Previously the preserve of a wealthy elite, huts are finding wider popularity among Scots in the wake of the pandemic
“It’s the place where people bury their pets,” says Lesley Riddoch, as she attempts to describe the profound connection that Norwegians have for their wooden cabins, or hytte, which caan be found across forests and fjords in their hundreds of thousands. “While people change their first homes to accommodate work or family, the hut is a constant, and it is home on an emotional level.”
The broadcaster and land reform campaigner is at the end of a 10-year investigation into what started out as a simple question: could half a million wooden huts sprinkled through the woodlands of Scotland transform the nation’s health, happiness and democracy? The resulting book, Huts: a place beyond, is a clarion call for a revolution in the way that we understand home, leisure and our relationship with the natural world, that has added bite since the pandemic has led many people to reassess their living arrangements.
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