Histories from home, part 3 - an unassuming pile of stones

In the first blogpost of the series 'Histories from home', I showed pictures of a stone structure that served as a gate for directing stoats into a trap. That particular trap gate was a something I had known about for years, and something I had seen several times when walking in the area. Recently, however, I found another, similar, structure in a part of my village where I had never been before (yes, such places do exist in abundance, because the landscape here is full of nooks and crannies). 

The structure in question was somewhat different from the trap gate described in the other blogpost. First of all, the trap gate was located at the opening of a sort of cave made up of several rocks of various sizes that have been brought together by the ice and the effects of various avalanches and rockfalls in the distant past. Such caves are typical shelters for stoats and foxes, and were typical locations for the traps which people of the village - predominantly young men or boys - constructed in order to catch animals they could skin for their fur.   

What I found on my recent excursion, on the other hand, was not just a trap gate but the entire trap itself, a structure with four walls, and most likely a stone in the middle which would fall down and crush the stoat when the animal moved a stick which kept the stone precariously in place. Moreover, while the previous example was located at the entrance of a potential shelter, this trap was placed right next to the naked rock face of a cliff. The edge of this cliff was no doubt a typical thoroughfare of various animals, such as stoats and martens, since keeping the naked rock on one side would ensure that they were protected from enemies on that side, while also keeping them less visible to birds of prey from above. Placing a trap in the middle of such a thoroughfare, a trap which guided the animal into a crushing death, was a time-honoured strategy. 

 
When I first came upon this trap, it looked like an unassuming pile of stones. As I was walking a dog at the time, I might easily have walked past it without giving it a second look, being dragged on by an energetic beast eager to trace the scent of deer. However, being brought up in this village in the Western Norwegian fjords, where so much of the past is lost and survives predominantly in such unassuming piles of stones - humanmade piles of stones, that is - I have become more alert to stones that seem too unnatural, one way or the other. Because this is mainly how history comes down to us: stone structures hidden in the grass, covered by roots, camouflaged by nearby stones, their original shapes bent or distorted by the elements.

This trap in the middle of an animal thoroughfare is a remnant of a lost past, one in which trapping for pelts was done without the aid of pre-made traps, and served as a way for people to supplement their income in a way that is now only rarely practiced (and no longer necessarily as a way of earning much-needed money). In other words, this trap is a remnant of a by-gone era, and a reminder of a small but important aspect of the economy of the early twentieth century Norwegian rural districts. This unassuming pile of stones, therefore, tell us about a much wider historical picture, which is one of the reasons it is so rewarding coming across these structures in the wild.