The cold arc of the sky is bright blue, and the high Norwegian plateau at the edge of Hardangervidda National Park is even brighter white. Cross-country skiers in red anoraks, black knickers, and long white woolen stockings kick-glide along freshly groomed tracks into the distance.

This is the winter view from Eivind Bøhn’s hytte, or cabin: 270 degrees of pristine snowfields and dramatic mountain ridges.

“I wanted something that felt remote,” says Eivind.

The seclusion is deceptive. Eivind’s cabin is part of Dalsethaugen, a development of 20-plus cabins along a winding road, high above the Numedal valley, a little more than two hours northwest of Oslo. Many Norwegian families own or have access to a cabin in the mountains, a place to escape from the rush of modern life. Traditionally, these cabins have been simple and utilitarian, often without electricity or running water; they sometimes require visitors to hike or ski for miles before reaching the doorstep.

“There’s no TV here, no distractions. It’s a kind of therapy.”
—Eivind Bøhn, resident

Today, it’s become common for Norwegians to upgrade the cabin experience with all kinds of conveniences, from indoor plumbing to heated lockers for their ski gear to garage chargers for their Teslas. (Eivind’s cabin includes the latter, as well as centrally heated floors throughout the living areas.) But most of the buildings continue to reflect the typical Norwegian cabin style: chunky dark walls outside, knotty yellow pine inside, small windows and a sturdy gable roof. Eivind envisioned something different.

“My father was an architect,” he says. “He designed my grandparents’ cabin, the one I grew up visiting all my life. He always said, ‘If you are going to make something new, don’t try to pretend or make it appear to be something old.’” Taking his father’s wisdom to heart, Eivind wanted to find a contemporary, minimalist take on the hytte that would still evoke the requisite sense of koselig (warmth, contentment, coziness) he recalls from his childhood.

Eivind is CEO of Moment Team, a software company specializing in project management tools for design firms; its products are used by architecture companies around the world, including Snøhetta, the design powerhouse with Norwegian roots behind such showstoppers as the Oslo Opera House, the National September 11 Memorial Museum Pavilion in New York, and the latest renovation and expansion of SFMOMA. Eivind wanted Snøhetta’s touch on his new holiday home.

Upon approach from the lower, back side of the cabin, the 1,884-square-foot structure is almost invisible. In summer, the gray-green inclined sod roof merges with the roll of the grassy hillside, and in winter, the snow-covered slope becomes one with the drifts surrounding it. On the front side, the roof drops off sharply to reveal two tall walls of windows connected at the southeastern corner. The effect is sudden and refreshing, like a breath of cold air.

“Designing an opera house and designing a cabin are not comparable. Both are interesting tasks, though.”
—Øystein Tveter, architect

“The lines of the cabin are modern, but the materials we used are very traditional,” says Tveter. The cabin’s external paneling is ore-pine, the same cured “heartwood” of old-growth pine trees that Norwegians used in the Middle Ages to build their famous stave churches. Eivind treated his ore-pine with iron sulphate to give the cabin’s exterior a silver-gray appearance.

Walking into it on a winter day, you emerge from a black anthracite entrance hall into the single, open living space. Vaulted ceilings in a warm, pale pine paneling are juxtaposed with slate gray concrete countertops and minimalist furnishings. Light pours through the panoramic windows that blur the line between indoor and outdoor.

“Having the effect of these tall windows was important to me,” says Eivind. “We had to get an exception from the local authorities, who were concerned about the glare of sunlight reflecting off so much glass and disrupting the environment, particularly for skiers.” To make it work, Tveter cantilevered the roof three to ten feet over the windows, putting them more in shade and reducing the reflection significantly.

In the corner where the windowed walls meet, a fireplace hovers at the same height as a nearby coffee table. Suspended from the ceiling by its own 13-foot flue, the gravity-defying piece meets an important design criteria for Eivind. On winter nights, the bank of windows behind it goes absolutely black, and the fireplace becomes a cozy campfire in the wilderness.

The cabin’s windy location—the gales sweep up out of the valley and across the plateau—is an acquired taste. “The kids weren’t used to the strength of the wind at first,” says Eivind. “They huddled close to me as it whipped the hair out of the hoods of their anoraks.” But now, he says, they love the sting and the howl of it. They chase one another across the spongy fields in the summertime and across the crunch of the snowy expanses in winter. It must run in the family. “When I go to the mountains, I want to feel the wind and the weather,” says Eivind. “My grandparents’ cabin was like that."

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Snøhetta / @snohetta

General Contracting: Numedal Hytteutvikling

Structural Engineering: Byggetek

Landscape, Lighting, Cabinet, and Interior Design: Snøhetta

Green Roof: Halling Torv

Windows: Aluminumfasader

Styling: Maria Hove Vestre / @mariahovevestre

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A Nearly Invisible “Hytte” Rises From a High Plateau in Norway