This Viking-inspired home blew me away! Unique & themed tour

Hi there, welcome to my channel where I take you on tours of unique spaces and alternative homes. Autumn is one of my favorite times of the year. I love to just cozy up with a nice cup of tea and some candles and that's why this week I went on a solo getaway to a viking style yurt. I promise you that this yurt is unlike any you've ever seen before. The inside is decked out with nordic themes and mystical details and it also features some luxury amenities that made it the perfect fall getaway. We're going to meet the owners that are behind this incredible build and I'm also going to give you a sneak peek of my solo trip. But before we jump right into this week's episode, I have something very exciting to share with you. Our sponsor Jackery has sent us a unit to power and decorate for Halloween. We're going to be electrifying and spookifying this Halloween season with a ghoulish garage van complete with a ton of animatronics, lights, and a fog machine and all of which are going to be powered by Jackery. With 2200 watts of output power, this Jackery is suitable for large household appliances such as a refrigerator, coffee maker, or microwave and that's lucky for us because we have a couple of very large ghouls that it needs to power. The Jackery Explorer 2000 has a low temperature resistance with a protective cover ensuring that it has reliable performance even in cold conditions and it's greener than a traditional generator and efficient because it can charge in just two hours with the Jackery solar panels and it's ultra silent so it won't be interrupting our bone chilling garage van. Now that we finished decorating for Halloween, make sure that you stay tuned to the end of this video to see how long the Jackery can power our ghoulish rock band. But next let's go on a Viking vacay. All right, I just arrived at Jarl's Yurt which is a Viking themed yurt just one hour outside of Seattle. So far the first thing I've noticed is that it has amazing views of Mount Rainier and that they've added on this covered porch which seems like a really great place for me to have my coffee in the morning and admire the view but what I'm most excited for is to check out the inside. Oh my gosh, this place is incredible. They have this like euphoric music playing. It's totally setting the vibe for me and the vibe is like Nordic Lord of the Rings meets off-grid hunting cabin. I can't wait to hear from the owners about like how they built this thing and what the vision was. Hi, I'm Sarah and I'm Douglas and this is the Jarl's Yurt at Folkvang. Why did we build a Viking yurt? We like Vikings. We do like Vikings. We love Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, Vikings, Outlander, so we've always really enjoyed that vibe, you know, the aesthetic of it. It's also part of our heritage. We were trying to think of what we wanted to do to move out of the big city and get into the country life. Somehow or another we stumbled upon this property. 11 acres that we live on that we call Folkvang. The yurt was actually already on the property. It was just an empty shell that was here and we thought, we can do something really cool with that. The construction took us almost a year to the day. About a year, yeah. Every weekend, 12 hours a day, every day after work, tested my carpentry skills with a few things out here. This ceiling was not that much fun. The worst part. It was so bad. It was really gorgeous when it was done, but man, I will never forget the number 1076 because that's how many boards are up there on the ceiling. So I found a lot of the pieces in here on marketplace, antique stores. A lot of it finds me in weird ways. So it's like champagne taste on a beer budget kind of thing. My favorite part of the build would have been just seeing all the fine details come to life because I saw them in my head. And when you just have a base that's going up, it's hard to see those details. But that was, I think the most magical part. It made it feel alive. The retirement goal is to just live out here and be a Viking full-time. Yeah. They don't have to go to the corporate office anymore. Yeah. First thing I noticed coming in the front door, we're ready for battle guys. Look at this. Complete with Viking gear. It is a Viking yurt after all. This table is really interesting. It's clad in like some type of like hammered gold. And on this gorgeous table, I see a couple drinking horns and I'm not going to lie. I did bring a bottle of wine for her later since I'm staying the night. So I'm going to be using those this place. Just like, I feel like I need a drink, you know, when I'm here, it's like what the Vikings do. Over here, we have like a little kitchenette. We have a lot of like natural elements going on in here. I think everything in here might be made of wood, pretty much everything. And it looks like there's a lot of hand carving. Underneath here, we have wood bowls. So like I said, everything in here is made