This trail get's way too much use today, but imagine it many decades ago....
Just you (Sven) and your team of two or three other loggers (Nord, Arne, and doven Olaf) find a beautifully large, old Hemlock, only 200 yards from the road! You spend a few hours cutting spring-board notches into it to get above the swell at the base. You choose the perfect direction of fall (slightly uphill, but mostly level). You and Nord take an hour to make the face cut notch, then you start working the big crosscut saw! D'er mange ǿksarhogg, som eiki skal fella
Maybe one of the guys (probably Olaf, that fanken!) mentions that he wonders, "could she hava a bit of rot in her heart?", but that there's just crazy talk! This has got to be a honey of a perfect tree; you need it to be a perfect tree! The boys keep cutting, switching off each end of the saw every half hour or so. The saw binds periodically, but nothing too terrible, part of the job, it is! Is it raining?? It's ALWAYS raining! At least you are making money today. This tree should be worth a week's wages!
As you get deeper into the tree, Olaf keeps looking at the dust coming out and worrying (out loud, it's always out loud with Olaf), about the rot...!
Finally (after six hours, or eight hours, or what seems like forever), the big tree falls (skål!!!), perfectly placed where you wanted it to land! It's always such a feeling of triumph when one of these giants comes down!! Olaf wanders over to look at the cut, sitting so nicely above the stump. He says something about heart rot. "Darn you, Olaf"!!!
What can you do?! After almost a day's work, you can't just give up! So you have the team start cutting the tree into 20 foot sections (not an easy job in itself, but at least the saw is working down!), and you send Olaf down the steep hill to get the Big Boss and the team of oxen. Glad to have him gone, you take another few hours to make three more cuts, each one showing just a bit of rot. The Boss trudges up the hill (with the team, or just with Olaf? Because if it's with the team, you may be charged for the day's use!). He takes one look at the big, fallen tree and says, "bedervet, elendig, råtten"!!!
You walk away, down the hill in the rain, looking for someone to clobber! "Uff da, what a day!!!
Olaf