If you love chopping wood, these books are for you

Tommy Barker looks at two heavy chunks of books which deal with the manly pastimes of wood cutting, chopping and storing, along with ancient ways of making gates, roof shakes and more in a captivating way. 

MOVE over, ye warbling Beatles: 50 years after the classic Beatles song Norwegian Wood, and its concluding line: “so I lit a fire, isn’t it good, Norwegian Wood,” there’s a new riff on the title, taking international bookshelves by storm, bringing it all back home, with hearth.

Back home to Norway, firstly, and more crucially, to wood. Back to basics, to wood-burning stoves and wood fires (and pizza ovens at a push,) to forestry, to cords of timber, to choices of chainsaws and axes, to stockpiling timber and drying it for winters to come. Wood as provision, wood as pension and woodpiles — wood as cents and scent, and nature-sent.