A vintage photo, and a few fragments of a bigger picture

 

Let’s see if I can’t breathe a little life into this photograph. This is my grandmother, Gudrun Andorsen. She was born in 1896 on the Stegen farm on Engeløy in Steigen municipality, and was the second youngest of nine siblings. By the time this photo was taken, several of her brothers and sisters had already emigrated to the United States. Here she is, posing as a young housewife in her new home, standing next to a piece of embroidery she made herself. It hung in her kitchen for a long time, and in many ways, it defined her.

'Let diligence reign within your home, and you shall prosper in this world,' read the cautionary words, illustrated by a diligent housewife doing needlework. This piece of embroidery feels like a relic from another era—not just because of its great age, but because of the lifeworld it came from and the ideals it represents. To me, Grandmother Gudrun was the very embodiment of all that.

It was quite a handful to sink ones teeth in for a cocky teenage boy whose head was crammed full of 1970s idealism. I used to quote the adage with all the sarcastic indignation only a teenager can muster: "Let diligence reign in your home" — as if life were nothing but toil and sweat!"...and you shall prosper in this world" — what a shallow, careerist philosophy! Today, many years later, I’ve learned a bit of history. I can connect this historical context with the biographical facts and unique personality traits that made my grandmother who she was. I see her in a slightly different light now. And that embroidered piece of cloth doesn't seem quite so ridiculous anymore. Even the past isn't what it used to be, as time goes by.

Gudrun was a workhorse for as long as she lived. "I'm deathly afraid of running out of work," she used to say as a retiree. By then, her eyesight had grown so poor that she could no longer do needlework. And in the winter, it could be hard to find outdoor chores once the last log had been chopped. Why did work hold such a central place in her life in almost every context, serving even as her moral compass? She grew up in a time when making ends meet was never a guarantee. The austerity and solemnity that many in my generation mocked were certainly rooted in reality — but it was a reality vastly different from the one we knew. Let us go back more than a century, to 1912.

 

Gudrun’s father was one of those capable pioneers who carved out a prominent standing for himself in the village (pity is given for free, but envy, as they say, must be earned). He was a farmer at Stegen, and a skilled yet demanding skipper for his boat crew. Gudrun’s older brothers, who later emigrated to the US, reportedly had a story or two to tell about that.

But by now, Adolf Johan Schrøder had become a shadow of the agile man he used to be — a frail wreck of a man, sunken into religious brooding and silent despair. He had been summoned as a witness in a boundary dispute and was afterwards plagued by the agonizing thought of whether he had remembered correctly and testified truthfully in court. After all, the Epistle to the Corinthians spoke of those who do wrong and cheat others in court, and Paul states that the wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God. Was he one of those destined for eternal damnation?

One of the last things Gudrun remembered about her father was him praising her for having handled herself very well during the examination on her confirmation day. Not many days later, her father rowed out alone. In the beautiful weather, neighbours spotted a boat drifting at sea. A pair of boots stood neatly placed on the floorboards. But the boat was empty, and her father never came home again. And so, Gudrun, like so many sixteen-year-olds of that era, had to grow up in a hurry.

In those days, there was no such thing as "hit the wall" or "taking sick leave." Only seven years prior, the family had lost Gudrun’s older brother, Eivind, at just twenty-four years old. One simply had to get through the daily chores, stay strong, and keep a brave face. Gudrun stepped into her father’s shoes wherever she could, even rowing out for the summer fishing season with a boat crew. It was undoubtedly tough, but likely not the worst fate for a wiry girl with youthful drive.

Far worse was the grief over losing a father she loved so dearly. And the shame. Suicide was a word one never uttered aloud. It wasn't until 1897 that the ban on Christian burials for suicide victims was lifted, and only in 1902 did it finally become legal to preach a funeral sermon over a suicide victim in our oh so Christian homeland. They never found Gudrun’s father, but society still knew how to heap shame upon the bereaved. People whispered that her mother had supposedly joked and laughed a bit too soon after losing her husband. Such behaviour was deemed unseemly. Some even coined the nickname "The Merry Widow."

"Many a time, having work to throw myself into was a blessing back then," Gudrun told us, on the one single occasion we managed to get her to speak about it.

 

The heavy thoughts, the religious brooding, the village gossip... there was no front or back to it, no beginning and no end. You couldn't get a grip on it. Work, on the other hand, was something tangible and practical — something you could tackle with your bare hands, get done, take pleasure in, be good at, and yes, even master. Her father used to say that if you asked others to do him a favour, you often had to tell them to hurry up, but with Gudrun, you had to tell her to slow down. Praise from parents is always a scarce commodity in a large family. Identities are forged from things like that. I can also catch myself thinking, my parents should have seen this. After all, we carry them with us as figures we measure ourselves against, long after they are dead and gone.

