GAMMEN
I was in my first year of my studies, working evening shifts in the kitchen in a hotel and dreaming of freedom.
What was freedom, really? Certainly not this, I thought as I watched the guests getting more and more drunk. Not this either, I thought as I looked down at my black uniform.
Work to study to work more to buy to die comfortably?
Time.
Ownership.
Property.
Who owns our time? First the family, then the school, the system, society's expectations internalized by me.
I've been working since I was born. First in the family, and then as soon as I could lie about my age - in shops, bars, galleries, as a cleaner etc. Do I have to pay just to exist? To shit, to sleep, to breathe?
To take part in a system that kills?
Looks alright in Norway, but the castle in the air cracked when I visited the refugee camp at Moria in Greece. I saw the other side of the coin and lost faith in most things.
Who owns, who rents, who’s sharing, who does the swiping, who does the caring? Who can enter, who are are billing, who are killing - who are not?
Is it possible to just be?
Over the steaming dishes at 4 a.m., I agreed with myself that I had to get out of this hamster wheel. The hamster wheel is decorated with bling: promises of an apartment, townhouse, partner, happy family… But the road to hell is paved with good intentions and after growing up in a more or less dysfunctional family, parents highly educated only to suffer in a 9-5, where every holiday was spent scraping the house, it was easier to jump off the drive. With Mariah Carey singing in the back I realized that the boiling water that scalded the skin on my hands was never going to give me life, it was only going to take it.
The huge mountains that surrounded the small village lured me in.
The Christmas table season was soon over. When spring came, I moved into a tent.
I loved it and started collecting driftwood to build something more solid for the winter. I wanted to build something that could keep warm, but as humble as possible in the landscape. I was inspired by the traditional earthen comb, which was used by the Sami and Kvens in recent times, but which has kept people alive here ever since the first humans arrived in Scandinavia.
On the garbage dump I found more planks and tools, kitchen utensils, a down jacket and hiking pants, the studio had a workshop, a guy sold me an iron stove from a house that was to be demolished, the second-hand shop gave away a pair of leather hiking boots that fit my feet like a glove. All the food I ate those years was from the store's dumpster.
I wanted to hide in the landscape and take back a piece of land. Especially as a woman, as men own 98 prosent of land, taking into consideration that most heads of the state and the church are male-ruled.
But as the rumors spread about my occupation plans, I actually got permission from a landowner. ♂
I spent the fall building. It was hard work. Didn't know anything about building, but it's pretty intuitive. You can do it too.
I also got help from fellow students, realizing that freedom had more to do with community than I had thought.
I moved in on the same night that the frost made its mark on the ground. The next 1,5 years I fell in love with nature, the mountains, the seasons, the fire that kept me warm, the lake below that I swam in and skated on, the trees and roots, the rocks, the snow, the wind that sang in the chimney, the rain that fell softly and quietly on the ground. I realized how dependent we are on nature. That we are nature. That we are in the process of killing ourselves. I was radicalized as a climate activist, anti-capitalist, little twig.
Now the gamme is openly accessible to people for free. For you too. A place where you can just be.
Vår
Etter den første vinteren 2017/2018, før noe hadde begynt å gro på gammen
Sommer
Sommeren 2020 prøvde jeg å kun gå barbent til gammen og å bade hver gang. Hverdag med gjørmeløping i varm myr og hyggelige naboer som tilbø meg å låne hagelsangen deres når jeg var nede.
Satte seg på sekken da jeg entret marka og ble sittende til jeg var fremme i gammen.
Høst
Å komme tilbake til Gammeboka å lese hva besøkende har skrevet er alltid et høydepunkt. Her har noen lagt igjen en liten gave som er helt i gammens ånd. En ung Jonas skriver: “Om sjelen noen gang vil finne fred må det være på en plass som denne.”
Tester Yakisugi eller shou-sugi-ban - japansk forkullingsteknikk for å beskytte plankene mot fukt/råte/mugg i ytre vegg bak senga 2020 og to gode hjelpere til å bygge de inn. 
Linolje
