the state wealth tax, depending on the value of their assets.
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From January to September, there were an average of 8,950 rental cabins listed in Norway, up 151 per cent from 2021 (AirDNA).
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