Happy Times in Norway

by Sigrid Undset

  “It would probably be best if you both slept with me tonight,” said Mother. “There is not quite so much smoke there as out here.”

  It was rather crowded sleeping three in a bed. Especially since Hans curled up in such a fashion that he took up nearly all the room. He slept like a rock all night, and did not even feel it when Mother tried to straighten him out and shove him against the wall. But Little Signe awakened every other minute.

  “Aunt,” she whispered tensely, “what’s that?”

  There was a terrific clatter and racket right outside.

  “Just a chunk of wood that rolled down the woodpile. Lie down and go to sleep now.”

  “Aunt, it’s blowing so hard. Aunt, the roof couldn’t blow off, could it?”

  “Of course not, Signe. It’ll stay on all right. Go to sleep now.”

  “Aunt, what is that?”

  Something bumped against the wall on the other side of the bed—then bumped and thudded and bumped again. Then came a bellow—loud and penetrating.

  “Bulls. Some must have tried to find shelter from the storm here by the north wall.”

  “Aunt, do you think they could butt in the wall and come in here where we are?”

  “No, no. You don’t have to be afraid. Now my little girl must try to go to sleep. It’s awful weather tonight— but those of us who are lying abed indoors, all warm and safe and sound—we’re lucky, aren’t we, Signe?”

  Toward morning the wind subsided a little. When Mother and the children came out, a thick mist lay over the world. Pressed close against the north wall of the lunnbu stood four strange young bulls, so wet that their red hides looked black as coal. And on the woodpile lay the doll house on its side, and all Janna’s pretty cards and paper napkins were pulp. Their pretty little doll dishes floated in water and the boards that had hidden the holes lay floating in a pond some distance away.

  Janna and Hans and Little Signe stood, gunny sacks over their heads, surveying the monstrous destruction. They had not cared a great deal for their doll house recently—at least they had not played in it so much—but now they were desolate at its having come to such a sorrowful end. Even Little Signe, who had been so scornful of it when she had first been invited to come and play in it, was sorry.

  “And it was so lo-ve-ly. Oh, what a shame!”

  She picked up the two poor wooden dolls.

  “Aunt, if we dry them, don’t you think you could draw faces on them again? They were so sweet.”

  Janna said not a word. Norwegian children are early taught self-control. It is a disgrace to cry “if there is nothing worth while to cry about.” And country people are especially stern with their children in this matter. Janna’s bright little face was strained and tense as she struggled to hold back the tears.

  Mother had received a number of picture postcards during the course of the summer, along with all the other mail that came to her by car on Saturday, and it comforted Janna somewhat when Mother presented her with these, though most of these postcards were photographs, and Janna’s cards had been such elegant ones, all colored and gilded and glazed.

  But Little Signe promised to send her some colored picture postcards from Oslo and Mother promised to find some cards with glaze on them when she got back to town. And then it helped some that she still had all those paper napkins left over from Hans’s birthday.

  The wooden dolls were bundled up in shawls that had been warmed by the stove, and tucked into a new cradle made from another empty box. Then they were fed warm milk and given aspirin. Little by little the children forgot their sorrow as they busied themselves in Mother’s house, doctoring and nursing their two little patients. By afternoon the babies were so much better that they could be sent over to Mother, who had just opened a beauty parlor, and who gave them a facial with red and blue and yellow crayons.

  The stormy weather lasted three days. On the fourth morning the sun shone from a cloudless, dark-blue sky. But the golden birch groves were now naked and brown, and the glorious colors on the tableland had faded. All was sere and brown and a graying yellow now.

  Hanna and Mother and all the children went for a walk to the nearest cloudberry bog. Fortunately, the cloudberries had not been too ripe or they would have been ruined. But it was high time the cloudberry pickers turned up, if they were going to collect all this wealth before autumn came in earnest and spoiled everything.

