Coronavirus – abandoned at Norway’s largest cabin branch

Sleep in the cabin

– I can say enough that we will sleep in the cabin for the first time since the cabin ban was introduced, but I don’t want it in the newspaper, one of the cabin owners tells Dagbladet on Sunday night.

On Sunday he raised his family and is in the middle of dinner after a long ski trip when Dagbladet knocks on the door. Another cabin owner residing further south in eastern Norway also made the trip to the cabin, finally, after finishing it earlier this winter.

He doesn’t want the newspaper either. A third Oslo-based man in a Milsluker’n hat and cross-country outfit crashes into a parking lot.

– You can tell an anonymous cabin owner that it is very nice to return to the cabin again, and we are glad that the ban has been lifted. We are now the only car in the apartment complex, he says.

Fear delayed Easter

The three of them were some of the few who had chosen to go to the cabin on Sunday night. The government still recommends “unnecessary” leisure travel outside its own region of life and work. However, when the weekend returns, more pressure is expected on the country’s ski and mountain destinations.

Local authorities fear a late Easter, which among other things led the Vinje hut municipality to introduce a failed local hut ban.

Here, in Norway’s largest cabin township, Ringsaker, with over 7,000 in number, there have been no local security guards or cabin police.

boasting

This caused a stir when Therese Johaug and his girlfriend Nils Jacob Hoff stayed here before Easter after receiving an invalid permit from the neighboring municipality of Lillehammer, where Hoff is a doctor. Sjusjøen’s best-known cabin owner is now not in the cabin, nor does he want to comment on the matter, says Johaug manager Jørn Ernst.

Ringsaker Mayor Anita Ihle Steen only has good words to say about the people in the cabin after a month of drought.

– People have really responded to the cabin ban. I also hope that they will do so with regard to the recommendation to avoid unnecessary leisure travel. People think so, although I understand very well that people want the cabin and are happy with it in this climate, says Ihle Steen (Ap) to Dagbladet.

Hundreds of millions

The Kiwi store right in the middle of the farmhouse had 10 to 20 percent of expected Easter sales. It is usually the most important week of the year. At the Låven water well, the 29 employees are laid off, and 25 new tables and 100 chairs are unopened in cardboard boxes inside the room.

Large ski resorts expect losses in the hundred million class as a result of the restrictions.

– Players in the mountains, of course, are happy that the cabin ban is lifted and hope that the wheels can be kept running. This has a big impact on the local community, and things will happen slowly and cautiously in the future, says Ihle Steen.

– Skiing until May 17

Jan Ove Holmen is the leader of the Sjusjøen well and sits safe at home on Sunday afternoon. He has just taken a day trip to check the state of the cabin he has had since the 1960s this week.

– We only deal with the advice of the authorities to avoid unnecessary pleasure trips, and we feel that most do. Still, there is now a meter and a half of snow and ski for another three weeks. Surely you can go skiing to Sjusjøen on May 17, he says with some eagerness on the phone.

But for now, he stays at home, as most of the others seem to do.

The national booth ban was introduced on March 19 and is therefore repealed today, April 20. However, no one knows if the number of infected people in the municipalities can increase when tourists return.

This is happening at the same time with a gradual opening of Norway, where the kindergartens are opening today and the kindergarten starting next week. It is not only the cabin municipalities that are now entering unknown territory.