Nine Years in Norway

An American's Reflections

Emigration from Norway to the USA

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Two weeks ago I shared photos and observations of a short trip to Fusa, and mentioned my husband’s recent discovery of ancestors who come from this area.

Jan’s explorations into his family’s history have been fascinating for me, especially when he discovered family in the States and I thought about that reality from the perspective of *my* ancestors that emigrated to America from Scotland and Germany. So I asked him to share a little of his family’s story with you, set against the backdrop of Norwegian history.

Take it away, Jan!

EMIGRATION FROM NORWAY TO USA … AND MY FAMILY
by Jan Eek

In the span of less than a hundred years, from around 1825, almost 900,000 Norwegians emigrated to USA. To put it in perspective, the population in Norway in 1860 was 1,595,000. That means that around 10 to 12 million Americans are of Norwegian ancestry.

These are just numbers, so what do we know about the people, the human side of this emigration?

Emigrating from Norway to US

Norwegian settlers in 1898 North Dakota
in front of their homestead, a sod hut
Source

I can only relate to my own family, and as it turned out, I was in for several surprises.

The first one came as we moved from Bergen to a smaller place, Os, an hour’s drive from Bergen. So, what did I find out? Well, I have always known the name of my grandmother and connected it to Bergen, and the first thing I found was that my grandmother’s father was born on a farm very close to where we now live and that he belonged to a prominent family in this area. So, I was back at the cradle of my family!

Further inquiry led me to the most interesting person, my great-great grandfather, Wilhelm. He was a wild one in his youth. He became a father for the first time at the age of 16 and his first son is my direct ancestor. He then roamed Norway, Sweden and Denmark and fathered several children. His family, including a priest and a fairly rich farmer/shopkeeper, of course was embarrassed and tired of this unruly young man, so he was married to a sturdy woman, Thora, and promptly sent to America.

That was the second surprise for me. I had no idea! I have family in the US …

Here is a picture of Wilhelm and Thora in America.

Wilhelm and Thora in America

1896

Wilhelm and Thora had eight children and the first years in the US they lived in a cave in Minnesota. Then they managed to get some land and slowly they developed it into a proper farm and later on established an hotel in the nearest town.

So, I have family here where I live and a large number of cousins in America. I have been in contact with my local family and also connected with one of my American cousins. She came to visit me and I showed her the area and the old farm house which is the origin for both of us AND it is still owned by my family, which was another surprise.

For a while I was hung up in tracing my family, but I stopped when I got to the 16th century. I turned the focus, thinking of the next generations, so I am now writing everything I know and can find out about people in my family. I want my grandchildren and their children to be able to connect with the history of our family.

Norwegian culture: vacations and hytte

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It’s Easter Sunday. Norway slows down the week between Palm Sunday and Easter Monday. Shops close. Businesses close. Many Norwegians take a trip to the mountains for days of winter skiing. Or they are on the coast, enjoying the hint and promise of spring. And many of them are at their hytte.

What the heck is a “hytte”? And what does it have to do with Norway, vacations, and especially culture?

Hytte is a difficult word to translate. From my American perspective it means vacation cabin. But it’s not just a physical building. The word represents generations of outdoor exploration and living, and the family hytte is at the center: it’s the place to return to after a day’s activities, and represents all that is cozy, warm, and relaxing with family. The more remote hyttes don’t have electricity or running water, require hours of hiking to reach, and then (in the winter) more hours of shoveling to get to the front door. There are also many hyttes closer to civilization; an hour or two of driving, and a family can have a relaxing weekend together.

At this stage of life, escaping to the mountains for days on end of hiking or skiing is something that is physically beyond my abilities. But I’m fascinated by this aspect of the culture, and enjoy listening to my husband’s stories of his experiences when he was a young boy and teenager, and father to young boys and teenagers. Experiencing “outside” was the backdrop for all their family activities, which is opposite mine as a girl, teenager, and Mom raising daughters.

In June of 2007, the first year I lived in Norway, a friend invited me out to her family’s hytte on the coast for an afternoon’s worth of girl time. Sotra, an island easily accessible from Bergen that has made several appearances in my blog before, is rocky and typical of the southern Norwegian coast. It reminds me of my trips to Monhegan Island, Maine.

My friend had fixed a lunch that we enjoyed on the deck overlooking the small harbor area looking out towards the Norwegian Sea. The sky was washed out and bright, and the landscape showed the effects of the strong winds that blow in off the ocean.

