Comments by "Luredreier" (@Luredreier) on "American Reacts to Amazing Timber Trucks in Europe" video.

In the past you'd cut down the trees with axes or later on when blacksmithing improved saws, then you'd use horses to pull 4-5 logs down to a creek or river. From there it's floated down ideally to a water powered sawmill, but at least a collection point for processing, before being exported out. The water powered sawmills and all of our rivers and creeks allowed Norway to be a much bigger timber exporter then the size of our forests would actually suggest. And our woods rebuilt London after city fires and for a number of other uses. (Probably including the Royal Navy too, although I don't know about that specifically).
1