How A Book About Chopping Wood Took The World By Storm

Lars Mytting’s Norwegian Wood: Chopping, Stacking and Drying Wood the Scandinavian Way, is shaping up to be this year’s surprise Christmas gift book. Having sold 300,000 copies, the book is a publishing phenomenon. Mytting remains surprised at the roaring success of his book, but believes we harbour something of an instinctive affection for flames: "Fire is mankind's oldest energy," he points out. "It must have left a love of fire inside the human genes." Chopping and stacking wood, Mytting believes, “is a very healthy thing to do for a modern person”. “So much of our life is based on a digital lifestyle. Chopping wood is so extremely different,” he said. “It’s a hands-on experience, which is only you, with simple tools, and very organic material – old trees that have spent up to 200 years growing, that are heavy and stout and really give you resistance when you chop them. It gives you a reward that is exactly equal to the effort you put into it.” He admits that our current love for firewood is a truly modern indulgence. "In the old days I don't think there was any romance in it at all. It was a very, very hard way of surviving. It's a paradox really because the luxury and the mindfulness where we can embrace the moment and have this wonderful time in front of the chopping block was completely absent in those days. Without a chainsaw, with only muscle and an axe, they needed two to four, perhaps even six times more firewood than we do today, because it was their only source of energy." Mytting remains astonished by its performance. “I think if I had known the sales potential of it, and the success it would have, I wouldn’t be finished writing it yet,” he said. “But without anyone knowing, the time was right for it.”