Welcome!
Holmevatn in Eggedal is the place to go to see reindeer, grouse, and enjoy nature to your heart’s content. You won’t find a place quite like this to rent in Norefjell and the surrounding area.
The cabin is ideal for independent travelers who enjoy hiking in the mountains, fishing, and hunting—perhaps a group of friends with children. Firewood, gas, electricity, and kerosene are included. All you need to bring are bedding and towels.
What's in store for you?
The cabin has amenities such as electricity and running waterjump, charging cell phones, a stereo with a mini-jack and adapters, 220V power for vacuuming, and heating cables on water pipes—but there are many specialized solutions and small details to consider in order to achieve this, especially in the winter. That’s why we’ve compiled information on everything you can think of—both what you should read before arrival and what’s already at the cabin—on the page forimportant information
Do you have any questions?
Check out the searchable (!)FAQ sectionfor answers to frequently asked questions that people often wonder aboutbeforethey decide to rent. It isvery detailedThe map page also includes information detailing how to get there—both by car and without a car.
Offline support!
Most of this page—including the PDFs with instructions—works even when you’re offline! As long as you’ve visited this page at least once, you’ll still be able to check out tips, search inFrequently Asked Questions, etc. The only things that aren't downloaded automatically are the blog posts and the photo gallery.
Updates
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Neverending Story: Upcoming Projects 😍
It’s important not to become unemployed, so there’s always something in the back of my mind that could be improved. Some people actually think that’s fun 😄 Here’s a list of things I’ll never finish, but that I hope to get started on in the coming months. I just need to renovate the house first, catch up on some online courses, and become a better person, and then I’ll probably get it done 😶(The seas) -
2024: Freediving for Freedom
#latergram After talking to the last people who rented the cabin, I realized that quite a few people actually find it kind of fun to read about the technical stuff we do, and I see that I’ve actually forgotten to write anything about one of the bigger infrastructure upgrades I’ve done recently. So I’ve put together aA short photo story in Google Photosfrom the transport of pumps by snowmobile in the winter of 2024 to the full operation of the heat cables with pumping on November 30, 2024.
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Up, yet down
About the best summer ever in the mountains, doing a ton of work on the cabin, and how I still managed to mess things up so that I’ll have to limit rentals again in 2025/26.(The seas) -
New intersection during the summer!
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It has often been a problem in the summer that it can be a bit of a struggle to cross eastward from the cabin without getting your feet wet, since you have to cross what is known as the Åselva river system. New this year is that some good Samaritans have built a bridgeat the outlet of Holmevann! In the past, you had to wade through the water or get thoroughly soaked, but now there’s a sturdy bridge, anchored to the rock face, that lets you cross at the narrowest point without having to hop from rock to rock. -
Why the cabin is not available for rent
I have more or less removed the cabin from both Airbnb and iNatur for 2025. The reason is simple: in the winter of 2024, I discovered several instances of damage to the roof, and Storebrand Insurance has (once again) failed to act in time to repair the damage. This means I don’t know when the repairs will be done, but it will likely happen either in June 2025 or August/September 2025. You can still rent it, but with the caveat that you might suddenly have to get your money back…
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☀️ Can you imagine how wonderful spring is in the mountains?
May 8, 2020 The very best time for skiing in the mountains is in the spring. Apparently, no one seems to realize this, because after Easter, no one comes until the end of June. It’s in May that you can enjoy a well-deserved ice-cold beer on the terrace in the afternoon sun after having been slowly roasted in the rotisserie that is a snow-covered spring mountain. The snow bridges over the stream usually start to melt a little after May 17th, but it’s usually possible to ski until early June.
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⛷️ Summit hikes and ski touring 🏔️
The mountains around the cabin can’t offer Røldal’s powder or Finnmark’s fjord-and-lake runs, but you can still have a pretty good time if the weather’s on your side. From the master bedroom, you have a direct view of Ranten (1,419 m above sea level)—the most famous summit destination near Oslo. It’s quite a distance away, though, and there are several peaks with a few hundred meters of elevation gain ranging from 600 m to 2 km away.
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The Wallas is back, and diesel is a thing again
Wallas is our paraffin stove, which has been running more or less nonstop for nearly twenty years. Or… “paraffin stove” isn’t really the right term anymore. Paraffin disappeared from the market when the ban on heating oil for residential use took effect in 2020, so now it runs on diesel. It burns just as well on that, but as it turns out, there are still some annoying differences in practice.
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Two steps back
I was just supposed to go out for a quick trip with Fredrik to fill up on diesel and water before winter, but I had to come back empty-handed. The Wallas won’t start, and the water pump is broken. On top of that, someone had forgotten to drain the water from the faucets and put antifreeze in the drains, so things were a bit tense this time.
