country and they kind of looked down on you, as what they call a greenhorn. I was surprised at the attitude they took, that you were very ignorant and didn’t know nothing. Even in church.
The only thing I went to was the Scandinavian church, for the simple reason that we were raised like regular puritans. It was wrong for us to play cards, it was wrong for us to dance, and these lodges and so on were not where we belonged. I can remember they were dancing at home [in Sweden]. But the people that were dancing, they nearly always got drunk and there were fights, bloody fights. We were supposed to be separate; we were brought up this way. Now I realize that some of that was wrong, because you lived in a cage.
*The crown has been the monetary unit of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden since the Scandinavian monetary union was formed in the 1870s. There are one hundred öre/øre in each crown. The exact worth of the crown varies slightly among the countries; the present exchange rate is approximately six crowns to one U.S. dollar.
*Province at the southern tip of Sweden.
*The Swedish Mission Covenant Church was founded in 1878. Paul Peter Waldenström (1838–1917) was an engaging preacher who played a major role in the establishment of the independent local congregations that comprised this free church.
†The penalties for holding private religious meetings were abolished in 1858, although some restrictions on free preaching remained in force until 1868.
‡Literally, lye fish; see also the interviews with Gretchen Yost and Torvald Opsal.
Torvald Opsal
“Home you had plenty to eat, but there was no cash.”
After spending the summer of 1929 in the Midwest, Torvald Opsal came west to Washington. There the nineteen-year-old Norwegian began a long association with the fishing industry. Ten years later, he married. While Torvald fished seasonally in Alaska and California, his wife worked as a bookkeeper in Tacoma.
My mother’s maiden name was Kjersti Fatland and my dad was Torkel Opsal. They were born and raised in Vikedal, Norway. Vikedal is just a hamlet. Stavanger is the main town; it’s two hours by ferry. The Gulf Stream came by there, so it was mild. It would snow for a week and then it would rain for two weeks. Walking to school, you could feel the cold slush on the open heel of your wooden shoes. I feel it still!
My granddad on my dad’s side and his two brothers had a shipyard. They built good-sized sailing ships for a living. When they sold the shipyard, they bought a farm apiece. His name was Amundson, but he bought the Opsal farm, and that’s how the Opsal name came in. You see, my granddad became Ole Amundson Opsal after he bought that farm.*
I never knew my granddad on my mother’s side, because he died early, but my grandmother, Ingeborg Fatland, got to be ninety-eight or ninety-nine. She lived on a farm halfway up in the valley, had nine kids. She was just a quiet, hard-working woman—light, small, active, could outrun any sheep until the day she died. Those old-timers made practically everything; did the spinning, all the weaving. It was a hard life, but still she had all she needed.
Torvald Opsal (left) and his brother Ole, ca. 1912
My dad went over to Minnesota and North Dakota and stayed for six years. He came back in 1906 and took over my granddad’s place, started raising a family. We were four kids, three boys and a girl. It was a small farm, seven, eight cows and a horse. They had boats, did a little fishing on the side. And they had woods, cut timber and sell. They pretty much lived the same way the whole area—a little farming, a little two-bit logging, and some fishing. To meet the bills, they would sell things on the farm, like pigs and sheep. We raised quite a few sheep.
They had good grade schools. Even as old as my grandmother was, she had gone to grade school like the rest of us. When I started school, I was six years old and I had the same teacher my dad had gone to. They were kind of foxy, those old teachers; they wouldn’t do anything to embarrass somebody that was a little slower. We had so many classes in one room. That was good, because we could be two, three years behind and we could listen to what the teacher was teaching the higher-ups. We caught on to something before we got there ourselves.
Everybody had to go to church. The minister had three churches; he alternated, every third Sunday, but he lived in Vikedal. The church was state-owned; they were state-paid. We had Sunday School every Sunday, except that Sunday we had church, in what you called bedehuset [the meeting house]. That was community-owned and operated. There was three, four that would teach Sunday School. We all had to go.
Then you had religion half an hour a day in school, every day. Bible history was a book in itself and it was practically all dates. You had to learn it at home and tell the teacher the next day. You didn’t know when you’d be called on, so you couldn’t get away from it.
What we got out of Christmas wasn’t presents like now; it was food, good food. That’s what we looked forward to. I don’t remember ever having a present or giving one until the last year or two before I left. Nobody did. Christmas Eve, the guy went up to church and started ringing the bell. Everybody had the holidays off. There was no police or anything like that, so there was nothing to have open. It was quiet, peaceful.
Christmas Eve at our place was mostly meat, a roast, and risengrøt [rice porridge]. That was a must. I remember when we were real young, we had a big bowl, a tureen, that sat on a stand. It was cooked so fine and so nice you wouldn’t know it was rice. It was floating in butter and they had this red sauce on top. That was the best stuff. We all took a spoon and ate out of that bowl. That’s the custom of that time. Later on, we had our own plates. We went to church, everybody, Christmas morning. Then mother would usually leave church a little early and go home and get the food ready for the rest of us. We had meat and potatoes. We lived good.
Sandbakkelse and krumkake and all that [typical cookies] was kept in a big tin can, so you had it for weeks after New Year’s. Of course you didn’t get all you wanted; that was more or less rationed. When people came to the house, they had to have coffee and goodies. We never went anyplace and nobody ever came to us from an invitation; it was always, if they stopped by. We didn’t have much of anything except we had good food. At least it tasted good to us! I never tasted lutefisk* until I came here to Normanna Hall [Tacoma, Washington], and I didn’t like it. Nobody had it where I came from.
Good heavens, for money I started to work when I was just a little tyke. Our neighbor was quite well-to-do, had a big, big farm, and did a lot of hiring, especially in the haying and cutting the grain. My brother and I were just small ones and we were cutting grain for money. It was raining. We had made kind of a headgear out of gunny sacks and that got soaked wet and you were wet. But you stayed all day long, day in and day out. Working, that was something we had to do when we started to walk. There was no playing; even going to school we never had any time for play.
While I was confirmed, I worked in a granite rock quarry. We hauled gatestein, cobblestones, down to the dock and the steamers came in and picked it up. There was no power equipment; your arms and hands did it all. Then I went on a road gang. We made a highway going up to the valley. You had a long plank and a wheelbarrow and a pick and shovel. It was all done by hand, every bit of it. You got into rocks, then you had the experts dynamiting it. That’s all I did until the time I came here [to United States].
I grew up with people that had been in this country. I’d say just about half of the population home had been here. My gosh, you
