Wealth

Living in the country like I do has a lot of benefits like being very close to nature and wildlife, the sea and open views. Also, we have milder regulations when it comes to lighting a fire, outdoor or indoor, than the strict rules for allowing smoke and open fire in town, where it's often forbidden to use a fireplace, should you happen to have a functioning one in your flat, mostly because neighbours get disturbed by the smoke. 

I have a fireplace in the house I rent and I use it a lot. It's nothing fancy, it doesn't store the heat nearly at all but it heats up the room very quickly and I love feeling the very special kind of heat that comes from a fireplace and the special noise the fire and the fireplace makes. 

Having the opportunity to make a fire provides having access to firewood which is not self evident. The chosen few who owns their own forrest can get their own wood there and maybe sell to friends and neighbours. There are of course people who specialise in buying logs from forrest owners, then using machines for chopping it up, drying, storing and then selling wood per cubic meter to people like me, for instance. The prize varies enormously, I paid around 300:-/cubic meter but I then had to fetch it myself. Where I live there is a special woodshed so storing it is no problem. 
My landlord, on the other hand, has forrest of his own to support his annual needs of firewood. It's considered real richness to have "free" firewood, though it's not really free at all, since there are quite a lot of work involved before it actually goes into your fireplace. The logs are often fetched from the forrest at this time of year because the ground is hard enough to support a tractor and a wagon to fetch it or, if there is snow and you happen to have a horse as well to pull you can "easily" drag it out of the forrest on the snow. Right now this is what it looks like after my landlord has gathered his wood and put it outside where he later can saw it into smaller pieces and then split it into firewood. They say that firewood, treated this way keeps you warm several times: when you fell the tree, transport it, saw it, split it, stack it to dry and then carry into your house and finally putting a match to it in the fireplace to enjoy the moment.