Traditional living in style. Luxury hotel located by the Aurland river.
In autumn 2012, Tone, Bjørn and the children left city life behind them and moved to #Aurland. It is a decision they have not regretted. Tone is a print journalist with a background in the national press, while Bjørn is a master builder who specializes in building projects up in the mountains and in restoring old wooden houses.
Few people know the mountains of Western Norway better than Bjørn. Tone has for many years written stories about sustainable tourism and rural development – where else could they end up than Aurland?
Ingrid, Bjørn’s mother (the little girl on the right in the photo below), is now 86 years old, but she still remembers the summers she spent at the summer pasture farm ‘Tvindane’. Every spring, the farmers moved their livestock up to their summer pasture farms in the mountains, and each farm could have more than one summer pasture farm. There the animals could graze on fresh pastures, while the children and women had to work, milking and making cheese, often from May until September.
For one child, it felt shameful that her school desk stood empty after the school holidays were over. The highlight of these summers was when her father came up to the summer pasture farm at weekends to collect the cheese – always cheerful, and with some sweets in his rucksack.
Last year, Bjørn’s mother moved back to the farm together with Bjørn’s father to see out her last days in Aurland, where her life started. We do not get much sun during the winter, but when it does finally peek over the mountainside in March, Ingrid laps up every last ray of it.