CLUNG ON TO LIFE AND STEEP MOUNTAINS
IN THE 19TH CENTURY IN VALDRES, NORWAY.
OF OLDEN DAYS IN VALDRES
By O.K. Ødegaard
[Introduction: the author first writes about the people of the district who were so poor that they did not even have a roof over their heads, nor clothes on their backs, despite their labors — and they were without hope. Then, he describes those who were almost as poor, but who still were able to keep up good spirits. Here is where our family — my Grandfather Ole (Ola) Ellestad — is mentioned. Otherwise, in those days, as nowadays, printer’s ink and paper was only expended on good ‘solid citizens’ or the rich and famous. I have conscientiously tried to keep the writer’s typically ‘Norse’ terse style. The elegant folk costume made and worn here by my niece Karin is of traditional Valdres design.]
The poor fellows who had small hired-hand plots of land, who were not any poorer than that they could just about keep a cow or two from starving to death, and who also had a bit of roof over their heads in the form of a cottage, did not have it so good either — especially during the lean years when the landowners [the big farmers] could not afford to pay any farmhands. And there were lean years quite often.
Many of these tiny patch farms have now been swallowed up by the landowners, and the cottages torn down. To some of these parcels of land, a bit more ground was added on, however, and sold to small farmers. Such a small farm was the little place called Åsen [the mountain ridge], which now has completely disappeared. [Note: this was written in 1911.] Many young people in the neighborhood have no idea even where Åsen was located. But, when I was a small boy, Åsen was a so-called resting place for all who traveled over Egge Ridge between Vang and Øystre Slidre [Valdres], so that there were often 30 horses standing along the road there at any one time. And, the little cottage was more than packed with drivers on their way home.
At Åsen lived Andris and Eli, and their son Ola [Note: see lineage chart in appendix]; and all three were ‘clever people.’ And, no matter how little they had, no one ever heard them complain„even when they were on the verge of starvation. Ola, who was about as old as I, was a happy and kind fellow no matter how things were, and he was an expert singer. A song written by Peter Dass, called "Happy was Halvar on the Ridge", was changed by him into "Happy was Andris on the Ridge", and he sang so that it echoed over the valley. Eli, who often sat inside and mended, would ‘sneak’ out as soon as all the drivers had left and sweep up the little fodder remaining on the ground there, and in this way, the sole cow they had also got something to live on.
Andris at Åsen was a good worker and good at doing things, no matter what, if he only got a little food in his stomach. Since he was of small stature and thinly built, and often hungry, he often used to say about himself: “It’s not my muscles doing the work, it’s the food.” But, it was amazing how many stones and rocks he moved up there on the ridge overlooking the valley. And, although Andris had toiled until late in the evening [all his life], it was not very long before the place called Åsen was no more.
Nils at Lykkja was a brother to Andris at Åsen, and because Nils would write his name Nils P Sen [Pederssen], it was not very long before people began calling him Nils Pesen, and that became his nickname.
It was not poorer inside the walls of Lykkja than at Åsen. But, then, Nils was an official. He was employed as a ‘dog-chaser’ by Lome Church [Note: hired to keep the farmers’ dogs out of the building during Sunday service.] and he received a dollar, or was it two, a year. And this was his livelihood. This dollar was often taken out of the pauper funds, and nobody thought it strange that Lome Church should take from the pauper funds. Yet, Nils, after that day was not called Nils Pesen anymore, but only ‘Pesen’ — as other officials were called then. [Note: This is apparently an old Norwegian pun that is no longer understood.]
Pesen was not especially well off either. One spring, he borrowed a plow horse for a day from Andris Kvisl, and Andris [when he came to get his horse] asked him if he had given the horse anything that day. Nils replied, “I gave him some beer.” That was, of course, all that the horse had had that day, because Nils did not have anything else to give him. [Note: the home-made beer in those days was more like soup — at least regarding nutrition!]
When Nils was on his last breath, he called the parson to him to ‘confess’ his sins. The parson spoke kindly to him and asked if he didn’t feel that he was a grave sinner, but Nils replied that he hadn’t noticed anything of that kind. “Yet, you have nevertheless sinned,” insisted the parson. “No,” said Nils, that he hadn’t done. “Why did you wish the Sacrament of the Alter, then,” asked the parson. “Oh, well, I thought that it [the wine] might give me a little pick-me-up,” said Nils.