of wood or natural items. We got what looks like some cast iron cutlery. Oh, and of course, every kitchen needs an axe. Why not? I mean, don't you guys cook with an axe? So I'm setting up a Jarl's Feast. In this kitchen space, this is all things that I built. So these are axes that I carved with Viking runes and motifs, that sort of thing. We really wanted to keep it super rustic, unique. You know, people don't often get to eat out of a wooden bowl or wooden plate, that sort of thing. This is a redwood top. We built this. You know, we hand cut every one of these shingles in here. I hand cut and take three cuts per shingle. It's a lot of them. And there's a thousand and seventy six pieces of wood on the ceiling that I had to individually hand cut to do. So it's a lot of love that went into this. A lot of crying. A lot of beer was necessary to get through it as well. But my wife, whenever I would be crying on the floor, she was great. Sarah would bring me a beer and get me back up and kick me in the butt and tell me to keep going, to keep working. Almost all the wood in here is reclaimed cedar fence wood. Then the rope came in, you know, and it all ties it together because it's got that kind of Viking nautical feel along with all of it. And so, you know, it's a circular room, which is really weird to work with when you're in construction. But I think it worked out cool because it doesn't feel like any other space you've ever been in before. I actually have no idea what is inside here. I'm a little afraid it's like some leg of lamb hanging up to dry. It just feels like that's something that would be in here. But let's let's find out together. Oh, OK. How cute. Is cute the right word for Vikings? Probably not. Oh, my God. How cozy does this bed look? Oh, yeah. This is going to be so nice tonight. Best thing about yurts, looking up at the skylight, the dome skylight that seems to be in every single yurt. And this one's really cool because they've incorporated a fan above. Because of the design of the wood, they've made it look actually like a sun, which is pretty cool. Pretty cool effect. Bed super cozy. Who, you know, of course, I'm sleeping under a dead animal, sleeping under a dead animal and some branches. So I would say that I'm living my best forest life right now, like a forest nymph. I'm pretty sure Viking culture like politeness is to lift your pinky when drinking out of the horn. So over here we have a sitting area with the nice fire and dress up clothes. Pretty fun. Let me try this on. Hold on. Oh, I automatically just went up like 10 badass points, I think. Wrap me in my bear skin. Are you guys still rolling? Is this in fact a kink? I don't know. Is this a drum? Oh, yeah, it is. And then bones, of course. I'm not a drummer, guys, but this is a really interesting musical instrument. We got different looking games on here. I don't know what these games are. Is this like a little Viking dude? I don't know. I also feel like we're going to be doing some sort of sacrificial ceremonies tonight. And I wonder if all of these things are like handmade. What is this? Am I holding somebody's tooth? I don't know. All right. Explain to me how to play this game and what is it called first? So I call it Uruz. Uruz is a Viking rune. That's this one right here. It's a rune for combat and battle, that sort of thing. So usually you'd play with like triangle dice, but for this I got cow knuckle bones. I thought those were teeth earlier. Yeah, they're cow knuckle bones. Rolling bones is kind of a gambling way to play, so it's kind of a cool thing to do. And the idea is we're trying to get all of our pieces off the board. You land on an opponent and that's how you knock them off the board and they have to start over again. And the first couple of times my wife and I played it, she and I were both like slamming the table and laughing and having a good time. So yeah, and it's really fun. So it's something different between this, the chess, Neftofl, which is a Viking version of chess. There's some unique things to do. We don't have a TV here, which is important because we want people to be able to connect with each other and do something that's unique and interesting. And this is one way we provide that. Definitely going to read up on Vikings later tonight, because why not? I don't know much about Vikings, as you probably could tell from my short tour. So I'll be more educated tomorrow. Welcome. It's reading hour. We're going to be reading today the, this is wrong, the Viking handbook. It actually says handbok, I believe. H-O-N-D-B-O-K. Don't come for me. That's what it says. All right. So we're going to be learning about the proper way to wear women's hair. Braid or cover up. For men's beard, it's basically the same. If there can be little bits of food in it, that's appreciated. So behind the bed, there's actually this partition wall. It's creating another space. And I'm wondering, is this, is this where the bathroom is? Let's see. Okay. So it's not the