June 2007 - hytte on Sotra

June 2007 - hytte on Sotra

 

After lunch we took our dessert — a thermos of coffee and tin of sweet rolls — and went out in their small row boat, planning to get to one of the small outcroppings visible in those images above. My friend was rowing the boat, and I was supposed to offer steering guidance from my place at the bow. I was clueless; I’m sure it was a comical site, with strong winds pushing us in various directions and me offering useless suggestions. My friend wisely decided it wasn’t the safest activity! We returned to the dock and took our dessert to an area overlooking the ocean. Once there, we realized we’d forgotten coffee mugs … so used the aluminum containers that had held the sweets. More laughter for the two of us! The early June sun, approaching the longest day of the year, was glaring and hot. It was a peaceful time, all centered on my friend sharing her family hytte with me.

June 2007 - hytte on Sotra

June 2007 - hytte on Sotra

I asked my husband to share his experience both as a boy/teenager, and in the family hytte in northern Norway as his boys were growing up. It’s the typical Norwegian experience of his generation.

My whole life I have been roaming the mountains. Skiing in the winter and hiking the rest of the year. Every week-end, no matter what weather it was, we packed our rucksacks and went skiing or hiking. We never thought about the WHY; it was part of our culture.

As I grew older, we started getting bolder, walking and tenting in the mountains (the real high and dangerous ones) for days and even crossing glaciers. Properly equipped, if the weather got really bad, we dug ourselves a snow hole and waited for the weather to get better.

When my boys grew up, we had a hytte way up in the high mountains of the north. Summertime it was fairly easy living, despite no electricity, no tap water and no toilets. It was marvelous! Walking to the creek to get water, fire up the fireplace and fry dried reindeer meat, light the kerosene lamps, watching the field mice and squirrels hopping around in the fire wood. And long hikes in the deserted mountains, coffee making on a fire beside a lake or a creek, watching the reindeer, the occasional wolverine or even a brown bear and numerous birds. The boys learned very early to walk in the mountains, that is, keep a steady pace and get into a rhythm and make enough noise to alert any predators. It was a wonderful time…

Winter is very different. First of all, we had to get there. In foul weather, the road was closed. If we got there it was very cold, down to around minus 30 degrees centigrade ( and fantastic polar light!), a lot of snow, 5 to 7 yards, and we had to get to the hytte. It was quite a stretch to either ski or trample in the snow and the last hill was very steep, so I had to carry food and sometimes kids up a little at a time…

Once we were there, we could only see the top of the pipe of the hytte, so I actually had to dig a tunnel into the door, and once inside, fire up the stove and the fireplace and get some food and drink into our bodies. It took two days for the hytte to thaw, and in the meantime we had to stay winter clothed at all times, even when we slept.

If this sounds exhausting, we actually never thought about it. It was as it should be…

No photos to show of the family hytte, but his description does it justice, doesn’t it? Here’s one found online that’s in the same area … but missing the final steep hill to get there!

northern Norwegian hytte

Click the photo to see others similar to it, as well as photos of families enjoying summer and winter activities during their time at their hytte.

How about one more photo? This one from the 1960’s is my husband, 17 years old, out for a hike in Sogndal with his friends (referenced in his second paragraph up there). I say “hike” — but this trek was part of a fourteen hour day: hours up a steep ascent from a hytte to get there, hours exploring the area, hours back down. The glacier is one we took my oldest daughter to see when we visited Sogndal in 2010 … although we didn’t get as close as Jan is in this photo, and — to make it easier for this American — our “hytte” was a comfortable hotel . 😉

1960s - Jan at Jostedalsbreen

nature in black and white

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Almost a week ago my blogging friend Nancy from Two Trails One Road challenged me to the 5 Day B&W Challenge. I’m late to the party, and I’m breaking the rules. I should post five photos for five consecutive days — but you’re going to get them all today. And I’m supposed to tag five others to take part in the challenge — but those I would tag have already posted theirs. (That’s what I get for being late!)

I love photography, and enjoy using Inkscape to manipulate images into a vector format. But although I use GIMP (the open source equivalent of Photoshop), I’ve not explored photographic enhancement too deeply, and wasn’t quite sure how black and white images would turn out.

Since most of my “enhancement” is by Mother Nature, I decided to take a few of her shots and convert them to black and white. It was fun picking out four of my favorite nature photos to see what they’d look like with the color striped away, making the lines and texture front and center.

