Within the framework for the Silver Museum's and the Umeå campus of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences' Fjällens kulturlandskap (Cultural Landscape of the Mountains) research project, experimental attempts at maintaining a fire inside a Sami hut located along the Norwegian border in the town of Arjeplog, are being conducted.

The hut is a reconstruction of the type of structure which is thought to have stood on what are known as stállo sites, found throughout the mountain range, and are primarily dated as having been in use during the period 800 to 1050 B.C.

Attempts at maintaining a fire are conducted during the late autumn and winter in order to test the structure and to get an idea of the kind of living conditions that prevailed at the time.

Important parameters are heat, smoke generation and wood consumption. The fire is fuelled using mountain birch.

January '09
The firewood - freshly-cut
mountain birch - is split.

The fire is burning gently

January '09
The entrance after a 24-hour-long
blizzard.