Photo: Instagram
A Norwegian couple has just finished the real outdoorfolks’ dream: they’ve spent the last year in Norway’s Arctic regions, sleeping in tents and improvised shelters, and living off the land.
The couple, Elise Theoline and Andreas Skagay, who are both 26, took off from her job as a nursery school teacher and his studies on fish health, and headed for the woods. Skagay told the Aftenposten newspaper “I think outdoor life in the winter was very exciting, sleeping in shelters, drying firewood, keeping warm and lighting fires. Everyday things.”
But it wasn’t all beer and skittles; while trekking, kayaking and skiing through the area, hunting and foraging for their food, they did occasionally not have enough to eat, and at one point Skagay had to be airlifted to hospital with an injured foot. And there were days when they just couldn’t get warm enough.
But, they say “we are closer than ever and we have grown as a couple. When you are in the tent for the fifth day because there is a storm raging outside, you can’t just leave things hanging.”
I love being out of doors, including some time roughing it. But I also love showers, a nice meal and a comfortable bed. Glad to know there’s adventuresome folks out there!