Huts

LESLEY RIDDOCH is an award-winning broadcaster, writer and journalist. She writes weekly columns for The Scotsman and Sunday Post and is a regular contributor to The Guardian, Newsnight Scotland, Scotland Tonight and Any Questions. She is founder and Director of Nordic Horizons, a policy group that brings Nordic experts to the Scottish Parliament.Lesley presented You and Yours on BBC Radio 4, The Midnight Hour on bbc2 and The People’s Parliament and Powerhouse on Channel 4. She founded the Scottish feminist magazine Harpies and Quines, won two Sony awards for her daily Radio Scotland show and edited The Scotswoman – a 1995 edition of The Scots man written and edited by its female staff. She now lives in Fife.

'My favourite new concept from this book is friluftsliv, coined by Henrik Ibsen and describing a state in which recreation, rejuvenation and the restoration of balance are achieved through immersion in nature. For Norwegians, this means escaping to your hytte at weekends. In this brilliant book, well-known journalist, Lesley Riddoch, explores how the Nordic countries, each with about the same population as Scotland, have around 400,000 summer houses or huts, whilst we in Scotland have 630 at the last count. Probably fewer now but the Reforesting Scotland Thousand Huts campaign aims to change all that.This book is part travel documentary, part personal journal and part research for a PhD. It is immensely readable, containing within its covers the whole sad story of how Scots became disconnected from the land whilst Norwegians went the other way and now enjoy the pleasures of a friluftsliv. The connections with bothies, hostels, boats, caravans and allotments are discussed. In all cases the Nordic countries are ahead of us. Generations of a hierarchical feudal system (abolished only in 2004!) have eroded the expectations of Scots to the point that many do not even know what they are missing. Huts are really a metaphor for centuries of political injustices. Scotland has castles, Norway has hytte which are available to almost everybody.The story of Carbeth is documented here in great detail with a focus on the role of William Ferris, an unsung hero, early last century. At the same time, a very similar working class hutting site was developing on an island close to Oslo. From then on the stories of hutting in Scotland and Norway diverged. The Thousand Huts campaign is determined to make the friluftsliv available to all Scots and this book is a beacon.' - Donald McPhillimy, Reforesting Scotland Spring/Summer 2021