An aristocrat in poverty

by Daniel Borgström
danielfortyone (at)gmail.com

"Aunt" Olivia was the daughter of Adolf Høstmark, my grandfather's uncle. Like the rest of the family in Norway, Adolf was a gentleman, a sort of minor aristocrat. However, he was downright poor, so he sent his children to be raised in the proper style by relatives who had the means.

That is how Olivia came to live with the family of my great grandparents as one of their daughters. So my mother called her "Aunt" Olivia, and I vaguely remember visiting her when I was little. She then lived in Seattle and was close to 80.

Her father had come to America, bringing her and her brother, Alf, as well as their cousin (my grandfather), Sigurd Grytnes. They arrived at Puget Sound in 1889, just as Washington was becoming a state. Grandpa worked in a store near Seattle for two years and eventually settled in Minnesota, but the Høstmarks remained in the Puget Sound area.

Half a century later, in 1938, my mother (daughter of Sigurd Grytnes) sojourned on Bainbridge Island, and used to spend her weekends with Aunt Olivia, from whom she learned this part of the family history, as well as anecdotes of my grandfather's childhood, like the time he put a live rooster in the kitchen pantry. Grandpa was something of a prankster during his younger years in Norway.

Recalling her first impressions of America, Olivia told of her difficulties in learning to adjust.

"When I came to this country it was so hard to get used to the idea that everybody is supposed to be equal," she told Mother. Olivia Høstmark had come from a rigid class-conscious society where being born into the right family meant absolutely everything. That façade had to be maintained. She remembered being admonished as a little girl: "Play with the children of the peasants and be nice to them--but don't forget who you are!"

The irony of it all was that she'd been sent to live with her relatives because her own parents lacked the money to raise her in style. She'd come from the outermost cliff-hanging edge of the privileged class and its pretentiousness.

Among the family heirlooms inherited by Mother was a silver spoon. Not all my ancestors were born to eat with silver spoons; my father's side were poor peasants who didn't always have enough to eat. The haunting movie Pelle the Conqueror presents a vivid picture of that world which returns to me like a recurring nightmare, from which I wake up on the verge of screaming, "Get me on the next ship to America!"

America was no paradise of equality, not then and certainly not now either, but, in comparison to Norway, it seemed that way. As one Scandinavian immigrant was quoted saying, "Here in America, nobody asks who your father is."

But it was a land of opportunity. Adolf Høstmark, the poverty-stricken gentleman, went into business here and did well. What he did, or where he lived, I hadn't known. I'd assumed that he'd settled in Seattle, and it was only last month that I learned otherwise, quite by accident. Traveling on the Olympic Peninsula, I stopped in a restaurant where I passed a rack of travel brochures and paused to glance at the maps, saw one of Poulsbo (a town I knew nothing about), took it to my table out of curiosity, and opened it.

"Velkommen til Poulsbo," it said at the top (in Norwegian!). It gave locations of historic buildings, and among them was the "Høstmark Building," a grocery store owned by Adolph Høstmark back in 1886. Seeing that, my eyes popped out. Could this be my grand uncle? Could this town be the unknown location where he'd settled?

It seemed plausible. Mother hadn't said anything about him being in America before 1889, when he'd brought Olivia, Alf and my grandfather, but I knew that Norwegian immigrants often came here ahead of their families, took a look at the country, and found a place to live before going back to bring their families. Could my great granduncle Adolf have done the same?

Imagine finding a bit of family history among a bunch of travel brochures! I showed it to Virginia, my traveling companion, and we decided that on our way back we'd stop by Poulsbo and see that building.

A few days later we drove into Poulsbo and found the address: 18978 Front Street. There was a plaque, put there by a local historical society, identifying it as the Høstmark building. The edifice appeared to have been renovated, and the current occupant was Bayside Engravers.

I went in to look around. The proprietor, Craig Hammond, was very knowledgeable of the local history and was able to tell me a lot about Adolf Høstmark, and he then took out a book of local history The Spirit of Poulsbo from under the counter. It had a full page on Adolf Høstmark. There was even a photo of him; he actually looked like me, except that he had curly hair.

Adolf had opened his store in 1886 with eight sacks of flower, one of sugar, and some miscellaneous items which he brought from Seattle in an open rowboat. The distance was about 15 miles by water. He also became the local postmaster.

Those were missing pieces from my mother's account. So, I realized that Adolf had first established himself in Poulsbo, then returned to Norway to get his family. In addition to bringing his children and his nephew in 1889, he'd also brought his wife. This answered another of my longstanding questions. I'd always wondered why she hadn't come; well she had, and here was her name, Engelbertine. A third child, Ann, had also accompanied them. I'd never heard of her either; she, along with Engelbertine, had somehow vanished from my mother's narrative. Ironically, Ann Høstmark and my mother both resided in Everett, not knowing they were neighbors.