  Next day between sixty and seventy trucks appeared, loaded with tubs, pails, buckets, bedding and lunch baskets, and parked along the saeter road from Nyplass to Björge saeter. Every saeter house became filled with berrypickers, or berryhunters, as they were called here in the valley, sleeping four or five in a bed, and in rows on the floor. Other berrypickers lay in tents and on the ground in sleeping bags, and every evening after dark campfires appeared over all the plain. No one could remember there ever having been such a cloudberry year as this one. It would surely pay to lay in as big a supply as possible.

  This was not the time to talk of being crowded when Little Signe and Hans and Mother had slept three in a bed the night of the big storm! Now Hanna and Mother and two women from down the valley all slept in Mother’s bed, and in both beds in the back room children and young girls lay packed as tight as sardines, for the saeter house was as full of men as there was room for in the beds and on the floors. During the day everyone was out picking berries, filling their pails and then coming to empty them in kegs and barrels. Evenings, when it had become too dark for the pickers to see the berries, the air in the saeter house was so thick with the odor of greased leather boots, of clothes soaked through with rank swamp water, of perspiring bodies and of woodsmoke, and the smell of coffee and boiled milk that one could cut it with a knife. But it was a tremendous lot of fun to be in the midst of such feverish activity.

  There was a telephone on Ledumssla saeter and every evening after dark people flocked down there. And the news from the valley was good—the fruit buyers were offering quite good prices, considering all the cloudberries there were this year, not only in these mountains, but all over Eastern Norway. Everyone was pleased—including Mother, who had managed to get two hundred quarts at a reasonable price. That was enough to last three years, even after sending some to her sisters and friends and acquaintances.

  Then, one fine day, it was over, and the caravan of trucks, loaded high with buckets and barrels, and topped with happy people, started moving toward town. A few cloudberries naturally remained—enough for people on the saeters to have cloudberries for dessert every day, but the mountains had been so thoroughly gone over that it did not pay for anyone to pick for cash.

  Little Signe sat enthroned on Sigurd Hole’s lap, atop a cloudberry car. She had to leave now, for Grandmother wanted to take her back to Oslo with her when she went.

  Hans’s mouth dropped sadly as he said good-by to his formerly favorite cousin. He looked as if he would have cried—if it were not shameful to cry. . . .

  “But, for heaven’s sake,” said Mother, “you were hardly together, you two, anyway, while she was here.”

  “That’s just it,” complained Hans. “She didn’t care about me at all, but just wanted to sit and knit with Janna. And we had always been best friends before. Now in a week you and I have to go down too—and then I have to start that nasty school . . .”

  Hans turned and ran quickly into the lunnbu. Mother discreetly followed Hanna to the saeter house. Hans, it seemed, needed to be alone to get over his sadness that summer was over.

  8

  ONE DAY MRS. HOLE CAME UP TO SEE HER SAETER AND she was almost like a summer guest herself. For when a farmer engages a dairywoman for the summer, she takes full responsibility and has full authority over everything concerning the saeter, and it would be the peak of bad manners if the farmer’s wife allowed herself to interfere in any of the dairywoman’s work.

  Besides, Mrs. Hole probably needed a little vacation. Her husband had been building and fixing a little of everything around on the farm down
in the valley this year, breaking and draining new ground too, so Mrs. Hole had had as many as twenty men to board for months at a time. She richly deserved a week’s rest and to be waited on and be cared for by Hanna.

  She was called Janna, like her daughter, and Janna Hole and Mother took many pleasant little walks together to the neighboring saeters and up the near-by hills. Then one morning Mrs. Hole suggested they climb Hogtinden—there was a fine view from up there, and today the weather was so remarkably clear.

  They equipped themselves with lunch and coffeepot, and each slung a sack over her shoulder, for they would have to gather wood along the way. There was only gray moss and stone atop Hogtinden. When they set out they were quite alone, but before long the whole flock of youngsters was at their heels.

  “Can’t we be allowed to come too?”

  The next one to join the company was that fine Irish setter from Björge saeter. Magda, carrying a large knapsack, and Magnar, with the binoculars slung over his shoulder, followed.

  “We saw you start, so we got the idea of going up too.”

