ungdomsnøte [youth fellowship] and one of the boys said, on the way home, “In the morning I’m going to take the boat and I will not come back until after potetopptakinga [the potato harvest].” You know, he went out in the morning and we never saw him again. We don’t know what happened to him. He could have gone away some place, or he could have drowned. This sort of thing made an impression on me. I don’t think there was any thought of getting out of it and go to America and marry, because I was going back home again in five years. But you never do, you never do.
We sailed from Eidet down the coast and we stopped in Bodø where my sister worked at that time, so she came to the boat and gave me a blanket. In Bergen, we took the train to Oslo. I was alone till I came on the train; then we met people that was going to America and we got to talking. In Oslo, we had to stay overnight and we went out for a tour of Karl Johan [the main street] and it was fun. I thought I had an awful lot of money, so I went into a butikk [store] and I bought myself a green hat and I paid thirty crowns for it. Oh, gee, I paid thirty crowns for a green hat, a green silk hat. I remember that green silk hat all my life. And I came to Tacoma with, I think, forty-two cents.
I have been back to Norway twice. In 1977 I went for the first time and in 1979 I took my two daughters with me for the family reunion; that was a joyous trip. They say when you have been away from home, anything looks different and smaller. Well, that is not just imagination. I am so sure that all the hills were smaller, absolutely. The hills where I used to run chasing the cows and the sheep, they were smaller and they were much rockier and the river where I used to go swimming was a trickle. But I took my girls up to that place where I stood on tiptoe and that was quite a moment.
*Finnmarken refers to the northernmost district in Norway; the Lofoten Islands are a prime fishing ground just off the coast of northern Norway, close to the island group where Henny grew up.
*She is describing the summer midnight sun, when the sun touches the horizon but never sinks beneath it.
Ester Sundvik
“We never knew what real medicine was.”
Born in the Åland Islands, Finland, around 1903, Ester Sundvik emigrated in 1922 and spent several years doing domestic work for families in New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. Following marriage and the birth of a daughter, Ester continued to work. The family moved to Vancouver, Washington, in 1943. There Ester became the head cook at a shipyard and was chosen to christen a Navy aircraft carrier.
I come from the Åland Islands, just between Finland and Sweden. From our town it took seven hours to get to Turku with a boat, and it took about the same length of time to get to Stockholm. Finnish people are living there, but they speak Swedish. Schools, churches, everything is in Swedish.*
My father was a baker. Mother met him working in a bakery—she sold bread and he baked—and then they got married. I don’t know anything about my father, that’s the saddest thing, because we were separated from him. I was three months old when he left for America. There were just two older sisters, Wilhelmina and Ingrid. When my aunt found out mother was deserted, she said we should go to the family home and stay there, because it was empty.
We had the most beautiful relationship with our mother. She was a remarkable person. She never complained. She was never idle. It was marvelous, really; we had all the security from her.
Mother raised cows from calves and when they were ready to have their first calf, she sold them, and that was part of her living. She sold butter and milk, and she was the midwife in town. I don’t think she was educated for it, but people thought she was like a doctor. Every child in our town, my mother delivered. And then, when they got older, she took them home and taught them kindergarten. When she sat down, she knitted stockings and spun wool and linen, and she kept the house so nice. She really did work hard and she was in good health. You don’t die from overwork, that’s for sure!
We had a little farm, maybe seven acres. This little place belonged to Saltvik, but it was called Ödkarby. It was a very beautiful place. The woods—fir and pine trees—was right back of the house, and we were close to the water. We walked to the water and swam. Sometimes we went in the morning to take the cows to the pasture, and mother made up a picnic lunch, and we stayed there all day to bring the cows home to be milked in the evening.
We had quite a big lawn and a woodshed and a barn, and we had a little house, not attached to the house but by itself, and there we kept all our food. We didn’t have inside plumbing; we had that outside, too.
I can see it when my eyes are closed, and I dream about it so many times, that I am there, sleeping in the same bedroom where I slept. We had a little round fireplace made out of tiles in the corner of our bedroom. They call it kakelugn. When the tiles got warm, it kept the room warm all night. Every night in the wintertime, about six o’clock, mother made a fire. She said, “Now we’re going to have a little rest and we’re going to sit and enjoy the fire.” We didn’t put the lights on; we just sat there and looked at the fire in the dark. It was so beautiful. My girl friends used to come over and sometimes mother give us something to eat, which we enjoyed very much.
My mother was a beautiful cook and she was a little different than some women around our neighborhood because she had worked in the bakery and helped to make such lovely food there. We had carrot pudding and we had leverlåda, that was made out of ground liver and rice and raisins and then an egg custard on top of it and baked in the oven. It doesn’t sound good, but to us it was very, very good. Then she made meatballs and pork roast and side pork. She always butchered a pig and a calf each fall and that had to be salted, because it wouldn’t keep otherwise, and a brine put over it. And that we lived on the whole winter. She made sausage and head cheese and all kinds of things.
We had not every vegetable that they have nowadays. We had beets and cabbage and carrots and rutabagas and potatoes, and we kept that in the root cellar. It was dug pretty deep down in the dirt and lined with bricks. The walls didn’t come up very far, because it was to keep cool in the summer and not freezing in the winter. There was a roof with shingles on it and you walked down about three or four steps to go down into it. And there we kept our milk and butter in the summer and it kept very nice and cold. It was not so convenient as to open up the refrigerator door, but it worked quite beautifully and we didn’t know anything else, so it wasn’t a hardship for us. Everybody had it that way.
Mother made us children plant the flowers and fix up the flower beds, so she could do the things we couldn’t do. First of all, we had lilacs. And we had calendulas and many different kinds of those blue cornflowers. I can’t think about the irises we had and many other flowers: forget-me-nots, they were so cute, and violets, and lily of the valley. There was flowers all over in the woods, wildflowers. I can’t remember all their names, but they called them vitsippa [wood anemone].
There were very many wild berries—blueberries and lingonberries and a little bit of cranberries. And we had something they called smultron, like small wild strawberries, very, very nice. Mother made jam out of them and also out of the lingonberries.
Mother made a liniment out of turpentine. There were some other ingredients in it, ammonia and cream. We had to shake the bottle every time we used it, because the cream separated; but it didn’t curdle or anything, it was very creamy and nice, and that we used whenever we got a pain. It was just marvelous. Then she also made black currant juice and kept that all winter. She heated it and give it to us and that was good for colds and croups. Then she used to make chamomile tea for us to drink when we had bad colds. We never knew what any real medicine was; we never had an aspirin in the house or anything like that. I never had been to a doctor all the time I was home. I was nineteen when I came over to America and I had to have