Gamalt fraa Valdres, Kristiania, H. Aschehough & Co., 1911. Retranslated and corrected, from the Valdres dialect of Norwegian, by Everett M. Ellestad, 23 Sept., 1989. New revisions 8 August, 1991 and 22 March, 1995, and (updated) 13 November, 1996 — Bromma, Sweden.
| A scene from the region of mountains, glaciers, and fjords in Valdres. The eternal snow and ice in ‘the Land of the Giants’ (north of Sogne Fjord) can be glimpsed in the background. |
The Herring and Salt Road
By Ole K. ødegaard
[Introduction: The herring and salt road was the winding mountainous trail that led from Vestre Slidre to Sogne Fjord, where people could buy salt and herring from the ‘seaside’ village there. Sometimes they traveled all that way only to find out that there were no fish to buy. Then, they had to go home with empty hands and empty wagons. The round-trip took something like two weeks.]
But here I shall tell what an old man once told me. His name was Ola Andrisson Ellestad. He grew up in a small farmhand’s cottage above the Ellestad farm and was the son of Andris at Åsen and Eli.
Ola at Åsen often worked as a hired hand for my father. My father liked Ola a lot. I believe father said that such a handy [good] worker was hard to come by. And he was kind and good-hearted too. He was a shoemaker and a tailor. And, yes, he was also a fiddler and a good singer. When he went to cut grain during the fall, he also sang and played the fiddle. He bundled the grain so neatly that all the straws were of equal size, even at the bottom, as if they had been cut straight off with a sharp knife. This I remember my father saying about him. That Ola, he went to America when I was a small lad.
But, then, one summer, a few years ago [Note: actually, he wrote this 15 years later — not just a few years], when I was in my small cabin up on the mountain [plateau] as usual, I was told that Ola at Åsen had come home. I sent a messenger to get him. The very same day, there he stood, out in front of my stoop. I immediately told him that he looked like the same man I saw roughly 60 years ago.
[Note: actually, only 40 years had passed since Grandfather had left Norway in 1881. He returned to Norway in 1923 and stayed there until 1925. Well, actually, he ‘ran away from home’ to go home to Valdres. One day, he was simply gone, and the sheriff looked and looked but did not find him. Months later someone in Norway wrote to Uncle Ole, who lived in Valders, Wisconsin, and said “Your father has turned up here.”]
We went out on many fishing trips together with a lot of stories and tales, but even more singing. One song after the other without a pause. He could go on like that the whole night, and never the same song twice.
One time, he told me about the school he had gone to as a lad. [Note: classes in those days were held at different farmhouses in rotation.] “I’ll bet you were quite a storyteller,” said I. “Yes, I was, but Gølik from Bakko was worse, and he was also quite thick in the head and had to fetch a stick when he was going to get a beating. But, I was clever in school,” he said.
I asked him if he had ever gone over to Øyre [Note: a small fishing town located on the great and deep Sogne Fjord to the northwest]. Oh, yes, he had. “The first time, I was just a kid. They drove along in a long line on those trips. Knut from Øygare was the leader that time. This Knut was a terribly big and strong man. It was said that he weighed 180 pounds when he was 18. He was surely the strongest man I’ve ever met. You can therefore understand that it was really something to have him ahead of me. But he was a quiet man, never out making trouble or anything. He was well liked by everyone. Now, the thing was, you see, that there were often people along the road that wanted to prove that they were real men. So, it easily happened that arguments and fights took place. That certainly was the case when a wagon train of Valdres men met up with a wagon train of Hallingdal men up there in the mountains. But, the funny thing was that if the Valdres gang and the Hallingdal gang fought ever so fiercely up on Fille Mountain, they were good friends and joined up against Laerdal boys when they came to Øyre.
“During the time I’m talking about now, things had gone quite well until we arrived at Øyre. We hadn’t seen anyone from Hallingdal, but now there was a pack of Laerdalers there that wanted to pick a fight. There were many of them and few of us. And, then, Knut from Øygare wasn’t there, either. He usually stayed at a farm near Øyre. He had relatives there, which is why he was over there with his horse. The fellows from Laerdal were keen on giving us a rough time, you can be sure of that. But, we were not up to fighting.