I also have a “true” black and white image, one with bare December winter trees and snow covered landscape, taken with my old film camera (and real black and white film) while visiting family in upstate New York in 2002. I don’t have the original any longer to scan at a higher resolution, but the snow, tree, footprints, house, and snow fence (to stop the white stuff from drifting across the road after its journey over the unbroken farmland) are a powerful combination for me when mixed with the emotions and memories of many visits. I’m glad it’s found a place on my blog!

January 22, 2015 - nature in black and white
December 28, 2014 - nature in black and white
July 6, 2014 - nature in black and white
March 2, 2015 - nature in black and white
December 2002 - nature in black and white, upstate New York

 

Thank you, Nancy, for inviting me to join you in your black and white images fun. Head over to her blog to take a look at what she’s posted!

From my Archives: West Berlin

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(Buried in my blog’s Archives are many emotions and experiences from my first years as an American living in another country. I’d like to let them see the light again! So, on occasional Fridays, I’ll share my favorites in a “Flashback Friday” type of reblog format.)

Recently I’ve enjoyed a comments conversation with aNa, “a language loving German with Colombian roots” who spent a year and a half as a study-abroad student in Izmir, Turkey. (Yes, it’s a very interesting blog!) She’d posted a night-time photo of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin that brought back powerful memories about my time living in Berlin. As I’ve shared earlier, I was only there for two years, 1982 – 1984. But what an intense time it was!

Because of our conversation, I thought this week’s “Flashback Friday” post should highlight another memory of that time. It includes just a few written thoughts, and three images that captured that experience as a member of the military, our reality behind the Wall, and (if you squint) me two days away from the birth of our oldest daughter.

West Berlin, Germany
(May and July, 1983)

… a few photos from that time “behind the Wall” …

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Sandviken history and Madam Felle

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As you could see from my photos in yesterday’s post, Sandviken is located near the water. The early buildings were mostly water mills and shipyards, and later traders from Bergen built landing places and warehouses in the area.

A few facts from my husband:

It has a long and complicated history, but here’s an overview:

– From the early Middle ages, Sandviken was the main location for milling (grounding grain into flour). Even today there is a huge mill there.

– Besides the boatbuilding (shipyards) and rope-making (the long “Reperbahn” building for making and storing the rope is still there), its main business was as a so called “Stapelhavn” mainly for the dried fish from the north. Sandviken was located a long way from the city center at that time in history; the business was located there probably because of the very pungent smell from the fish. It clings to anybody who works with it.

– “Stapelhavn” means a harbor for changing goods between the different traders. In its history, ships brought fish from the North, spices from the West Indian company, etc. The goods were transferred and distributed, mainly in Europe, but also on a world wide basis.

– The area was privately owned until it was sold to the Bergen commune in 1876. As a far northern suburb of Bergen, it was accessible from Bergen only by boat or over the narrow, high path over Ladegården. A wider road was established in the late 1800’s.

– As the business and activities grew, people started building houses: Small ones for the workers and grander ones for the rich merchants. Most of those houses are still there.

A few personal observations:

– My family owned a number of houses in Sandviken for several hundred years, building ships for trading in the European Hansa League and buying dried fish from the northern parts of Norway.

– My great, great grandfather was First Mate on a Danish ship until he fell down from the rig and crushed both his knees.

As you can imagine, it was long hours, hard work, and a difficult life. Of course the workers needed a release … which brings me to today’s post. While Grandson and I were enjoying our walk (that is, while he snoozed and I gaped at him and my surroundings), I took some time at the Madam Felle statue.

(An additional photo of the base can be found here; as the photographer Bård Skåden writes, “At the bottom of the statue it shows how they believe it was.”)

A bit of more history from my knowledgeable Bergenske husband, this time about Madam Felle:

Her name was Oline Felle, born in Breim, Gloppen (Nordfjord) in 1831, and died in Bergen on January 9, 1908. Her bar/pub and guesthouse was a family business, and she was the daughter-in-law of the first Madam Felle, Randine Felle. Randine was born in Voss (west of Bergen) in 1790 and her father bought the house and received a pub licence in 1796. Randine served beer for 60 years until she died in 1867. Oline continued until she passed away in 1908.

Her clientel were locals, but also all the workers from the shipyards, the men sorting the dried fish from the north, the rope-makers … it was extremely hard, labor-intensive work.

Her fame is very much caused by the song about her. Written by an “unknown,” it is a very simple two-verse Bergen “street-song” that most people from Bergen know.

