The Norwegian Homestead – HeimaStead

Share this with someone who'd love it!

Welcome to our sliver of the internet. We are so happy that you are here. Truly! We’re Trine and Ole. We can’t wait to share more about our path towards a more healthy, conscious and self-sustained life here on our Norwegian Homestead – HeimaStead!

Since moving together in 2015 we’ve been steadily working towards diversifying our income, building confidence as business owners and developing a mindset for financial stability and freedom, self-sufficient living and personal development. We know that we have the power to choose our own fate and we are craving a community of like-minded, determined people to share, learn and develop together with.

Heima means at home in old Norse. It’s a word still commonly used today mostly in rural parts of Norway, but also in Iceland. To us home is everything, but our definition of home has changed over time.

This notion of Heima came long before the idea of a blog or podcast. See, our job for the last 8 years has taken us far away from home. And 14km (8.5 miles from the nearest road (in the middle of nowhere). For half the year we’ve had a separate home up in the rugged Norwegian mountains. We have been hosts at a tourist cabin for the Norwegian Tourist Association. We’ve owned our own business for all those years and it’s been our pleasure and our pain. Above all, it’s been an absolutely defining experience and a wonderful way for us to pour the foundation for a beautiful, tight-knit family unit. This has shown us that although home can be a place, it is above all a feeling.

Home truly is where the heart is. It is family and our children. Home is our world; where we’re at peace and where we can gather the people dearest to us. It’s where we feel safe and let our guard down. It’s our little part of the world that we feel honored to care for and reap from. So HeimaStead it is.

There are infinite ways of living, making money, raising babies and growing the mind and soul. We are dreamers, but to dare to make dreams into reality you need to know that anything is possible. Like, truly know it to your core. But to even be able to think that the world is your oyster, you need to know a little bit about the world. And the more you know about the expansiveness and diversity of this incredible place we all call home, the more you realize that there are endless possibilities to what you can do and how you can live your life.

When we first started talking about buying a farm back in our early twenties people were not convinced. Most of our close family and friends tried to be friendly, but it was clear that they did not believe we would go ahead and do it. Some laughed right in our faces. That’s why we didn’t tell anyone when we put in an offer on a tiny farm with an old house, far from “home”. We made the first move towards our dream of a Norwegian Homestead on our own. And it felt good.

Although we both appreciate and understand the importance of the rapid developments happening within all the fields of science and technology, we also see how all this incredible new knowledge is removing us further from invaluable old knowledge. Ancient knowledge. Our ultimate goal is to be happy. And to me happiness is feeling safe, having my basic needs met and seeing our children grow into well-rounded people, but it also means having the time and capacity to connect with my inner self. To the wisdom that not only tells me, but shows me how I am intrinsically connected to nature, and all I fundamentally need to be happy is already within me.

To find this time and capacity I’ve realized that I need to disconnect from many parts of the modern world and reconnect to the natural world. But here’s the catch-22; to find time and capacity… you need time and capacity! Am I right?!

Our experience is that money generally takes up a large portion of both time and capacity in people’s lives. It seems as though many of us never have enough. Now, we’ve gone through periods when we’ve lived on a pretty low income. When every dime is considered and spent very consciously. And it revealed to us how much money had previously gone into the big black nothing. That we couldn’t account for at the end of the month because it wasn’t spent consciously. It was money spent on coffee on the go, take-out, sweets, clothes bought on a whim, luxury items we thought we had to have because other people had them and bad investments like a brand new thing rather than a slightly used thing. The list goes on.

When we got to the point where we actually sat down and mapped out what we wanted in and out of life it became painfully clear to us that we were getting in the way of making those things happen. Because of this pretty reckless and clueless relationship to money. We decided to start mending our finances and although we are not there yet, we want to take you along for the ride. Perhaps you will learn something from our mistakes and let our successes and failures inspire you to make changes of your own.

And so this is where it all kind of comes full circle. We are taking care of the finances and steadily working on our homestead to live more self-sufficiently and further stabilize those finances. We also want to be comfortable. To have the time and capacity to connect to that inherent, ancient knowledge and find true peace in ourselves. We dream of being happy people who constantly refill our own cups and let it pour over our family, our friends and our community. We want our Norwegian Homestead to be somewhere everyone we care about can come and find some rejuvenation.

Personal growth and pursuit of happiness are not isolated endeavors but rather contribute to a larger sense of fulfillment and the ability to make a meaningful difference in the world around us. By working on ourselves and our situation I truly believe we are more capable of being attentive to and providing greater value for our community. Which in turn fills that cup right up! Love is a beautiful, self-reinforcing cycle. It only grows as it is shared.

We have the entire world at our fingertips. And that is so incredibly exciting! However, it’s pretty easy to get lost in the vast maze of the internet and feel both overwhelmed and paralyzed. You watch all these people doing amazing things, but without a personal connection, it feels unattainable in your own life.

Which brings us back to why we are so excited that you found us. We are looking for our online community. Not to replace the one we already have, but to build on it. To fill our cup so we can overflow in all directions, online and in real life.

Through blog and Instagram posts, YouTube videos and podcast episodes we hope to reach people who sit with this same feeling that certainly there is more to it all, but can’t pinpoint what or how. But also those that are further along this path that can help us uncover more. If you feel like we are people you can have a meaningful conversation with then join us. Please send us a DM on Instagram, an email, or comment on our posts. Share with us your thoughts, your opinions and ideas, your sources of inspiration, and your dreams that motivate you towards some kind of change. We are looking for our Flock. The Flock will be united through our newsletter, so make sure you sign up below. That’s where we feel safe to speak freely, share first and eagerly anticipate your feedback.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read our post. There will be a new post up same time next week. We can’t wait to share more of what we’re learning here at our Norwegian Homestead.

Love Trine & Ole

Share this with someone who'd love it!