  The path ascends in zigzag, and the rise is so gradual one does not realize how high Hogtinden is until one climbs it. Janna Hole and Mother became quite tired and short of breath. They had to rest when they were halfway. That was on the very edge of the precipice where the snow owls had hatched their broods.

  “See the falcon!” cried all the children to their mothers. Its reddish-brown wings shone in the sun as it hung motionless high in the blue heaven.

  Meantime people were bobbing up along the path from every which way. Someone at every saeter had seen people starting up the mountain and so had wanted to go up too.

  “Why, if Ingrid isn’t even staggering along,” laughed Magnar. “Poor thing, do you think she’ll make it?”

  “Make it?” said his sister. “No one has been in the training this summer that Ingrid has. She’ll pass us all, see if she doesn’t.”

  And Ingrid did.

  Finally they reached the utmost ridge. The wind blew cold and refreshingly on their hot, perspiring faces. And there, twenty or thirty yards away, rose the cairn of stones that marked the summit of Hogtinden.

  Magnar found a place sheltered from the wind and started the fire. Magda got out the coffeepot and set it into the flames, bracing it with stones, and began unpacking her knapsack.

  “Here are some meat balls,” she said. “But it’s a shame to offer these to you, Janna. They’re not half so good as yours.”

  Actually these meat balls were made from the same recipe, for Mrs. Björge and Mrs. Hole were sisters. And they smelled delicious as Magda started them heating in a pan.

  It had turned out to be quite a gathering around the cairn. Fortunately, several others had also brought coffeepots and had gathered wood along the way.

  Mountains without end spread out below them, monotonously green-brown and gray, scarred here and there with purpling clefts where a valley ran down, its sides laden with dark conifers. And everywhere water blinked bluely beneath the darker blue autumn sky from hundreds of little lakes and tarns that were joined by sparkling bands of stream and brook.

  Lonely saeter groups, the little houses looking like gray rocks on the green saeter fields, broke the wilderness. To the south the land fell slowly down toward the larger communities and disappeared in a bluish haze; but to the north and west and east stood stark, high, naked mountains, the summits swathed in snow and the sides gray with rockfall.

  The children swarmed around Magnar, wanting to borrow the binoculars, but Janna Hole and Mother lay flat on their backs on the moss carpet, resting.

  “Yes, that high snow mountain to the northeast ought to be Solntoppene,” declared Magnar. “That’s way over on the Swedish border. Say, look at that,” he shouted suddenly, and handed Mother the binoculars. “Wild reindeer. See them?”

  In the old days these mountains were the home of great reindeer herds. Krag-Jörgensen rifles, increased mountain travel, and finally the automobile roads had almost rendered them extinct. A few years’ protection, however, had increased their number again. Now once more one frequently saw little herds of wild reindeer.

  An old fellow, called Paal, came over and pointed:

  “You see that big pile of stones over there on the other side of Djupsjön, on that little hill right east of the lake? Yeah, it looks like a wart. Well, that’s that there Börål Tautrom.” Paal chuckled.

  There was a story about that cairn. Everyone knew it, but Paal told it just the same. . . .

  IN THE OLDEN DAYS, THIRTY YEARS AGO MAYBE, THE peasants still used to take their own stuff to Oslo, or Kristiania, as the town was called then. They set out when the winter sledding started, long trainloads of them, their sleds heaped high with meat and potatoes and hides and tallow and whatever else they had to sell. They figured it was cheaper than using the railroad. Besides this way they got a trip to town, for the dealers they did business with always had a bondestue, a place where the peasants could stay, free of charge, as long as they liked. These lodgings did not amount to much—only one single room with several tiers of bunks along the walls. The peasants brought their own bedding and food.

  Well, one year soon after New Year, one letter after another began coming to the farmer, “Mr. Börål Tautrom.” The letters were bills for coffee and groceries, a mowing machine, a sewing machine, seed grain and fertilizer. Some scalawag or other had bought all these things in Kristiania and charged them to “Böral Tautrom.” These city people, you see, thought that sounded like some fine, old name from up the valley. No, they never caught the fellow. Oh, sure, people had their own ideas about who he was, but no one felt like getting mixed up in the affair. Besides, he wasn’t from this neighborhood. He was from Oyer, people said . . .