Tragedies are often omitted in the telling of family histories, and there was one, forgotten till now. In 1895, Adolf Høstmark hung himself in the attic of this building.

Daniel Borgström
danielfortyone (at)gmail.com
August 2010

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* The local history book which the engraver showed me was: "The Spirit of Poulsbo" by Judy Driscoll


** Below are the ancestors in the above account:

ADOLF HØSTMARK,1842 - 1895
born in Norway
father of 8 children, including Olivia, Alf & Ann
uncle of Sigurd Grytnes (my grandfather)
had the store at18978 Front Street, Poulsbo

ENGELBERTINE JUNGE (HØSTMARK), 1843 - 1922
born in Norway
wife of Adolf Høstmark
mother of 8 children, including Olivia, Alf & Ann

OLIVIA HØSTMARK (COLE), 1873 - 1975
born in Norway
daughter of Adolf & Engelbertine
cousin/sister of Sigurd Grytnes

ALF HØSTMARK, 1875 - 1953
born in Norway
son of Adolf & Engelbertine
captain of ferry boat in Puget Sound

ANN HØSTMARK, 1885 - 1974
born in Norway
daughter of Adolf & Engelbertine

SIGURD GRYTNES, 1868 - 1961
born in Norway
father of 10 children, including my mother, Agnes
(my grandfather)

AGNES GRYTNES (BORGSTRÖM), 1899 - 1996
born in Iowa, USA
daughter of Sigurd Grytnes
(my mother)

The People of Grytnes

by Daniel Borgström
danielfortyone (at)gmail.com


GRYTNES was the farm in Norway our family came from and named itself after. My mother believed that our ancestors had lived there for countless generations, going back to Viking times and even before that. It was located in the vicinity of Trondhjem, but that's all she could tell me, since she was born in America and had never been back to the old country.

Much of her information had come from an old letter written by a distant cousin to my grandfather, but that letter had been misplaced. My mother knew it had to be somewhere in the house, because she never threw anything away, and one day, in an old desk drawer, she found it.

The letter was written in Norwegian, and dated November 15, 1953. I could understand most of it, since Mother used to read me stories in Norwegian. The major difficulty was deciphering the handwriting, done in an ornate old-world style.

"Kjære Sigurd Grytnes, Tak for brevet som jeg mottog . . ." it began. "Dear Sigurd Grytness, Thank you for the letter I received some days ago."

My grandfather had never met the writer, but had seen his name, Havtor Grytnes, in a Norwegian language newspaper, and had been struck by the coincidence that it was also the name of his own twin brother. Since first names tend to be repeated within families, my grandfather wondered if the man might be a relative, which was why he had written to him.

In his response, Havtor Grytnes explained to my grandfather: "I began right away to look up who you were, and I found out that you are indeed a relative. We have a family register that goes back about 250 years." Havtor included a list of some two dozen relatives they shared in common, including aunts and uncles who'd immigrated to America in the 1800's. It gave years of birth, marriage, and when they sailed for America. My mother had personally known a number of these people, and fleshed out the bare-bones data with anecdotes and personal memories.

Thus I began a family history. It's been a lengthy project at which I've spent some decades, finding bits of information in all sorts of places--old letters, church records, and, more recently, information I've retrieved online.

Of the Grytnes farm in Norway, Cousin Havtor wrote that it was at Øksendal. Was that a village I could find on the map? The letter also mentioned the towns of Sunndalsøra and Kristiansund. I got a map of Norway, and easily found all three. Library reference books gave a few population statistics.

At the time the letter was written Øksendal was a village of about 500 people, deep in the upper reaches of Sunndals Fjord, enclosed by snow-clad mountains. One must travel down-fjord some 60 kilometers to reach the open sea. And as my mother believed, it is in the vicinity of Trondhjem, about 130 kilometers away as the crow flies.

Cousin Havtor asked Grandpa if he had ever seen Grytnes. An interesting question. It's very possible that he hadn't. According to Norwegian custom, a farm went to the eldest son, and Grandpa's father, Anders, was the second son, so he had to leave the farm. That would have been around 1850. Anders was sent to school, became a teacher and later a parish priest in the Lofoten Islands, which are above the Arctic Circle, about 400 miles north of Øksendal. Lofoten is where my grandfather, Anders' son, grew up.