 

A place full of fond memories.

 

Eventually, her brother Arne took over the running of the farm, and Gudrun married a fisherman-farmer — like so many others — who had his own boat. His name was Sofus, and he was kind. So, they weren't badly off at all on a smallholding located right next to the farm where she grew up. Gudrun had two children, not nine like her mother. And none of the kids had to travel to America to make a living, none died young; they fared well and lived long, prosperous lives.

Women in Gudrun’s position had not yet become a subject of loud concern for sociologists and economists. I don't think they felt all that looked down upon. And being a capable housewife on a farm during the interwar period carried a somewhat different job description than being a dependent housewife, meticulously organized and with a cleaning obsession, in a housing-estate apartment in the 1960s. With every right (but with an unnecessary amount of social contempt), people rebelled against that kind of feminine ideal in the 70s.

Gudrun came of age before electricity reached our village, back when a good deal of clothing was made at home, and when butchering, salting, foraging, and preserving were part of the yearly cycle. There was no end to the skills and knowledge required in this jacks-of-all-trades way of life. For anyone willing, there was no shortage of practical knowledge to acquire, efforts that yielded visible results, and challenges to grow from. I never got the impression that Gudrun saw herself as a victim. And though she might not have chosen the words herself, I think she could be described as a well-respected professional woman who took pride and pleasure in her work.

Diligence reigned in her home, and she saw the fruits of her labour. Yet the strictness and gravity underlying this diligence is a trait of our recent past that appears increasingly foreign in our privileged part of the world. The moral condemnation of unwanted behaviour that marked her youth was rooted in a harsh and barren social reality — a reality that the condemnation and shame made even harsher. A young lady could “get into trouble», getting pregnant and end up "in ruin." Nobody would want you. And who will take care of you then, my child? You have to watch out and not be reckless. Alcohol was another threat. There were no financial safety nets if someone grew careless and turned to drink as an escape from a demanding daily life. You had to be cautious and responsible; you had to be strict with the children so they could survive in a harsh world, teaching them to be hardworking, cautious, and considerate. Things could go wrong, terribly wrong. Heaven knows they’d seen enough of that up close. In a small village, you witness most of life's fortunes and misfortunes up close.

"I am mortaly afraid of running out of work." But now it is spring, with iron rakes and black flowerbeds.

Yet by nature, Gudrun was no rigid pietist. Far from it. She was quick-witted, funny, and energetic — she wasn’t one of those people to whom life just happened. She didn't take the twists of fate as scoldings from a sour, capricious deity. If a crisis hit, you just had to tackle it as best you could; you couldn't just sit around and mope, as that would only lead straight to ruin. "Is the work done with gusto and in high spirit?" she would ask us youngsters with a twinkle in her eye. Work helped against most things. Against poverty and hardship, and against the heavy thoughts that could sometimes cloud your mind.

 This sounds quite like a heroic portrait, one of the many "strong, magnificent coastal women" who were championed during the 1970s wave of feminism and "history from below." Allow me to add a bit of nuance. Some of the nuances are personal, touching on how someone's greatest strength is often also their greatest weakness. And some of it is about how general living conditions have changed.

To take the latter first: adults today choose for themselves who they want to live with under the same roof, whether that means a spouse, parents, or in-laws. They can — and must — choose who they want to become. That is both wonderful and terrifying.

Back in the '70s, there was a lot of talk about how ideal rural communities were, in contrast to "alienated" city life. In the countryside, generations lived together, people learned from one another, and the elderly weren't left out in the cold — they got to live with their families, be grandparents to their grandchildren, and so on. People didn't die in nursing homes; they were cared for by their own. My cousins and I grew up in homes where our grandparents also lived, and it felt safe and secure. There wasn't a single child of divorce at school. Couldn't the world have just stayed in that harmony that reigned back when we were small?

Let me put it this way: when I, as a young man, rambled on with my strange blend of Christian cultural pessimism and clueless, trendy nostalgia, I was firmly put in my place by several members of the older generation: "Don't you think there were plenty of people back then who stayed in marriages they never should have endured? And do you really think it was always easy to arrive as a new daughter-in-law on a farm, having to learn to 'do things their way' under the same roof as your husband's parents? Do you think there was much room for self-fulfilment?" That's how they would question a clueless young man who had enjoyed a safe, sheltered childhood. I had an immature notion of a world that was perfectly balanced and ought to stay that way. I was brought to my senses.