  Everyone laughed at the old story.

  “Well, nowadays no one would do anything like that. It wasn’t exactly honest, but those days the buyers cheated the farmers every chance they got. Oh, not all of them, of course, but some didn’t think anything of cheating some dumb farmer. So some of us figured we ought to get even when we could. But, of course, it’s not like that any more, no, not like that at all,” Paal concluded:

  Hans came over and lay down beside Mother and gazed out over the mountains below.

  “Oh, Mother, if only we could stay here for always,” he said fervently. But he had his mouth full of cold buttered waffle, and waffles in both hands, so his words did not have quite the moving effect they should.

  But he said it again that evening, as Mother was putting their freshly ironed clothes down in the suitcases.

  “You can wait and change when we get home, Hans. Dirty clothes take such a lot of room. And it will be just until tomorrow.”

  “I wish we never had to go away from here, mother. I wish we could stay in the mountains forever.”

  “Oh, Hans, things aren’t so bad as all that at home. Don’t you think it might even be pleasant to get home —meet all your friends? And Tulla—”

  “Yes-s. But then I have to go to school again. Darn that old school!”

  “We have all had to go to school sometime, Hans. You too must learn something. And time goes so fast, once you get started. Before you know it’ll be potatodigging vacation.”

  “Phew on potato-digging vacation,” Hans snorted. “It always rains.”

  “Yes, but then it isn’t long until Christmas. You surely like Christmas, don’t you?”

  “Yes-s, but it’s pretty long until then,” sighed Hans.

  He was only half-consoled for having to leave the saeter and go home.

  PREFACE TO THE 1942 EDITION

  WHEN THE GERMANS INVADED NORWAY ON APRIL 9, 1940, the Happy Times in our country came to an end.

  The two boys whose childhood joys and adversities I have told in this book were young men by that time. Tulla had died a year before. And, since nobody could have explained to her why all the good things and pleasures she was accustomed to had come to an end—why her dear flag co
uld not fly over her home any more, why there were to be no processions and music on the Seventeenth of May and no sheaves of grain for the birds outside her window at Christmas, no rides to the mountains in the summer, no sledges with bells in the winter—it was a good thing that she was dead. She was spared the sufferings inflicted on her people by a nation who has deemed children like her—not able to achieve anything in this world except teaching us love and tenderness, and giving love and tenderness in return—unfit to live.

  On that black ninth of April, Anders and Hans escaped from occupied Oslo. Next morning they both joined the Norwegian army near Lillehammer. Three weeks later Anders was killed in action, up in his home valley. Hans finally joined his mother in Sweden, and was with her all the way through Russia, Siberia, Japan, to America. But when the Norwegian army was being reformed somewhere in Great Britain, he returned to the colors. By the time this book had been printed in 1942 he may have had the opportunity he wished for, to fight again for his king and native land. When he said good-bye to his mother in Grand Central Terminal in New York to travel to the secret port where his ship waited, he told her: “You know, Mother, if we get our country back again from the Germans, nothing matters. And if not, and if you and I should live nevertheless, we must acknowledge that Anders was the only lucky one in our family.”

  But we Norwegians know for certain that we shall have our country back again, free and swept clean of the forces of evil. What if the fine old farms up along the river in our valley of Gudbrandsdal, and all our other valleys, are burnt down; what if ever so many of our men are dead on battlefields and in prisons; what if the courteous and happy hard-working peasantry of Norway have been impoverished, deprived of their horses and cows that were as dear to the owners as if they were members of the family; what if the Germans have destroyed the fruits of centuries of labor and millenniums of cultural development—we still have our land. We are still the same people who built it up to be a place where human dignity and integrity were cherished, where friendliness, happiness, and charity were considered the best things in life.