So did Grandpa ever visit the Grytnes farm in Øksendal? Did his father ever bring the family back to the old home to visit their grandfather? Maybe, but probably not. Grandpa was born in 1868; travel was difficult and expensive in the 19th century.

I remember my Grandfather well, but by the time I began work on this family history project, he'd been gone for several decades. Most likely Cousin Havtor as well.

Additional information came from other sources, some of it very old. One day I was reading the "Saga of Gisli the Outlaw," a medieval Icelandic story which was probably written in the 13th century. It relates events which took place around the year 900 and briefly mentions the village of Øksendal. There's only a line or two about the village, just enough to indicate that the place was inhabited back in Viking times. The settlement may have been ancient even then, in which case the people who lived there would be among our ancestors.

More recently, satellite photos have come online, and in these we can see the upper reaches of Sunndals Fjord as it looks like from space. Near the upper end is an inlet; that's where Øksendal is located.

The Grytnes farm had milk cows and a whole mountainside for sheep, as well as quite a lot of timber, according to another distant cousin, Bersvend Grytnes, who was born at Øksendal in 1902. He was interviewed for an oral history project in 1982, and a summary of the interview is now available online. In this interview, Bersvend said he attended school till he was 15, then worked for his father. In the winter they logged. He also fished for salmon, setting traps along the shore of the fjord. At other times he hunted for grouse and ptarmigan, which he sold in the market. But when his father died and his older brother took over the farm, he was out of a job. Seeing no future there, he emigrated to the U.S. in 1922.

Cattle and sheep raising, logging, fishing and some hunting must have been the basic activities at Grytnes and other Norwegian farms since ancient times. The eldest son inherited the farm; second, third and forth sons found something else to do; in the 19th and early 20th centuries some went into the professions and others went to America. But it was only after around 1850 that the option of going to America became available.

Cousin Havtor's letter mentions Nils, an ancestor born back in 1753 at Øien, another farm in Øksendal. Nils Øien seems to have been a 2nd or 3rd son, and therefore could not inherit the Øien farm. But there was a place for him at the Grytnes farm where the owner had a daughter but no sons. Nils came to Grytnes, married Brit, and became the ancestor of a whole lot of Grytnes people, including Halvor, Bersvend, and my grandfather Sigurd.

I fantasize Brit Grytnes as an eligible, sought-after woman on the fjord, and her engagement to Nils Øien a romance that the contemporary English novelist Jane Austin could have immortalized, had she known of them. Although it was the general custom in those times for marriages to be decided by parents, it is also true that even before the 18th century marriages were sometimes left to the option of the couple themselves. Of course, there was no Jane Austin in Øksendal, and the details went unrecorded.

Sadly, we don't have a single anecdote which might bring Brit and Nils to life as personalities who once lived and worked and loved and dreamed. There is something very tragic about the way entire lifetimes pass into oblivion, and that is why I am writing this history, to preserve the memories and traditions that we do have.

It's only as we get to the middle of the 19th century that we begin to have oral traditions and anecdotes which flesh out some of the names in the genealogy, starting with Grandpa's father Anders, teacher and later parish priest in the Lofoten Islands. Also, from the 1860's onward, we have photos of him and others which put faces on our more recent ancestors. My mother was able to identify for me most of the people in those old photos, and personally knew a number of aunts, uncles, and cousins who came to America in the latter 1800's.

Brit and Nils's grandson, Pastor Anders, was born in 1833. His son, my grandfather Sigurd, was born in 1868 and came to America in 1889, just in time to be in Seattle the year when Washington became a state. My mother Agnes was born in Iowa in 1899.


(to be continued)

.
.
.
.
.
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a letter from Havtor Grytness

to my Grandfather, Sigurd Grytnes
November 15, 1953

Here is a letter to my grandfather from a cousin. In it Cousin Havtor looks at the family tree, confirms that they are relatives, and also tells about the ancestral farm in Norway. I'm posting it first in Norwegian, then the family tree, and under that, the English translation.
Daniel
danielfortyone (at)gmail.com



Hoquiam, Washington
Nov 15th, 1953

Kjære Sigurd Grytness,

Tak for brevet som jeg mottog nogen dager siden; Jeg beyndte straks å undersøke hvem du var, å fandt ut at du er nok en slektning ja. Vi har ei ættitavle skrevet ned, som gaar tilbake omtrent 250 aar. Der ser vi at din grandfader Nils Pedersen Øien var fodt i 1753 å giftet sig med Brit Andersdatter Grytness, å tok over gården Grytness paa den tid.

Du har vel kanske ikke set Øksendalen å gaarden Grytness. Den er upbygd med nye hus no å ser svæi ut, men tongvindt å drive, for det er saa brat.

