Grover C. Magnus 
“Solid Wood”, the title of Mr. Mytting’s book, has a double meaning in Norwegian, also meaning a person with a strong and reliable character. His post appears to have given older Norwegian men, a traditionally taciturn group, permission to reveal their deepest thoughts while apparently discussing firewood. In this way, they are akin to avid fishermen awakened from monosyllabic interludes by topics such as which fly to use and how to really understand what a trout is thinking.
“What I learned is that you shouldn’t ask a Norwegian what he likes about firewood, but how he does it, because that’s how it turns out”, Mr Mytting said. “You can tell a lot about a person from their pile of firewood. “
The book proved particularly popular as a gift for hard-to-buy men.
“People buy it for their fathers, uncles – ‘I don’t know what to get him, but he always loved wood,” said William Jerde, an employee of Tanum bookstore in downtown Oslo. . Tobias Sederholm, an employee at another store, said a customer walked in after Christmas after receiving copies from seven different family members.
Petter Nissen-Lie, 44, a lawyer in Oslo who lights a fire every morning before breakfast with wood he himself chopped, said he fully understood what it was about .
The other day, he said, one of his three axes broke in his vacation home in the mountains, and he brought it to the store where he had bought it ten ago. year. When he tried to pay for the repairs, he said, the storekeeper said “that sort of thing shouldn’t happen to our ax,” and insisted on doing it for free. “It was very important for this man to carry quality axes,” he said.
What is Mr. Nissen-Lie’s position on the important issue of bark in the woodpile? (Do you have an hour?)
“I like having the bark down,” he explained. “That’s how I learned from my grandfather, and I think it’s drier that way. But I respect the fact that there are different ways to do it – and basically the most important thing is how much air you leave around the logs.