bathroom, but it is a really cool changing room. And I see a comfy robe in there that I'm definitely going to wear later, but that makes me wonder, where is the bathroom? I think I need to do some exploring outside. Oh, wow. This is a whole nother space. Wow. This is like a full-on spa. I mean, we have a cold plunge. We have a sauna. We have a hot tub. It looks like a wood-fired hot tub and an outdoor kitchen. This sink is rad. At first, it looks like it's wood, but it's actually stone. This looks like, almost like petrified wood. This is going to be so nice for me to soak in later. I'm definitely going to do the sauna and the hot tub, and I'm going to try to work up the courage to do the cold plunge as well. I don't think they left any corner untouched. They thought about every little detail in this space. This has got to be where the bathroom is, right? Let's check it out. That was the bathroom. Over here, I bet we have the shower. Wow. This outdoor shower is a lot bigger than I would expect. The stone flooring is very cool. This nice bench, beautiful, big shower head and hand shower. It's really lovely and nice ambient lighting. They did a great job with this. This is the Jarl's deck, as we like to call it. It creates this super unique, immersive, again, traditional experience. Sauna is very Scandinavian, as well as cold plunging after you're done doing that. It's completely enclosed. It's private. It gives us really cool, again, intimate space and not be distracted by phones or TVs or any of that other sort of stuff. We have the water fountains, which kind of add a little ambient noise, so you can't hear much of anything when you're sitting out here. It's really pretty remarkable. It makes you feel like you're a million miles away. Some of the fun things we have out here are these cool lanterns. These were handmade in Ukraine. I was so stoked when they showed up. They were really beautiful. We have this petrified wood sink that we found. Again, Sarah found it at some kind of an antiques and oddities sort of place, and it worked perfect for that space. The bar that's out here is built out of slabs of maple. A lot of this is just from finding cool things, unique pieces that add this lived-in look, like these ropes and the nets and all that sort of stuff. You watch an episode of Vikings, and they're not living with drywall and really clean spaces. There's stuff like this. It's a fishing community, so we wanted to add that kind of lived-in feel to the space by putting these pieces in that soften it up, make it feel comfortable, again, lived-in and authentic, so it really transports you to a different time, a different place. I hand-built all these doors. These are made from individual planks, and I've never built a door before, but figured out how to do it, and then I decided to make it really extra complicated and not make a square door, but to make a rounded top door. With these straps, just kind of a classic medieval look, and these doors are super heavy-duty, I think you could probably hit it with a battering ram, and it's not going to go anywhere. The wood-burning technique that I use pretty much everywhere out here is called shisugi-ban. It is a Japanese technique, generally, but it's not only Japanese. There are other places you see, including in Scandinavia, where they burn the cedar and then they tar it, and that gives it protection against the weather, against bugs, all that sort of good stuff. It's a cool technique. It also just really makes the wood pop, all the wood grain comes out. It makes it look kind of old-school and authentic and rustic, and I just, every time I get a, like, as soon as I get a brand new piece of wood, I just want to take a flamethrower to it and just see what it's going to look like after it's had a little fire. I really enjoyed meeting Douglas and Sarah and learning about the inspiration for their Viking yurt, but now it's time for me to get If I could describe the feeling in the Jarl's Yurt, you know, in one word, it'd be hygge, which is the Scandinavian word for just comfort and coziness. We have guests that write in our book that they just feel held when they're in here. For me, I think, I think pride when we're in here. Yeah, we're pretty, we're both pretty proud of it. So the Jackery is powering all of our animatronic rockers as well as a bunch of lights, and when the fog machine is on, we're using about 530 watts, which means it could power all of these things for three and a half hours, but luckily the fog machine only comes on every five minutes. So when the fog machine isn't on, we're only using about 66 watts, meaning the Jackery could power our whole band for 12 hours. So I have complete confidence that we're going to be able to power our Halloween for trick-or-treating. Search for Jackery 2000, Jackery 2000 V2, or Jackery 2000 Plus to learn more about this new product, or you can click on the link in the video description. And check back soon because we publish a new unique home tour every single week.