Min fader solgte gaarden Grytness til sin broder Endre i 1905, å saa flytta vi til Kristiansund hvor han døde i 1913. Alle mine søskender reiste hit til landet, men to av dem reiste tilbake å lever nu i Kristiansund.

Vi kom endlelig tilsammen igjen dette aar, da de to i Norge kom hit paa besøk. Det blev den føste gang vi var isammen i vort liv for min eldste broder reiste hjemmifra før jeg var født.

Du siger du har en bror med navnet Havtor, ja det maa vel være manden som jeg var upnavnt efter, for jeg har aldrig hørt om nogen anden med sligt navn. Lever han? Saa maa du sende meg hans adress!

Er det nogen efterfølgere av din onkel Halvord her i landet?

Jeg kom hit til landet i 1922, reiste hjem igen i 1928 paa besøk. I 1930 blev jeg gift med en jente av Norske forældre i Nord Dakota, å kom herut paa kysten i 1944. Ve har en datter 20 aar gammel som gaar paa universsited i Seattle dette aar.

Min Broder Kristian lever ogsaa her i Hoquiam. En bror å en søster i Tacoma Washington.

Det var rigtig morro å foa høre fra dig, å om du nogen gang tak en tur østover soa maa du kalde paa us, å du maa være sikker paa om jeg tar en tur østover igjen saa skal jeg nok komme ind å say hello og saa. Hvis Post Falls er paa høivien no. 10. so har jeg vel kjørt igjennem den flere gange.

Vær saa snild å skrive igjen å svare paa mine spørsmål. Jeg kunde vel kanske hat mere av interesse å fortælle, men det foar bare være med dette.

kjærlig hilsen

Havtor Grytness
Hoquiam, Washington

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GENEALOGICAL DATA FROM HAVTOR GRYTNESS

Below is the family tree which was enclosed with the letter of Nov. 15th, 1953. Havtor said he got this information from files which went back as far as 1700. So apparently this is only part of the information contained in those files.



Peder Nilsen Grytness, født i 1791 paa Grytness i Øksendalen er min great grandfather å din grandfather.
Hans barn var:

1. Nils. (Din onkel, Min grandfather) født 20 april 1828, konfirmert 2 april 1843 av sogneprest Ole ??hr Berner(?).

2. Brit. Født 2-9(?)-1830, gift med Nils Endresen Brandstad. Hun reiste til America i 1899 å døde 8-26-1904.

3. Anders. (Din far) født 12-20-1832. I mine opskriverser staar det at han: i 1859 bleve han dimiteret from Tromsø Seminarisem med Loved Karakter "Meget Duelig". Senere tok han den akademiske vei å tok 1866 Artium med karakter "Laud" Eksamen philos. med preceteris, Embedseksamen 1872 med "Laud". Han bleve først sogneprest i Flakstad i Norland å 1884 i Aure Nordmøre. å døde 27 july 1904.

4. Dordi. Født 1-1(?)-1836 Gift 6-24-1858 med Endre Endresen Brandstad. De reiste til U.S.A. 5-23-1873.

5. Eli. Født 1-13-1841. Gift med Hoagen Olsen Melkild. Dei bodde paa Sundalsøra.

6. Halvor. Døde 2 år gammel.

7. Halvor. Født 3-23-1844. Han var flere aar paa et apotek i Oslo. Den 21th april 1885 utvandret han til U.S.A.

8. Brit Født 8-8-1847. Gift 11-13-1878 med Martinus Johnsen Erstad. Hun døde 1-26-1919.


Nils Pedersen Grytness (Min grandfather). Gift med Gura Endresdatter Brandstad, hadde 9 barn: Peder (Min far), Brit, Endre, Meldrid, Marit, Brit, Anders, Halvor.

Peder Nilsen Grytness.(Min far) gift med Brit Kristoffersdatter Jordahle. 9 barn: Nils, Helga, Kristoffer, Kristian, Petter, Gudrun, Astrid, Ole, å tilslut migself Havtor.

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ENGLISH TRANSLATION
This is an English translation of the letter from Cousin Havtor Grytness.


Hoquiam, Washington
Nov 15th, 1953

Dear Sigurd Grytness,

Thank you for the letter I received some days ago; I began right away to look up who you were, and I found out that you are indeed a relative. We have a family register written up, one that goes back about 250 years. There we see that your [great] grandfather Nils Pedersen Øien was born in 1753 and married Brit Andersdatter Grytness, and took over the Grytness farm.

Perhaps you have not seen Øksendal and the Grytness farm. It is built up with a new house now and looks very fine, but hard to work because it's so steep.