                            "You have the muscles of a man," a doctor had once insulted her by                                                             saying. Because Gudrun was, in so many ways, a lady through and                                        through, and that comment had wounded her vanity.

Some of this awakening from the illusions of a carefree childhood happened while my grandmother was slowly slipping into senility and changing personality. What the adults had loyally kept to themselves for as long as possible eventually became something they discussed with us kids. After all, we were gradually growing up. They say all great men cast long shadows. I don’t think that applies only to men. You rarely get a good trait without a flip side. Another word for strong is dominant. Just for good measure, my teenage rebellion was aimed at two generations at once. I felt my mother was far too plagued by ambivalence and guilt when it came to my grandmother. She didn't share my black-and-white condemnation. In my grand reformative crusade, all weapons were fair game: subversive humour, mimicry, and ridiculing everyone in every direction — to a degree that I was fortunately spared from by my own children. Good grief, I’m not proud of all of it. But some of it carried a hint of legitimate self-defence.

My arsenal included words and isolated quotes from our family folklore. Grandma used to mimic someone who said, "Well, I am but a humble soul," to which her husband, Sofus, replied, "Yeah, right, you are humble indeed " Once she set her mind to something, that was usually that. For a few years, my father served as the organist, and from the pulpit, the congregation would be informed of various upcoming church events. "And we had intended to send our organist on a course, but his mother-in-law said no," the priest announced. Unbelievable, isn't it? And to say it from the pulpit, no less? We laughed in disbelief at our eccentric grandmother. She was quite a character. I imagine my parents didn't find the incident quite so comical at the time. Years later, I remembered to ask my mother about it. Yes, the story was true enough; her mother had believed there were many other things of greater practical importance that her daughter and son-in-law should prioritize — after all, it would waste several days right in the middle of the spring fieldwork. Gudrun laid down the veto. Mother-in-law said no.

I loved my grandmother and was proud of her. She was patient with her mischievous grandchild who mimicked and made fun of almost everything she said. She had a sense of humour, and with that, much is forgiven and much becomes manageable. But I was also in fierce opposition to her, partly because I was a child of a new era — one that was less barren and harsh than the one she had experienced in her formative years. Was it really necessary to be so on guard against every danger and take everything so damn seriously? Wasn't life about more than just work?

Part of this stems from the fact that I was young, green, and full of vitality. Back then, worries, illness, and death were things reserved for old people with a bizarre, morbid taste in conversation. She was old, and she knew she wouldn't be good for much longer; the rising generation would soon have to face their own heavy responsibilities. If you take life's realities too lightly, you might just have to learn the hard way. And on top of all those realities, you had all the contingencies—everything that could go wrong.

She spoke to deaf ears and reaped nothing but mockery and laughter. Granted, we turned out alright in the end, in a way, with busy days and adult responsibilities. But we were allowed to be young first; we weren't thrown headlong into an adult world that demanded everything of us from the time we were teenagers. And one way or another, we always managed; the world we knew was moving forward. We used to scratch our heads at old people who had retired and would say, "We have it so good we ought to be ashamed," while apologizing for "no longer being of any use" to anyone.

Couldn't you just do something simply because — God forbid —you actually just wanted to?

"Let diligence reign within your home," I would mimic, rolling my eyes. 

"Competition!" my cousin would mock, fresh off a 4-H meeting.

We thought it could all be a bit much — a bit narrow-minded and unimaginative. We had no desire to become worker ants, letting diligence rule until we had, at best, reached the top of the anthill with no life left in us. We were healthy, vibrant, normal — and consequently, at times lazy — teenagers whose heads were full of poetry and dreams. And we did have a point, the way all well-fed, ungrateful youths do when they condemn the frantic, one-dimensional nature of the adult world, while simultaneously gorging themselves on all its material blessings. Life is about so much more than just work. You have to sleep, for instance. And drink. And, well, it's also pretty nice if you can get Mom to serve you food the next day.

But seriously, though... I think I understand my grandmother a little better now. And my parents. And the era and circumstances that shaped them. At the same time, the world of my childhood seems strangely exotic and distant, now that I look back on it from a completely different era, an unfathomable number of years later.

Ivar Bakke

Translated from norwegian - link to the original text: 

https://ivarbakke.blogspot.com/2014/01/et-gammelt-foto-og-noen-biter-av-et.html