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The Boat Hunt
An unfortunate renter forgot to secure the boat properly, and both the boat and the oars disappeared when the water level rose due to the heavy rains at the end of August. I had to go out, and after a couple of hours of searching, I found the boat at the north end of the lake. I was lucky enough that Erling Lüder-Larsen at Holmevassetra had found and pulled the boat ashore. I found one oar in Sætervika, but the other seems to have disappeared down the Åselva river system. All in all, this turned out very well, even though the boat isn’t getting any prettier with all these mishaps. Luckily, I bought it knowing it might take a bit of a beating :)
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Community Work Day to Install a Thatched Roof
The roof is finally in place, a year and a half after two hurricanes destroyed the original roof on the north side. We headed up Thursday evening with Jakob and Hans, and on Friday we prototyped and tested a sled to haul the turf until we found something that worked well: wheels attached to half a Euro pallet with side-stabilizing wheels turned out to be the perfect solution. We used it to haul up a pallet of ground panels to be placed underneath the insulation, before three more friends arrived on Saturday to tackle the big job of hauling up 180 bags of peat and spreading it out. Once we got started, we were done in just 4 hours! I’m waiting to sow the seeds until I come up in July and can oversee the watering, but I did test that the concept of using a pump with water connections to a regular garden hose worked.
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Laboratory results for pH levels in fishing waters
The results from VestfoldLab regarding water quality in the various lakes of the Åselva watershed are now in. The samples were collected in September 2022 and analyzed in November.
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We're (also) on iNatur!
Inatur.nois a Norwegian government-owned website for renting hunting grounds, fishing rights, cabins, and more. I finally got around to listing my cabin there at the end of March, and even though the platform is less polished than Airbnb, it definitely left me wanting more:
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After the storm
Last winter, we really didn't have any luck, andmade the news. First, a hurricane struck in late November 2021, bringing the strongest winds ever recorded in Sigdal. Wind gusts reached 52 meters per second (about 200 km/h)—so strong that the moss was stripped from the rocky outcrops all around 😱
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Avalanche Course with Svalbard Guides
We have now entered into a partnership with Svalbardguidene, which means that they will be using the cabin forAvalanche course in the Norefjell area! The pilot weekend will take place January 27–29, 2021. It will be very exciting to see how this turns out, because I’ve long thought that the cabin is perfect for people who enjoy hiking in the wilderness and want to start their hikes out on the open plains.
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220V in the outlet
This weekend, I had an electrician go over all the electrical work I’d done myself this summer. It wasn’t enough for him to just check that everything was OK: he ended up opening up the wall and running all the exposed cables inside it. Suddenly, all the holes in the exterior wall and the 30 meters of cable running out from and under the cabin were no longer necessary… whoops, Swiss cheese for nothing 🙈
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A Year of Upgrades
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Summer is over, and we’ve wrapped up a bunch of small projects. Between having to set up a backup toilet solution last year and the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping across the country, we ended up spending a lot of time at the cabin this summer. Among the most important things we took care of: -
New year, new opportunities
So, the first trip to the cabin in the new decade is now behind us. Hundreds of pounds of new gear have been hauled up and down:
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County Governor of Viken: No to wind turbines
From October to February, we struggle with the fact that, for long periods, very little sunlight reaches our solar panels. The sun’s angle is much lower, so less energy is captured; there are fewer hours of sunlight per day; there are fewer days with blue skies and sunshine; and the solar panels tend to get covered in snow. All in all, this means that a typical week in December can yield as little as 5%–10% of a typical week in July. The only way to compensate for this is to charge the batteries using our generator—which is both noisy and causes some complications when it comes to renting out the property.
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The water problem is fixed!
I went up to the cabin with a plumber today and got the water problem fixed! It turned out there was a cracked pipe that was causing the pump to suck in “false air.” It must have expanded over the winter, but it must have been there for years. As soon as we replaced the pipe, the faucet started working again right away! No more waiting or trouble. This bodes well :-)
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You can pay tolls with Vipps!
Finally, tolls for Bjørnerudveien can be paid via Vipps. This has been a major problem for quite some time, as people no longer carry cash.
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Cinderella Ruined: Backup in Place
Unfortunately, the new Cinderella restroom was vandalized yesterday :-( It's a little unclear exactly what happened, but here's roughly how it went down:
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Lots of repairs, but the door and water supply are broken :-/
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Signs in production
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New FAQ section!
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Improved bathroom comfort
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Missed the mark
Background
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Cabin Renovation Week
Ida and 5-month-old Oskar We had a lot of visitors this week, but more than anything else, the week was filled with a lot of odd jobs (as usual).
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The Toughest Mom in the World
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New gas stoves
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Holmevann now has its own website
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