My father sold the Grytness farm to his brother Endre in 1905, and we moved to Kristiansund where he died in 1913. All my siblings emigrated here to America, but two of them returned to Norway and now live in Kristiansund.

We finally came together again that year, when the two in Norway came here for a visit. That became the first time we were all together in our lives, because my eldest brother had left home before I was born.

You say you have a brother with the name of Havtor. Yes, that could well be the man after whom I was named. For I have never heard of any other with such a name. Does he still live? If so, you must send me his address! (see footnote*)

Are there any descendants of your uncle Halvord here in this country? (footnote**)

I came to America in 1922, went home again in 1928 on a visit. In 1930 I married a girl of Norwegian parents in North Dakota, and came out here to the coast in 1944. We have a daughter 20 years old who goes to the university in Seattle this year.

My brother Kristian also lives here in Hoquiam. A brother and a sister in Tacoma Washington.

It was very good to get to hear from you, and if you some time take a trip out this way, then you must call on us, and you may be sure that if I take a trip going eastwards, then I will certainly come in and say hello. If Post Falls is on the highway number 10, then I have certainly driven through it many times.

Please be kind and write again to respond to my questions. I could well have more of interest to tell, but it can be enough with this.

greetings,
Havtor Grytness

=====================
NOTES: We don't have a copy of Grandpa's reply, but the answers to both of cousin Havtor's questions would be "no."

* Grandpa's twin brother Havtor had been dead for over half a century. As a young man just out of medical school, he died tragically from gas leaking from a lamp.
** Uncle Halvord had no children that we know of.
*** My grandfather, Sigurd Grytnes, spelled his name with a single "s".
**** Havtor is also spelled Haftor

Grandpa comes into my life

The latter years of Sigurd Grytnes
26 February 1868 - 13 October 1961

by Daniel Borgström
danielfortyone(at)gmail.com



Grandma died when I was 3 1/2 years old; but I never really knew her because she lived so far away, way back in Minnesota. After she was gone, then Grandpa sold their home and went to live with his children and their families. There were several he would stay with, including my parents from time to time. And so I lost a grandmother, but gained a grandfather.

I was just a very little boy then, when he first begin coming. We would go down to the railroad depot to meet him. I still remember that huge train chugging in and slowing to a stop. It was fascinating, but also somewhat frightening, that big train. The engine would let off steam with a loud hissing sound, Grandpa would descend from one of the coaches, and then he'd be here to stay with us for a couple of months.

It was really neat having Grandpa with us. And, being the only child, and living on an isolated farm out in the sticks, I was lonely and enjoyed the extra attention. However, Grandpa had other things to do and he didn't always have time for me. I had to work hard to get his attention.

One day he was out in the yard, raking up leaves. And, being the violent little monster I was at that time, I picked up a rotten apple from under one of the apple trees, and threw it at him. I scored a direct hit, right in the head.

Grandpa didn't chase me; in fact, he did nothing. He just sat down in a chair to take a rest. He had done nothing and obviously he intended to do nothing. And so I just went back to playing in the yard. Then, for some unexplained reason, he grabbed hold of me, turned me over his knee, and gave me a spanking.

My parents ran a chicken farm. We had 10 acres, there was plenty of space, and mother had her gardens where she raised vegetables and flowers. She also had a cow. There was a hay field, a pasture, and the woods.

So there was haying to do. It was later that we started having our hay bailed. Back then there were still a number of old timers around who used horse-drawn hay mowers, and we used to have them cut our hay. I remember Grandpa making hay stacks. And when I got older I also learned to use a pitch fork and do my part.

Having been a farmer, swinging the scythe and making water-tight hay stacks was something Grandpa had done all his life. But he never milked cows. Neither did my father. Nor was I expected to either, although it was the normal thing for most of the other farm kids around there.

I never thought much about it. That's just the way it was at home. It was only recently that I found out why, when I read Amerika-Breve by Ole Rølvaag. In it the author tells of his amazement and disgust after coming to America and finding that he would have to help milk the cows. Back in Norway that was women's work, something that men just didn't do.

Grandpa had come from Norway; that had been years before when he was a young man. He'd been in Washington when it became a state, back in 1889. He was young then, in his early twenties. It was hard to imagine Grandpa having ever been young. By the time I knew him, he was in his 70's.

He'd spent his life here in America, a couple years in Washington, but most of it farming in Minnesota and thereabouts. He spoke English well, and of course he read books and newspapers in English. But he still preferred the Decorah Posten, the Norwegian language newspaper which he'd been reading all his life.