Finally, Knut showed up. He led a small, red horse he had. His wagon stood there with ours, and we had already hitched up. When someone in the wagon train said that we’d waited a long time for him, he replied that he’d be ready in a jiffy. ‘Just put my horse up front,’ he said to one of his comrades and handed him the halter. Then, he went down the road embankment, walked across a plank and went into a shed on the waterfront. He immediately came out with a barrel [full of salted fish] clutched with one hand at each end, went across the plank, up the embankment, and put the barrel up in his wagon. ‘Now I’m ready,’ he said and picked up the reins. He who was to go first now took up the rear. Away we went, and the Laerdal boys just stood there and didn’t say a word. Many things happened on these trips to Øyre, you can bet,” said Ola.— And there were many more stories.
Printed in the Tidsskrift for Valdres Historielag. 1 Helfte IV B. 1938. Retranslated and corrected from the Valdres dialect of Norwegian by E.M. Ellestad, 24 Sept., 1989. New revisions 8 August, 1991 and 22 March, 1995, and (updated) 13 November, 1996—Bromma, Sweden.
 | It doesn’t look like a long way on a big map, but remember there are a lot of streams, fjords, waterfalls, canyons, cliffs, & mountains between the Ellestad farm and that village of Øyri (Øyre) [now called Laerdalsöyri] located on a southeast branch of the Sogne Fjord. It is possible to take a ferry from there to Øvre Årdal [ Ovre Ardal ] at the end of the fjord. But the road up from there and back to Vestre Slidre is NOT for the faint-hearted. |
Eli and Andris at Åsen and Their Boys
By O.K. Egge
[Introduction: I met O.K. Egge the second time I went to Norway in the fall of 1962. Wherever I asked about information concerning any possible relatives, the reply was always the same: “ask O.K. Egge, he knows everything.” I finally found O.K. Egge (92 years old at the time) on a snowy day in October in the warm back room of the Lome post office, sitting around the stove and telling stories with the rest of the ‘old boys’. He wrote me a letter containing more or less the same information as found in the article below, which he had written many years before. Here, the old ‘walking chronicle’ is standing [October, 1962) outside the Lomen post office, Vestre Slidre. Unfortunately, he spoke only pure Valdres dialect, of which — at the time — I understood practically nothing. But I do remember that he talked about Grandfather Ole and his Hardanger fiddle in a wooden case. Note his fancy hand-knit mittens and white handkerchief stuffed dapperly in his coat pocket.]
On the farmhand place called Åsen, or Åsen cottage, which belonged to the farm Ellestad, there lived about 75 years ago the ‘farmhand folk’ Eli and Andris. Andris was born in 1812 on a place called Landsrud. He came north to the Ellestad area at the age of 15 and worked for Ola called Ellestad [Note: this Ola was the big landowner. The owner of that farm, clinging to the side of a steep mountain ridge, today is also called Ola Ellestad.] This Ellestad was a hard-driving man, but Andris was good and handy and worked as a hired hand at the Ellestad farm until in his twenties.
At the Åsen place lived Eli Knutsdatter, born in 1797. Andris was keen on her, although she was 15 years older. [Note: A mistake in the church books was repeated here. Great-grandmother Eli, or Elie, was born in 1802.] They got married and became farmhand folk for the Ellestad farm. After that, he was known as Andris at Åsen. Most of the time, he worked for Ellestad. He had to work as a hired hand to pay the rent, since Åsen was no easy place [to make a living].
In the winter, Andris threshed at Ellestads’ or had many other jobs. The Åsen place was on the road between Vang and Øystre Slidre [Valdres], and when Vang people wanted to get over to Øystre Slidre to fetch slate stone or sell timber, they rested [their horses] at Åsen. And, when Øystre Slidre folk went to the Vang parish for seed grain, they stopped at Åsen.
At such a ‘resting place’, there was often a lot of pleasant chatting going on when people from Vang and Øystre Slidre got together. Many a story as well as a lot of news about what had happened in the district exchanged hands — and Eli listened well, so she could spread it around. Andris got many a pinch of tobacco and Eli got to taste some of the food they [the drivers] had with them — and she often got a little something to put in the pantry, too. That was how travelers used to pay for stopping at a resting place.
