The inter-war origins of the Norwegian hytte - a permanent home in nature

My PhD aims to compare and contrast Norway and Scotland -- two North Sea neighbours with very different approaches to land ownership and - as a result -- two very different traditions of second home ownership and use. Norway has one of the highest rates o f second home ownership in the Northern Hemisphere -- Scotland has one of the lowest. My thesis is that different systems of land ownership and local democracy in the two nations explain their differing experiences of second home ownership -- and that th ese underlying aspects of democracy have been under-estimated in existing Norwegian second home research which focuses on technical triggers like the advent of holidays with pay and the de-rationing of cars in post war Norway. In Scotland research focuses almost entirely on the negative impact second homes currently have on the housing market for local people. I would like to focus on the origins of huts in both countries -- in particular on the inter war period when working people from both nations trie d to escape the pressure and squalour of urbanisation by building basic huts around cities. The modest huts around cities like Oslo in the 1920s appear to have blossomed into a mainstream national cabin culture in Norway whilst similar efforts by Scots ar ound Glasgow were surrounded by difficulty, lack of rights, and finally eviction. I plan to compare two sets of hutters active in both countries at roughly the same time. The first are urban working class inter-war hutters in the islands off Oslo and the Carbeth hutters from Clydebank in Glasgow. The second set are rural peasant hutters in the Arctic province of Finnmark and the Scottish Borders village of Rascarrel.