The Decorah Posten came once a week, and when it came he would sit there for the next day or two wearing his glasses and holding his magnifying glass, totally absorbed in his newspaper.

One day while he was reading, Mother left me in his care while she went out to work in the garden. But when she came back she found that I had taken out a whole loaf of bread and covered every slice with jam.

"Pa, why did you let him do that?" my mother demanded to know. He looked up from his Decorah Posten and asked, "What? ... What did he do?"

That's the way he'd always been, Mother says, "He'd pick up some book or newspaper, and you wouldn't hear from him again till he'd finished it."

He also read to me. We had some Uncle Wiggly stories, and he'd read them to me. There was a part in one of the stories that I asked him to read to me over and over. Actually, it was a picture of some hills in the story which had caught my fancy, and I'd say, "Read me that one." He'd read it to me, and then I'd ask him to read it to me again. He'd say, "I just did." But I'd ask him to read it once more.

But he never read me Per & Ola, the comic strip in the Decorah Posten. Mother had to do that. It featured a family of goofy Norwegians who lived out on the prairie in the Dakotas. "They're so silly," Mother objected. But I enjoyed Per & Ola even if they were silly. I still have fond memories of them.

Once Per and Ola bought an airplane and installed a steam engine in it. Per, who'd come up with the idea, explained the logic of this to Ola: they could save money since firewood was cheaper than aviation gasoline. Ola responded admiringly, "Per, you have a head like a brick."

So that was another neat thing about having Grandpa around. I got to read Per & Ola. When he left, Decorah Posten stopped coming, and there was no Per & Ola. Not till Grandpa came again.

One thing that always intrigued me about Grandpa was the large clock he brought with, one they would nowadays call a grandfather clock. It was about a foot and a half high, and as I grew older and began school and learned to tell time, I attempted to try out my skills on it. But instead of numbers, there were some strange markings on the face which I didn't know how to read. Mother told me these were "roman numerals". Each night before going to bed he'd take out a special key and wind it. That ritual also intrigued me.

Both he and my father were history buffs. Sometimes in the evenings he and my father, who was Swedish, would talk about the history of Scandinavia. And as I got older I begin to listen to bits and pieces of their discussions.

My grandfather was, as I have said, Norwegian, and it had been only in 1905 that Norway had finally achieved its long-sought-for independence from the Swedish Crown. Grandpa would have been about 37 that year, and so for the first half of his life that struggle had been going on. He didn't appreciate the benefits of Swedish rule, nor did he particularly like Swedes in general.

My father, on the other hand, always thought Swedish rule had been just great for Norway. He thought that Norwegians were backwards, stubborn people who didn't know what was good for them. Looking back on it, I can see that my father's attitude was a good example of what had been wrong with Swedish rule.

So there was that one sore spot they generally avoided; otherwise they got on well. My father thought highly of my grandfather, and respected his knowledge of history. "He knows his history better than anyone else I have talked with," my father used to say.

But the unfortunate topic still came up from time to time, but my grandfather was a consummate diplomat, and defused the tension by saying, "Most of the wars between Sweden and Norway were caused by the Danes." I imagine that if a Dane had been present, then the blame would have gone to the English, or perhaps to the Germans.

More often they talked about other things, like the Black Death, which wrought havoc and panic in Scandinavia in the 1400's. They remembered it almost as if it were a personal experience they'd lived through, recalling vividly how whole countrysides had been left deserted, how you might walk into a village and everyone would be gone. I was later surprised to learn that these events had happened hundreds of years ago.

The Black Death had obviously traumatized the old-world Europeans. But it was non-controversial. It was a shared experience, killing Swedes and Norwegians alike. They could recall the event with shock, horror, dismay and sorrow--but without anger.

But it wasn't just history that they talked about. Grandpa was well versed in Norwegian literature. They spent hours discussing Henrik Ibsen, Bjørnstierne Bjørnson, and other authors of that world. But I was not old enough to know who Ibsen and Bjørnson were. It was their stories of the Black Death which made the greatest impression on me.

Grandpa had always spent a lot of his time reading. Mother recalls that back in her childhood home, when somebody in the family brought home a book and he got his hands on it, "We didn't get it back till he was done with it." She also recalls that whenever anybody would say a book was no good, he would always say, "Have you read it? You don't know if a book is good or not till you've read it."

Reading was his interest, but he was an active person who always needed something physical to do for several hours a day. He would never have been content just to sit around reading books all day long. We had a wood burning stove and when he came we would always have a load of wood for him to chop up and stack in the woodshed. "It was the only way we could keep him around," my mother says, and that was true.

