Watch This Traditional Finnish Log Cabin Being Built…Entirely By Hand

I promise, I really do like sports.

I number among my favorite smells in this world the scent of ice rink, and I find the pop of a baseball hitting a leather glove irresistible; I show my hometown roots in my collection of Baltimore Orioles hats, and I love the thrill of victory in sports films, even ones involving sports I couldn’t care less about. But I confess, I’m a lackluster sports fan. Scores, standings, and statistics bore me to tears, and my attention span diminishes to nil within 5 minutes of a televised game.

Set me in front of an artisan plying his or her trade, though, and you’d think I were a pitching scout at a showcase tournament: rapt attention, soaking in every detail, occasional grins at particularly strong displays of good craft. Are you the same? Well, you’re going to love this.

The Northmen, a guild of master craftsmen based in Latvia, have done us a solid and posted a remastered film of a group of master craftsmen hand-building a traditional Finnish wood cabin. Though it was filmed in 1990, it looks like it could have been filmed a hundred years prior. (It’s only a half an hour long, so it’s not even a large time investment, but I could probably watch a feature-length film of these guys.)

Bonus: if you enjoyed this, go and check out the Wooden House Project on the Northmen site, where you can watch a 25-minute film of their founder hand-building his house using timber felled in his own forest in western Latvia.