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“It is odd how, when you have announced that you are leaving, it is as if you are already gone, even if your physical departure still lies months away. People begin to erase you from their minds, and you walk the halls with a feeling of growing transparency.”
― Paul Watkins, The Fellowship of Ghosts: A Journey Through the Mountains of Norway

“Still hovering at the back of my mind is a stereotype of Norwegians as descendants of ax-wielding barbarians, but this ancient image clashes wildly with the gentleness, honesty and generosity of the Norwegians I have met on my journey.”
― Paul Watkins, The Fellowship of Ghosts: A Journey Through the Mountains of Norway

“The woman smiles and says, "Hey," the standard Norwegian greeting.
I "Hey" back, but then she says a whole sentence and I am force to explain, in English, that I have no idea what she is saying. I feel like a fraud, and I see a change in the focus of her eyes. I am a stranger, and even if I am no less welcome, I am still a stranger.”
― Paul Watkins, The Fellowship of Ghosts: A Journey Through the Mountains of Norway

“The word hytte can too-simply be translated as "hut," but it holds a more vaulted status in Norway than the English word implies. A quarter of the population own such hytte. They are usually buried in the forest or up above the treeline, and offer Norwegians a place of escape from their lives down in the valleys. Sometimes the huts are located so close to the main residence that it doesn't seem to make sense that someone would abandon the comforts of home for a woodstove-heated, out-housed cabin. But that is exactly the point. This change of gears toward a simpler life, where tasks like boiling water on the woodstove or chopping wood with an ax, that might take only minutes with the help of more advanced technology, may fill the day in your wilderness retreat.
These places are sacred to their owners, because they make a balance of the old world and the new.”
― Paul Watkins, The Fellowship of Ghosts: A Journey Through the Mountains of Norway