He did other things too. I remember once watching him build a pig pen. And he dismantled all the old tumble-down sheds and structures left over from the previous owners of the farm. But whether reading or working, I can never remember him just sitting there with nothing to do. When he didn't have anything to do, he'd find something.

One day he tore open the skin of his hand on a nail that was in an old fence he was taking apart. But he went right on working till my father happened to come by and found him, still chopping and sawing, and blood all over the place. "What happened to your hand?" my father asked him.

"It's just a scratch," said Grandpa.

But my father insisted on taking him to the doctor, and it turned out that this "scratch" required 10 stitches.

That's part of being an old-world Norwegian. When you need ten stitches you call it "just a scratch," and go on with what you're doing.

When the woodshed was full, and if it wasn't haying time, then he'd sit around for a few days reading whatever he could find, until he got restless, and then he'd go back to Minnesota, or in later years to Idaho.

In Minnesota he had other children, and he also stayed with them and their families. My mother was one of 10 brothers and sisters, and some of them would also visit us from time to time. There was Aunt Freda who would spend a week or two with us almost every year, and Aunt Wilma and her family whom I got to know later when they moved to Idaho. But most important in those early years was Uncle Ralph, my mother's younger brother. He used to visit us even before Grandpa came into my life.

Uncle Ralph was a sailor in the merchant marine. And he used to come and visit us as far back as I can remember. That was during the war years.

My parents had bought our farm the year we came back from Alaska in 1941. That's also the year I was born, as well as the year that America finally entered the war. Mother tells me they had gone out to look at the farm, and that's where they were when the radio announced that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor.

Later, my folks learned that Uncle Ralph had been on a ship which sailed out of Pearl Harbor just a few hours before the attack. Throughout the war he remained in the Merchant Marine, which must have been fairly dangerous duty because cargo ships were targets for submarines.

When his ship docked in Seattle or Tacoma, he came up to Ferndale to visit us. He usually stayed for a week or two. He helped with the farm work, which there was always plenty of. One summer he helped build the hay barn. I remember riding on a horse drawn hay wagon with him.

Ralph was a fun guy to have for an uncle. But he was also something of a tease, and one day I got mad at him and told him to leave, "You've been here long enough!" I said.

I only vaguely remember telling him that, but was often told the story by my parents. And then the next day he did leave, much to my regret. Apparently his leave was up and he would have gone anyway. After he was gone I missed him. I still miss him today.

Even in his absence, there were mementos of his visits that continued to make an impression on me.

From distant ports like Shanghai, Hong Kong and Osaka, he brought back various exotic art objects. He gave to his mother and each of his sisters a beautiful Chinese teakwood chest. These mementos of the Orient were also part of my childhood home, as were the visits of the sailor who brought them. I remember one of those pictures on our wall that intrigued me. "It's Japanese," Mother told me, and I asked, "Is that what Japan is like?"

I admired those pictures and wondered about the strange, distant, exotic worlds they came from. Those pictures were my first impression of Japan--a place I was eventually to spend several years.

Today, Japanese art is very popular in this country, and can be seen everywhere. But back in those days it was found only in the collections of eccentric world travelers, or people with an exclusive Asian connection. You didn't expect to find it on the walls of a farmhouse.

Uncle Ralph wasn't the only family member in the war. On a dresser were the photos of my cousins, Douglas and Russell. One was a soldier and the other a sailor, I could never remember which was which. Despite my knowing so little about them, I'll always remember their photos as part of my childhood home. They were Aunt Freda's sons, other grandchildren of Grandpa. There were also two other cousins, Aunt Dagny's sons, Merle and Dewey . These represented our family's participation in the war. So Grandpa had one son and four grandchildren in the services during WW II. And, as I was to learn later, he also had a son who sat out the war in jail for refusing to serve because of his religious beliefs. That was Uncle Ingvald, whom I met later.

I remember those photos so well, along with Uncle Ralph's visits. But I remember nothing about the war. I was only 4 when it ended. And it was even a year or two after that that Grandpa came into my life.

Mother had taken me with her on a trip to Minnesota when Grandma was dying, when I was about 3 1/2. I remember that trip well, and there I met many of my cousins, including Ramon and Beulah and their mother Aunt Wilma. But I didn't see them again until around 1951 when they moved to Idaho.

Most of Grandpa's children lived in Minnesota. Several of these still lived at Lengby, where his home had been for several decades. He had also been treasurer of the school board there in Lengby for so many years.

But in the 1950s many of the Lengby people, both family and neighbors, migrated to Post Falls, Idaho. First one or two families came to the new area, and then one by one, the others followed.

