IV. "The Good Life"
Monday, May 12, 2008
Rena, Norway

We’re living the good life in Norway. After Sunday’s busy day we lazied around the hotel and didn’t even make it to breakfast until about 10:30. It’s a holiday today. Imagine the day after Pentecost being a national holiday in America. Norway’s apparent disregard for Sunday church-going is trumped by its love for an extended weekend. Thankfully, the holiday schedule meant that breakfast continues until 11:00 or we would have been out of luck. While leisurely reading email, writing, and preparing to go to breakfast, Rose Ann suggested that I might have a future in being a unique travel agent. She has been appreciative of the work I did in planning this trip, so she thinks I could lead tours for people who like to move at my pace—not in a hurry. “Paul’s Leisure Tours”—has a nice sound, don’t you think? (She actually called it “Paul’s Lazy Man Tours”, but I think that’s a little too strong.)
After breakfast we walked around the town on a crisp, cool sunshiny day. The town is in a valley, and walking paths lead out of the town up into the hillsides around, so we enjoyed great views overlooking both Rena and the river. I don’t recall symmetrical sidewalks in the residential areas, but there are paved walking paths wherever needed. Steps lead down the path above Rena to a grand entrance of sorts walking past the train station, by the hotel and straight towards the church. It’s a community of about 2200 people, according to Agnes, with about 4500 altogether in the area. The town is Rena, the township Osterdalen, the county Amot, and the state Hedmark—if I have it right. And Rena appears to be a comfortably prosperous small town, unlike towns of similar size in the US. Perhaps the farmers are subsidized better, but then the farm population doesn’t dominate around here. The logging business seems to dominate farming. And there are several small factories in town. Anyway, the town is clean, well maintained. The homes are painted and look attractive. We’re impressed.
After some early afternoon writing and a nap we were met by Agnes and Tante Nelle, who provided their version of a Grey Line tour in Agnes’ ’85 Volvo Wagon. We drove through the countryside with three stops altogether—at a recreation center and the homes of two relatives. Unlike Midwestern America’s straight line country roads and their occasional correctional curves to accommodate the surveyors who platted the roads, Norway’s country byways meander and amble wherever they choose in order to connect the farmsteads. A road will pass directly through the yard of one rural resident in order to go to the neighbors. A road will change from gravel to sand and then to a barely discernible path, but it will always be a road. But with mountains in the distance, lush forests all around, and numerous streams carrying mountain runoff to the river, who notices the roads?
The first stop was at the home of another Tingstad sister, Bodile. She’s one of nine in the clan comprising Agnes’ aunties and uncles, and she’s the youngest. She and her husband, neither of whom looked like spring chickens, live on the farm and continue to raise sheep. Their daughter and her family are within biking distance, however, and they lend a hand. Bodile and Nelle chattered away and eventually led us to the building housing their sheep, perhaps 20 ewes with their lambs and one mighty proud looking ram. Many of the new births were twins, so this will be a good year for the sheep business. Bodile handled the lambs like babies, cuddling and kissing them while showing them to us. Her white hair matched the clean wool of the newborns when she would hold one close to her face. The sheep house was clean and organized with a separate pen for mothers awaiting birth and no more than two moms with offspring in other pens. The Stenseths have been raising sheep for nearly 40 years, and their experience is apparent. They would be the envy of many a Midwestern farmer for their ability to maintain their independence, continue to work, and be close to their family.
Next stop was the Scramstad Recreation Center at about 2500 feet above sea level where the snow lies deep and cross country skiing is good through June. This is a stop on Norway’s Birkebeiner race, and there are Norwegian “hyttes” (I think that’s the spelling of their word for “hut”), little cabins designed for outdoor enthusiasts who like an overnight experience. Like Minnesotans with their love for a place “up north” at a lake, Norwegians pursue their love for nature and recreational sports with zeal. Tante Nelle has a hut up here that she and her husband bought 30 years ago, and she would have showed it to us, but melting snow made the road impassable for now. Our hosts were proud to show us this place they really enjoyed.
Last stop for the day was the home of the Dufseths, one of Agnes’ uncles through the Bolstad line. Margit Dufseth, Olaf’s wife, died just three years ago, and she was a Bolstad, a sister to Haakon. Olaf is 90, lives on the farm in his separate home, but his son Ola and wife Karin now live in the main home. Ola commuted from Oslo for years to help his dad with the farm while maintaining an electrical engineering job in the city during the week and farming on weekends, but now he’s a full time dairy farmer while living on the farm. I’m not sure how one becomes a full time dairy farmer with only 9 milk cows or how one makes a living with only 9 milk cows, but I guess that’s easily answered by the fact that Karin is a nurse and works full time at the nursing home in Rena. The full time issue is perhaps addressed with the number of buildings on the farm and with the need for care for Olaf.
Olaf is a genuine Norwegian Olympian. He was the 8th place finisher in a skiing event in the 1947 Olympics in St. Moritz and has a room full of at least 200 trophies to commemorate a lifetime of skiing. Reluctantly, at age 72, at the urging of his cardiologist, Olaf quit skiing. If not for the health concerns, he would still be on those sticks. He barely hears now, and he’s stiff and stooped from a bad back, but he looks like he could handle any of us mere 60 somethings with a hand tied behind his back.
The farm is certainly a working farm with livestock and farmland, but it also is a museum. The key to the museum is one building that is called the outdoor kitchen. Outdoor means it’s not in the house. It’s really a cute little building, very well maintained, and it is the repository of kitchen artifacts like a huge vat for cheese making, a pedestal for a stove that serves as the lefse griddle, a wooden sausage stuffer, and countless tools of wood including at least a half dozen different types of rolling pins.
There’s a home for Ola and his family. There’s a home for Olaf. There is another house reserved for the hired hands, now vacant, but a tribute to the family’s desire to remember their past and their willingness to do the work to keep all these buildings looking good. We ate dinner in the home of Ola and Karin and their children Marit, Erik, and Eijvind--the son who’s attending the university. Ola will turn 60 in just a few days, and last weekend they celebrated his birthday with a big gathering with lots of friends and too much food, so we—like good family members—get to help them lighten their load of leftovers.
Marit, a social worker in Rena, in her early 20’s, walked us around the farm and told us about her present work with abused children (yes, it happens in Norway, too) and her earlier travels in Bolivia where she worked with street kids and grew a heart for the poor. Erik, in high school, limped down the stairs to greet us because he’s recovering from surgery to repair a groin muscle torn in Norwegian football. Karin, the nurse, and Ola, the electrical engineer turned farmer, spoke good English, and we enjoyed the entire family. Along with Agnes and Tante Nelle we drank wine, ate leftovers including three scrumptious kinds of birthday cakes, and told stories.
Back in 1992 we made a too fast trip through Rena. We saw the church, and using my mother’s journal with names of her Norwegian relatives we saw the Dufseth’s name, received directions at a local gas station and drove to the farm. It was not a good visit. Olaf and Margit were working dairy farmers, and it was the end of their day. We think it could have been Karin they called to help them translate. Olaf gave up and went back into the kitchen. They never invited us in. The farm looked run down, and probably we did too after too many nights in Norwegian campgrounds, and the visit was memorable only in the sense that we failed to connect. They don’t even remember it, but we do. What a difference this time! What beautiful farm places! What interesting people! What a good life there is to be found in this country!