Reliving Memories of Norway

On this winter morning I am sipping coffee from a mug I bought in Oslo and thinking of Sven Nygaard. He is a Norwegian I met last August in an art gallery in the village of Geiranger.

But he won’t be there now.

Sven was leaving Geiranger a couple of days after I did, closing Galleri 2-S for the season and returning to his other life as postmaster in the town of Stranda, which lies to the northwest, an hour and a half commute by boat.

Galleri 2-S opened last May in an old frame-and-stone schoolhouse at the head of the fiord, just a thunder away from a mighty cascade that scores the mountainside. The gallery operates only on summer weekends and holidays, catering to tourists--including Norwegians--who flock to this pretty village.

Among the artists shown is the innovative Marianne Heske, who dismantled a shepherd’s wooden hut in Norway and reassembled it at the Centre Pompidou for the Paris Biennale exhibition.

Sven said that when French critics asked about the meaning of her project, Heske said: “I thought the hut would be regarded as a hut in Norway, whereas in Paris it would be seen as a manifestation of conceptual art.”

Of her vivid paintings, a Paris critic wrote: “Here is an artist who comes from the cold and returns willingly to it . . . if only to bring back picturesque landscapes of her native Norwegian West Coast.”

The hut was put back on its Norwegian site after the show and is used again for storing hay. “We are both avant-garde and traditional,” Sven said.

On this winter morning I am thinking also of the ruddy-cheeked Norwegian who drove our tour bus in the Lofoten Islands that lie north of the Arctic Circle. His real job is as a schoolteacher; the demands of tourism there are few.

The rugged Lofotens have no tourist hotel. Most visitors arrive by ship and stay less than a day. Tenders shuttle from anchorage to shore. A cruise ship dock is under construction, however, in the town of Gravdal. And UNESCO funds have been incorporated in the restoration of cod fishermen’s huts as tourist hostels.

“Are there anybody of you who have Norwegians in their family?” the driver asked eagerly. “What? Not this time? That is unusual for Americans. There are 4 million Norwegians living in Norway and 4 million more in the U.S.A. We have no family in the Lofotens without relatives in America.”

The Lofoten archipelago includes eight big islands and a scattering of small ones. It is a wild landscape of sheer, rocky mountains that seem tossed from the sea. It is home to a legendary cul-de-sac called Trollfjord, a challenge for ships and captains.

I am thinking, too, on this winter morning, of the people of the hamlet of Undredal, which you can reach by ferry along the magnificent Sognefjord from Flam. The ferry runs twice a week between late June and late August. Undredal is known for its fine goat cheese and for its tiny village church built in 1147--the smallest still in use in Scandinavia.

In summer, Flam’s Hotel Fretheim is banked with heavy crimson floribunda roses. Blue candles flicker on knotty pine tables in the sitting rooms. Fireplaces blaze most evenings of the year.

I am thinking of the lecturer on our ship for this coastal cruise, who, even in August, wore a traditional Norwegian patterned cardigan knit by his aunt. The sweater had pewter buttons. I searched shop windows but never saw one quite like it.

“Self-discipline and self-reliance are national traits,” the lecturer said, “as well as Henrik Ibsen’s streak of melancholy. Norwegians avoid trends and excesses. They take at least one winter before making up their minds about any problem.”

I think of that as I sip my coffee, light my blue candle and listen to the A-minor piano concerto by Edvard Grieg. I vow--by the first day of spring--to check again on my family tree.