Eli and Andris had two boys who were handy [clever] and able to take care of themselves. Their names were Torstein and Ola.
[Note: Torstein was actually the illegitimate son of Ola’s illegitimate elder half-sister, Marit Endresdatter, whom Eli had had with Endre Iversen "EllingbŔ", when she worked in Vang Parish as a servant girl, before meeting Andris. Such happenings were commonplace in those days „ and today.]
One day, a bridal procession came over the mountain ridge at Egge on its way to Høre. The fiddler rode up front, and the small boys heard the fiddle tunes as the procession came down the road to Åsen and their home. Then, the boys said that they, too, wanted to become fiddlers. And they did, even if not master musicians.
The boys stayed at Åsen until they were grown and married and got their own families. Then, there was no room in the little cottage. The only way out such [people] had was to go to America. And, so, that is where the Åsen boys went. Torstein became a watchmaker over there, and Ola got some land and became a farmer. Both are now dead, but their children are alive and have taken the name of Ellestad. Ola was a solidly built man and a handy tailor, and he took himself a wife from Øystre Slidre. She was not especially handy. People said that Ola had to mend her clothes and patch the children’s socks.
Some years ago [Note: in 1923], Ola came home to Vestre Slidre. He had to see the old Åsen place once again. He told me, “I got so homesick, and so I scraped together 10,000 Riksdaler and left the wife, kids, and farm without anyone noticing. Now, I want to live here in the district for the years I have left.”
[Note: his wife, i.e. my Grandmother, had already died by then, in 1917. But he certainly did leave “without anyone noticing” — he just simply disappeared from the farm one day in 1923. (He had already sold the farm to his son Sven on 23 Oct., 1917 — for $1.00 — and the rest under the table no doubt, else how could he afford to sail for Norway?) The story goes that Grandfather Ola had gone around and visited all of his children, one after the other — which was thought unusual — and then he was gone.]
Ola bought himself a small cottage at Haga below Før [Note: the farm called Før is on the west side of the fjord in Vestre Slidre — the people call them fjords even up in the mountains.] and settled down there. He bought what he needed for the house. And the old man cooked and took care of himself.
One day, Ola came to pay a visit. He said, “Now, my children have found out where I am, and they write I should come back, so I’ll have to go over again. It’s not easy living alone and having to care for yourself. So, my business here today is to ask you if you’d please sell my things at Haga.”
Oh, yes, I would do that. I sent a notice to the Valdres newspaper of an auction at Haga, and many people came. Someone said that Ola had to play a tune before I began. Ola came out with a beautiful ‘rosemala’ [traditional Norwegian flower designs] fiddle case and took out a fiddle well wrapped in a silken cloth and began to play. It was not only one tune, but many.
|
Grandfather Ola played this Hardanger fiddle that day long ago in 1925 before leaving his valley of Vestre Slidre in Valdres for the last time. That fiddle, which was made by ‘Uncle’ Sven, hangs on my living-room wall. Years ago, I put new teeth in the dragon’s mouth, and added its red tongue and the missing mother-of-pearl inlays now in 2010. Its case is now painted black, but according to this story, “rosemala” should be under that paint, but there is none. |
He got so caught up in his music that he forgot the auction and the crowd — and when I understood how things were, I asked him to stop, so that I could get his stuff sold. A few days later, Ola returned to America — to his wife and family.
[Note: Ola ‘got stuck’ on Ellis Island for months, because he had no papers. Grandmother Marit had been dead since 1917.]
In the magazine Tidsskrift for Valdres Historielag, 1 Helfte, IV Band, Ola K. Ødegaard has written about this energetic, handy and clever man. [Note: The stories above.]
Ola got his good sense of humor from his father — and all the songs and stores from the travelers who rested at Åsen when he was a small boy.
Here is an example of Andris’ humor. As mentioned earlier, Andris went threshing at the Ellestads’. One morning, in the gray light of early dawn, he came to the farm to start threshing. The farmer’s wife had made blood sausage the day before and now she cut off a piece, put some sour cream on it and reached out to Andris. But, he was a little too slow and the piece fell on the floor and rolled away. So, the farmer’s wife went to get a candle to look for it. Andris noticed traces of sour cream on the floor and then said, “Now we’ll soon catch her, ’cause here I can see her tracks.”
