In addition, there was a “soup-well,” covered with a big “hat” – perfect for keeping your coffee warm, or for melting and drying snow-covered mittens in the winter! Opposite the stove, a long wood table, scrubbed to almost white, large enough to seat at least twelve. All with rings to be taken out one by one, size of kettle depending. It has a center burner for big-size kettles on the front burner, and two smaller burners. A large wood-fired, black iron stove on the right was used to cook all meals, summer as in winter. A big kitchen, it was the heart, and hearth, of the farm. We had four rooms in that old house, but the kitchen was for everyone. We got to know the farm well, a big barn, cows at one end, hayloft in center, horse stalls on the right, the pig-pen around the corner, and cackling hens running as we came upon the farmyard.Ī little further up the road, with a huge stone knoll on the left, above the garden on the right, we arrived at the entrance to the main house on the farm, a long, 300-year old log house, blackened by tar. And we were here for the summer, the long, seemingly never-ending summer. Once on the island, we climbed aboard a flat-bed horse-drawn wagon for the last journey, where among belongings we bumped along a two-rutted road to the farm. Women and children first - the men left to unload the car and truck, a couple of more crossings. The final bend took us to the inlet that separated the island from the mainland where Dadda’s father, Erling and her older brother, Hans, waited to row us across. How can I forget that sudden openness, the taste of dust and smell of sun on not-yet mown fields and the blue, blue of water? In the afternoon light, the island appeared to float, to almost hover in a shimmering mirage that hugged the water, layers of summer haze from gray, to blue to golden. Then the road widened from that one-horse-and-wagon road through the woods, a rise before a downhill, and suddenly, there it was, the sea and the island. Leaving tails of dust behind us in the dry summer heat, the small truck almost covered to a ghostly white. In my mind’s eye, I can still see the road, that final leg of the journey an unpaved country road that wound its way through woods. A steam-car, I was told later.Īt just 5 years old, the journey seemed endless to me. I remember it was fed a small square piece of wood, as we had to stop now and then to “feed” it. This little truck had a contraption behind the driver’s cab that huffed and puffed small clouds of smoke. We were followed, in tandem, by small truck that belonged to my father’s company, packed with what seemed everything we owned. We were all packed in the car, my mother, our Dadda, my sister, my little baby brother and I with my father driving, as we left the city behind. Although gas was rationed, my father had managed to hold on to his car, saved gas, and by summertime we set off for the island. Our Dadda Margaret had come to us when I was still 4 years old, she barely 17 at the time, and that was the second year of WWII of Norway’s occupation by German forces. Sometimes for the rest of their lives, part of the family they were. Her real name was Margaret, but in those days, the common name for young women hired to help with children was “Dadda.” It was a good position to hold for those who’d leave farms and smaller towns to seek positions in households in the “big city.” Mostly they found their second family there and stayed until the children were grown to teen-age years. This island, which remained for us a summer home through many years, was the island where my nanny, Dadda, came from. It was always so in the “old” days, mothers and children along with nannies would leave the city and go to the sea for the summer, dads remaining in town for their businesses and came on weekend visits, and then for their own holidays. We had gone on summer holidays before, but this was a new adventure. The first time we went to the island it must have been in wartime, the summer of 1941.
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