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home of hanne borge-yngland Kvitfjell Norway &47 In 2006 Bolina shop owner Hanne Borge-Yngland set about building a quaint countryside cabin for her family. “Originally we were thinking of taking down an old timber-house from the region and then rebuilding it.” However, due to the limitations of such a structure’s interior layout, Hanne decided to construct something with a more contemporary twist. “We love open spaces, so the cabin itself was built to modern standards, but with a look of ‛Troenderlaan,’ which was the dominant style in the region 100 to 150 years ago.” Even though the new love of old is a pretty recent trend in the United States, it has always seemed a popular design aesthetic in Scandinavia. Hanne agrees and adds that “the appreciation has grown in Scandinavia in the past decade as well.” She personally believes that it started getting very popular ten years ago when markets began selling vintage and industrial style furniture and French antiques. Her general design rule is to “always mix the old, cute and romantic with the rough and industrial.”
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catherine borge, hanne’s sister and co-owner of bolina, designed the bedroom’s skull pillow.
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A Chat with Hanne Borge-Yngland
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My family and I do. My children and I are all very much into skiing, both alpine and cross-country. Most of the time we invite friends as well, it is a great way to keep in contact, as we are all too busy during the week in the city. The cabin is a three-hour drive from Oslo, where we live. We try to spend as much time as possible here, almost every weekend in the winter and on Christmas and Easter holidays. We also come in September and October when there are the most incredible colors in the woods around the cabin.
Who lives in this cabin?
The vintage pieces are the essence of my design. When we designed the interior of the cabin we started with an advertisement in the local newspaper asking for “old furniture, everything of interest.” We spent a week driving around visiting a lot of farms in the Gudbrandsdal Valley (and met a lot of people with interesting stories about the region). Amongst the junk we found some really wonderful jewels, like the bed shown in one of the pictures, an old bench used to slaughter chickens and a table for baking Norwegian flatbread. We ended up with 13 old wooden doors, all in different colors and sizes, now installed inside the cabin into the different rooms. We also found some old planks from an old lawn, bleached grey from the sun. They were used as the front to a standard Ikea (!) storage closet in the kitchen.
How important are antiques and vintage pieces to you when you design?
How do you bring the Rough Luxe aesthetic into your interior design?
This is difficult, but I will try: it should definitely not look luxurious, it should not be too “obvious,” not “a perfect match,” it should be surprising, a blend of old and new, of different styles and new unexpected combinations.
What is your design philosophy?
It’s who I am and I love to surround myself with “life.”
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the fireplace was discovered in an old townhouse in oslo. hanne bought it years ago and held on to it well before the cabin was planned. now it is the central piece of the living room adding a regal quality to the rest of the room.
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this page most objects in the cabin come from hanne’s shop. she often sources furniture and knickknacks from the south of france, england, and her native norway.
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the rounded stone basin sink and moroccan tea glass brings some exoticism to the cabin’s guest bathroom. the faucet is made out of an old copper pipe and water pours into the marble with the help of control sensors in front.