Hytte-til-hytte - literally hut-to-hut - is the Norwegian multi-day mountain walking format in which the traveler moves each day from one DNT cabin to the next, eating dinner and breakfast at the cabins, sleeping in cabin beds, and carrying only a light daypack with water, snacks and weather layers. It is the dominant format for serious multi-day Norwegian hiking, and one of the most distinctive single mountain travel formats anywhere in the world.
What makes the format work is the density and integration of the DNT hut network. Most major Norwegian hiking regions - Jotunheimen, Hardangervidda, Rondane, Dovrefjell, Hallingskarvet, Femundsmarka, Saltfjellet, Børgefjell, the Lofoten islands - have hut networks dense enough to allow multi-day traverses with each day's walking ending at a DNT cabin. The walking distances between huts are sized for a comfortable day's effort (typically 5-9 hours, 12-25 km, with some descent and ascent variation) and the trail network is fully marked with the standard T-merker.
There are three accommodation tiers in the network. The staffed DNT lodges, Gjendebu, Glitterheim and Tungestølen among them, are serviced lodges where you book a room or a dormitory bed and eat in a dining hall; several well-known staffed lodges on the same trails, such as Memurubu and Sognefjellshytta, are privately run. The self-service huts have a pantry of provisions; you let yourself in with the standard DNT key, cook your own meal and pay for the bed and the food in the DNT app. The unstaffed huts have the same kitchen equipment, gas burners, duvets and firewood but no pantry, so you bring all your own food. Most multi-day Norwegian itineraries use a mix of staffed and self-service nights.
For the international visitor, the hut-to-hut format is genuinely without equivalent in most other mountain countries. The combination of well-marked trails, integrated accommodation, light pack weight, hot dinners at the end of every day, and the underlying cultural seriousness of the system produces a kind of multi-day walking experience that is harder to find elsewhere. One of our trips uses the format: see A gentle hut-to-hut walk through Rondane.