Off grid sheep and folks

This is Holseter, a small off grid community of sorts tucked up beneath a mountain that descends, quite close by, into an impossibly majestic fjord.

Farms in this area used to send their livestock to mountain pastures in the summer, and send some girls or children along with the animals. The people would live in small shacks and cabins, sometimes not much more than some rocks placed on top of each other, and the sheep or cows or goats would just meander around, doing sheep stuff and cow stuff and goat stuff.

(You can see a shed made entirely of slate on the picture.)

Occasionally, these mountain cabins would be clustered together, but few of these congregations of shanties remain. Holseter is still around, though. Mostly the buildings are used as summer homes but. as the picture above shows, there are still animals around. Not, I am afraid, a place that would welcome a team of sled dogs.

Holseter is entirely off grid. Some of the owners have put up solar panels, to a large part in horrendous angles, facing rocks and other houses, tucked up under the eaves and in general seemingly kept out of the sunlight on purpose. Painful to see for smug solar panel users, but if the battery gets charged between each visit, who cares.

I get dreamy around places like this, fantasizing about what it would be like to live like this, if this had been a permanently inhabited village. I tell myself sure, I could put up some small cabins around mine, get some friends to live there. We could pick berries and do bark craft, take care of each other's animals and grow a garden.