After that, the place called Åsen was deserted. The boys had gone, the road [over the mountain to Øystre Slidre] closed down, and a new farm owner came in. Arne H. Berg bought the Ellestad farm. He was more serious than Ellestad, who had come up with so many funny and wild things. They gradually grew accustomed to living alone at Åsen, and Liv, the new farmer’s wife, often went up to Åsen with morsels for the two. And Andris kept working at the Ellestad farm as before.
As time passed, Andris’ health weakened. He could not work as he used to, and Eli was not as strong, either. Andris went around to the different farms when he knew that their ‘Christmas Pig’ had been butchered. Then, he was given the feet, but the best he got was something they called “krøto” [Note: the fat belly portion of a pig.] When Andris came with his “krøto” bag and they were boiling lard, he often was given the liquid under the lard, and often even some of the lard itself went along. [Note: That is what I call a fat means of meager charity!]
Andris Olson Åse died in 1884 at the age of 72 and was buried in the Lome churchyard. [Note: the old stave church in Vestre Slidre — still standing today.] The farmhand cottage Åsen now returned to the Ellestad lands, and it has been abandoned for many years.
Here [hole in ground] is
where the small cottage “Åsen”
once stood. The snow-covered mountains in
the distance are those in Jotunheim—
“The Land of the Giants”.
Now, in 2022, almost nothing can be seen of this foundation. A new road build and the present farmer have covered most of it up.
[ CLICK ON PHOTO FOR LARGER VIEW ]
Eli, when her husband died, now had no home and nothing to live on. She therefore was sent around from farm to farm — as was the custom called “leigd” — in the Høyne district. She spent a few days at each farm reckoned according to the community tax rolls. Eli could no longer walk, and she was hard of hearing and had poor eyesight, so, in the winter, she was driven from farm to farm on a sleigh, well wrapped up in clothes. I sadly remember, I think it was when Eli came back after having made the rounds in the district, that grown men had to carry her in and lay her in bed. Some years passed.
Then, a more humane way of thinking came into existence, and so the authorities thought that the custom of “leigd” should be stopped. Eli was then permanently placed, at the expense of the paupers fund, on the farm of Knut and Sigrid Ringostadbergo. There Eli had it good. Now, it was no longer necessary to drive her from farm to farm. And she did not have to move again until she moved for good to the Lome churchyard on the 2nd of July, 1897, well over 100 years old.
Tidsskrift for Valdres Historielag. Retranslated and corrected, from the Valdres dialect of Norwegian, by E.M. Ellestad, 24 September, 1990. New revisions 8 August, 1991 and 22 March, 1995, and (corrected!) 3 July, 1998—Bromma, Sweden. Corrected again: 18 October 2013.
THE OLD LOME STAVE CHURCH, | Our Norwegian ancestors are buried in this churchyard. Their plots cannot be located exactly, because the poor — at very best — were given only a simple wooden board for a ‘headstone’. These have rotted away a long time ago. There were, nonetheless, a bunch of old ‘headboards’ still piled in the bell tower (a separate building behind the church) when I was there back in the late 1980s with Albert and Anna-Kari. In any case, it is quite certain that Andris and Eli both rest in peace from years of hard labor somewhere here within the stone wall running round the church. |
The ‘Land of Valdres’ was once so remote that the dialect spoken there even today is tough to understand. Once, when I was attending a trade fair, I met a Norwegian engineer from Trondheim, which lies quite far north on the coast.
After we had talked for a while, I said, “Yes, I understand Norwegian quite well, but if you were speaking your home dialect, I suppose I wouldn’t understand a thing.” The fellow replied a bit indignantly, “I AM speaking my home dialect!”
“Oh!” I said, “I’m surprised, because when I am in Valdres, which lies far closer to Oslo than your district, I can hardly understand anything they say.”
“Valdres!? Nobody can understand them,” he replied.
Of course, Trondheim lies on the coast and has always been ‘connected’ to the rest of Norway by ship. Poor Valdres lies up in ‘unreachable’ mountains, so the people quickly developed their own special dialect. It took me 25 years to learn enough to translate the stories you have just read.
[CLICK ON PHOTO FOR A BIGGER AND MORE READABLE VIEW.]
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