Here are the lyrics in the local “Bergensk” dialect to this street song, and a rough English translation courtesy of my husband (but of course a lot of the humor is lost in the translation):

Kjenner dokker madam Felle

Norwegian/Bergensk English
Kjenner dokker madam Felle
– Jonnemann sin gamle mor?
Hon så hadde øl å selle:
ut i Sandviken hon bor.No e hun dø for lenge siden,
Jonnemann sin gamle mor,
hon så hadde øl å selle
ut i Sandviken hon bor.		 Do you know madam Felle
– the old mother of Jonnemann?
She had beer to sell:
out in Sandviken she lives.Now she is dead long gone
the old mother of Jonnemann,
she had beer to sell
out in Sandviken she lives.

I’ll be visiting Sandviken again — both in person of course, and also on this blog. But in the meantime, I’ll leave you with the song, sung by Lothar Lindtner and Rolf Berntzen on their 1977 album:

 

(Here is where Madam Felle’s statue is located on the map.)

From my Archives: Philadelphia

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This week’s “Flashback Friday” isn’t expat related. It’s America’s Independence Day! So I thought I’d celebrate with re-visiting a post that has two photos from a 1988 trip to Philadelphia of The Liberty Bell and Independence Hall (with my young daughters and their Dad featured prominently, of course!)

But first, a short quote and a current photo: today, as “on every Fourth of July, at 2pm Eastern time, children who are descendants of Declaration signers symbolically tap the Liberty Bell 13 times while bells across the nation also ring 13 times in honor of the patriots from the original 13 states” (from the Independence Hall Association — please visit that link to read more of my country’s history).

July 4, 2014

July 4, 2014
Happy Birthday, America!
Your flag is flying proudly over the fjord and Lysøen here in Lysekloster

Philadelphia
April 2, 2013

A 1988 trip to Philadelphia when the girls were small, visiting the tourist areas and feeling a part of U.S. history.

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hmmm, can a blog be compared to a room?

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My blog has been offline for a few days. I moved it to a new server, hid it behind an “Under Construction” screen, and had fun experimenting with new themes and a new look.

And after hours (ok, it was a few days…) of tweaks, changes, and increasing frustration — I realized that none of the other themes I tried were satisfying. I don’t *want* to change my look right now. I like my theme. I like my photos with the darker textured background.

So it’s back to the same theme. I’ve adjusted the display to make the font size and contrast a bit easier to read, and made other minor tweaks, but basically my blog home is right back where it was … just on a different server, where I have more control. (I’ve lost all the WordPress “Likes” my posts had, the subscriber numbers seem to be taking the long road to my new blog home, and all of your comments were jumbled — many of you seemed to be having conversations with yourself — but we all know that glitches like that are to be expected when moving, and I’ll get those comment conversations sorted out eventually!)

I’m comfortable in my blog home and the display of my blog’s “room” … and that segues nicely to this week’s photo challenge of room. (Yes, I know, that’s probably a stretch, but I’m running with it anyway. 🙂 )

Ben writes: “Like a few other English words, Room means two contradictory things. It can be the four walls that enclose us, giving us shelter and comfort but also limiting our movement. It’s also the limitless space into which we can wander and which we can fill — or try to…”

In my 55 years on this earth, I’ve moved about 25 times. I think. Every new place brought adventure, learning, awareness, education, comfort, love, friendships … well, I could go on, but you get the picture.

And in each of those 25+ places I have found or created rooms that comforted and contained my personality and needs so that I could grow and love, and create connections with those around me.

But with every new place there was also a little uncertainty with the newness. If it was a different State or Country, that was an adjustment. But even if it was in the same area, there still was an adjustment with new sounds, new neighbors, new routines.

In thinking about it, every room in every new home that I’ve created has been a place I connect with the people I love most in the world. Isn’t that the most important aspect of life?

A room can be a place where the foundation of family is nurtured …

family love

 

A room can be a place where we’re comfortable to let a little sneakiness and silliness occur …

silliness with our dogs

 

A room can be a place where magic or music happens …

magic and music

 

A room can be place of unsettlement and discontent, or a place of settled contentment …

unsettlement, discontent, settlement, contentment

 

And a room can represent the heart of a home: the kitchen, where wonderful aromas, tastes, and conversations and connections with those most important to us occur …

the heart of a home

 

Many of us have figurative “rooms” here on the Internet: blogs where conversations are exchanged, information is shared, photos are viewed, virtual friendships are forged. I enjoy visiting YOUR Internet room, and am so glad to welcome you to (my slightly updated) corner of our world!

(EDIT June 23: I finally found a theme I’m happy with: I’ve customized the Sixteen Nine Pro theme from StudioPress. What do you think?)