Valabærjet
About us
Meet the team and the place, find out more about who we, Louise and Morten, are with just enough details and a few anecdotes.
Meet Louise
Where to start? Well, I’m mostly a work in progress. But allow me to break that down for you.
I’m a belgian, 30-something years old, graduate with a master degree in anthropology and ethnographic field research. I moved to Norway about 7ish years ago, after finding love under a tree, proving you can never predict where life’s gonna take you.
I have a great enthusiasm for medicinal plants, folklore and traditions. So I’m into green beings, birds, fairy stories, ancient brew, walks at night, … yes, only missing is the pointy hat you’ll say. But jokes aside, I try to keep both feet on the ground and can be a bit stubborn when it comes to practicality.
I Love to cook from scratch, finding a kind of childlike excitement in unlocking new recipes.
Viewing baking and cooking as a bit like alchemy: Mysterious and magical. It goes without saying that being able to harvest food, whether it’s foraging in our surrounding forest or in the garden, always puts me in a better mood.
Although a somewhat recovered dyslexic, I am also a book lover. There’s never enough books in the house, nor is there enough time to read them all. Never-ending-story.
Artistic at heart, I like to draw, paint occasionally, play various music instruments, some more and better than others, sing both in choirs and solo (and in the shower on sunny days). When it comes to craft, I knit and crochet but would love to explore embroidery, weaving, and loads of other fabulous techniques in the future.
I adore solving problems and puzzles (loooove puzzles… and hate them as well… it’s a complicated story). Give me a good itchy situation, and I’ll be delighted to find a way to make things work.
There, that’s a good start isn’t it?
Meet Morten
Who am I? Well I am heading towards 60 still trying to find out what to become when I grow up….Have a various background when it comes to both work and education, as well as voluntary work in several organizations. I am an idealist, creative, romantic and not an A4 person.
Finding this place, Valabaerjet, some 12 years ago was a “revelation”. I have always loved nature with all its mysteries, amazing wonders and all the diversity of all living things, plants, trees, rocks, animals, birds, insects…and the list goes on….
So moving here was like arriving in Paradise, in the middle of the woods with everything I love and with food growing right outside the door, this felt like the best gift ever.
As a “good” Norwegian I love skiing in the forest in the wintertime and have good walks during the rest of the year. Why? To watch, listen, smell, taste and feel everything that surrounds us in nature. We need to remember that we are an equal part of nature as everything else, not something above it with the right to control and destroy because of progress.
I think cooking is fun and never seen that as something boring or tiresome, and I love to eat what’s coming out of the process, either it is Louise or me cooking…a bit like hobbits we are.
Which also brings me to the incredible and amazing experiences through using the gifts from nature, whether it be for food, as herbs, as tea, as medicine or whatever else we can use it for. Not to mention the joy of knowing that there is always more to learn… wooooohoooo love it.
Love photography as an amateur, trying to capture the grandeur of nature. I also enjoy transforming thoughts to words, and to see what comes out of it. Music, reading, drawing …and and and… Got it? I am a bit like Winnie the Pooh – “Yes please both”…and the third and the forth. There are so many exciting things to try, to learn, to experience…it`s endless…and it fills me with joy, I wanna do it all, now!
Valabærjet
Now, with Louise and Morten living here, the more we have learned, tasted, smelled and seen here during the years, the more we have come to love this place.
But, what about the history of Valabærjet, when did the first people start to clear the land here in the middle of the forest, and what made them stop at this place and say: “Here we will settle”? Where did they come from? Fascinating to think about!