Grandpa's daughter Wilma and her husband Simmie DeMarre moved to Post Falls Idaho in 1951, and his sons Ingvald and Bill came about the same time. Another son, Olaf moved to Lewiston Idaho. Other Lengby people also came to Post Falls. And so Grandpa spent most of his latter years in Post Falls with Aunt Wilma and her family.

Wilma and Simmie had about 40 acres at the edge of town near the Spokane River. Uncle Ingvald brought his trailer and parked it near the house; and he would sometimes work with Simmie in his sawmill. This sawmill was also on their farm; it was a small two- or three-man operation. As a by-product, it produced scraps which Grandpa sawed and split into firewood. So, wherever he was, there was always something for him to do.

I spent a year there with Uncle Simmie and Aunt Wilma in 1958 and 1959. That was after my father died and Mother sold the farm at Ferndale. I was a teen-ager then; the year after that I went in the USMC.

Behind their house was a large rock, about 100 feet high; and on it the town water tank was built. When it was finished, a local paper wrote a story about that water tank; and to illustrate it, printed a photo with the rock in the background, and Grandpa in the foreground, chopping wood. My aunt and uncle went to the newspaper and received a print of that photo which they proudly displayed.

My cousin Beulah remembers that at around noon Grandpa would always take a break and walk down town to a tavern and have a beer or two. That was how he broke up his day. The dogs would always follow him on his walk down town, a mile or so, and then sit outside the tavern and wait there for him. He didn't want the dogs following him, so before leaving he would lock them in the house. But somehow they would get out and when he came out of the tavern the dogs would be outside, waiting for him.

Beulah told me that story years later. It really surprised me. I never knew that Grandpa went to taverns or even drank beer. My mother was very anti-tavern, anti-alcohol, and so I just assumed that her father was too. Beulah says he would drink one beer, sometimes two. That was his limit. "It was something he did to break up his day," she said.

Now when I think about it, I do remember Grandpa going downtown around noon, the dogs following him. I didn't know where he went. I was a teen-ager then, living pretty much in a world of my own.

If Grandpa had an addiction, it wasn't alcohol, it was reading books and newspapers.

That was when the uranium boom of the 1950s was going on. A number of prospectors had discovered deposits of the ore and struck it rich; and so it became the national fad to buy a Geiger counter and go prospecting for uranium. Even Simmie and Wilma had their mine. It was about a hundred miles to the north, up in the Coleville Mountains. The way that came about was that a neighbor had discovered an ore deposit and needed help to develop it. So four families got together and located their claims, did the required assay work to keep it legally in their names, and built a cabin on the property. I was there at that time and went with, and helped build the cabin. It was a beautiful place, high up in the mountains overlooking the Columbia River.

A mining company offered them $75,000 for the property. Back in 1959, a dollar was worth much more than it is now, so it seems to have been a fairly good offer. But the partners thought otherwise, and, as Aunt Wilma said, "If it's worth that much to the mining company, it's worth that much to us."

They planned to mine it themselves. However, as more and more deposits were discovered in various parts of the world, this small deposit soon paled to insignificance. And they never got any financial return. But they did wind up with a nice summer cabin, and they enjoyed that.

Uncle Simmie later used to say, "That's where two fools met. The one who offered me $75,000, and I who refused it."

Grandpa never came with to visit the mine; He was about 90 by then, and mining had apparently never interested him to begin with. While the rest of us made trips to do assay work at the mine, he stayed back in Post Falls; sawing away at his wood pile, and taking his noon day walk to the tavern, with dogs in tow.

In the summer of 1959 I joined the USMC. By then I had just turned 18. About a year and a half later, I received a letter telling me that he had died. He had lived to the age of 93. He had brought to my life an atmosphere of history and tradition, a bit of Old Norway. By his presence in my childhood home, he enriched my life in many ways.


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Not even Grandpa could ignore the loneliness of old age. His wife had been gone for over a decade; he'd outlived his friends and contemporaries. Even many of his children were gone. And during the last 2 or 3 years of his life he was able to work less and less in the wood pile, and he would often walk around in the house and sometimes push the curtain aside to look out the window as if to see if a visitor might be coming; perhaps one of his old friends from out of the past, and he'd say, "I feel so lonely."

Sigurd Grytnes, born 26 February 1868 in Norway, died at Post Falls, Idaho on 13 October 1961, at the age of 93.

Recently I looked to see if Decorah Posten and Skandinaven are still publishing. No, they are not. Skandinaven ended in 1941, its subscription lists were taken over by the Decorah Posten, which survived till 1972. Their readers, the Norwegian immigrants of my grandfather's generation, have passed from this earth. And their newspapers followed them.



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3/9/09