Nordic American Voices Nordic Heritage Museum

Interview of Mina Larsen January 12, 2013 Seattle, Washington

Interviewers: Mari-Ann Jackson

Mari-Ann Kind Jackson: [0:03] This is an interview for the Nordic American oral history project at the Nordic Heritage Museum. We are today, January 12, 2013, interviewing Mina Larsen from Mercer Island, one of our great volunteers here at the museum. Welcome, Mina. We are delighted that we can interview you and hear your life story.

Mina Larsen: [0:29] Thank you.

Mari-Ann: [0:29] Would you start by telling us your full name, your date of birth, and where you were born?

Mina: [0:36] My name is Mina Bjerknes Larsen. I was born in Hokksund in on December 17, 1931. And I was told that it was a stormy day, and my dad had to drive through the snowstorm to pick up the midwife. I was the fifth girl to be born, which probably was not so good for a farm, where you needed a boy to take over the farm.

[1:04] But a little over a year later, my brother was born. And then after that, I had another sister, and my youngest brother was what they call an atpåklatt . I was thirteen years old when he was born. And of course our farm was about fifty miles from Oslo, and it lies between two little towns, Hokksund and Vestfossen.

[1:32] And our address was Hokksund, but our school was closer to Vestfossen. Røkeberg skole . And we were a big family. We had two boys that worked on the farm, and we had two girls that worked in the house. And my grandfather lived with us. So we were about fifteen people in our household.

[1:57] Back then, of course, things were very different. We didn’t have… we had electricity; we had a telephone, but we didn’t have any indoor plumbing, so we had a utedo [outhouse]. And of course all the farm work was done with horses. We had horses; we had cows, pigs, chickens, and sheep. And we all had to help out on the farm.

[2:27] My grandfather was the oldest in his family, and actually he grew up further out; it was not so close to town. So as the oldest, his father bought the farm that I grew up on, and he chose to have that farm, because it was closer to town. So like I said, my grandfather lived with us, and he was

Nordic American Voices Page 1 of 20

very, very strict. He was very religious.

[2:58] And I remember hearing him pray at night, loud. And he also wanted us all to go to church, so on Sundays we all had to get dressed up, and he took us to church. And the prize for going to church was, on Saturdays, he’d ride his bike to Hokksund to buy store-bought cookies. So that was special.

[3:29] And I also remember my grandfather… I never remember him not wearing a suit. It was a suit every day. And he was a great moose-hunter. We had some forest out further out in the country, and he’d go out there every fall, and he must have shot a hundred moose, so we always had moose meat, which was very good.

[4:04] And… yeah, like I said, he was very strict. I do remember that after we had eaten, had our meal, he would sweep up the crumbs from the table because he didn’t want us to waste anything. But he had grown up during what they called the barkebrøtiden [ time] where they ground up bark to put in the bread. So, we were not allowed to waste anything.

[4:43] My dad had one brother and one sister. And his oldest brother immigrated to the United States… to Canada, actually to Vancouver, where he had an uncle. My mother grew up in Jostedalen, which is way up by the glacier. It’s just nothing but rocks up there. When she was… well, through school, which is probably, you know, only seven grades then, she was sent to another family to learn how to cook and take care of a household.

[5:28] And then she ended up moving down to where we lived, and she worked with different families. And then she was hired as a housekeeper for my grandfather, because his wife, my grandmother, had died. Actually, I never did know my grandmother.

[5:51] So, she came in to the family then as a beautiful little blond twenty-year-old, and we always wondered what my grandfather was thinking, being such a strict, strict man. Maybe he knew what he was doing, because he had a young son, and my mother ended up marrying my dad.

Mari-Ann: [6:11] The son.

Mina: [6:12] My dad was the son that was left on the farm, to take over the farm. My mother has a rather interesting history, too, because she grew up in Jostedalen, and back in the 1300s when the Black Death went through Norway and killed so many people, some people in Sogn would move up to the end of the glacier there to think they were going to be saved.

[6:44] So, they lived up there, and in order to communicate with people in the other part of the valley, they had a stone that they put letters under, and nobody was allowed to leave, and nobody was allowed to come in. So, what happened is they still all got the plague, and everybody died except

Nordic American Voices Page 2 of 20

one little girl. And she was left up there, and her mother that knew she was dying left food for her and put her in a feather bed.

[7:20] And I don’t know how much later, but some of the animals came down over the valley and into another community, and so they went back up, and they found this little girl, alive. And she is called Jostedalsrypa. And so that is my ancestor. I belong to, they call it, the Rype familie . The Grouse family. Yeah.

[7:53] So, anyway, so my mother then married my dad, and they had, like I said, seven children, plus my brother that was born much later. And when my mother moved, you know, became the wife on the farm, she would bring young girls from her community down to work for her. And they were… that family, that group of people was so different from my dad’s. My dad’s family was very strict, very serious. Here come these young people that are so full of life. And they were joking; they would love to tell stories. And so we had a lot of fun there.

[8:44] So, like I said, we had girls that worked on the farm, and boys, and they were part of the family. You know, we all ate together, and worked together. We worked on the farm, too, from the time we were very young. We worked on the farm.

[9:09] And… well, I want to tell a little bit about Christmas. Because Christmas was of course was a highlight. We started early, preparing for Christmas. My mother had a big plant that she put on a stool, and we would walk around that in early November, and we’d learn all the Christmas carols. And I still remember every verse of every one of them.

[9:45] And of course, then we would go out in the forest before the snow came so we could find a Christmas tree. We’d all bundle up, all the kids, and my dad, and we found a tree, and he marked it, and then the day before Christmas Eve, he’d go out and cut the tree.

[10:07] And of course, then we had to prepare all our food for the winter. When the butcher came, that was a really exciting time in our life. The butcher came, and butchered the cows and the pig. Of course, I remember the big pig lying on this big platform, actually. And this is something that is different from what people do here, but the blood was taken from the pig and my mother would make klub . Do you know what that is?

Mari-Ann: [10:50] I love it.

Mina: [10:50] Yeah. And that was the first thing we had. You know, a little fat in the middle, and klub around, and she, I think she put in boiling water, and then we got it fresh out, with sugar. That was very, very best. Very best. And then she’d have some people come from town to help prepare the food. They prepared meatballs and pork chops and all the meat. Some of it was salted down in big containers, so we’d have food for the winter.

Nordic American Voices Page 3 of 20

[11:27] And of course, my mother was baking a lot. She was making the dough in the morning, and then she was rolling out the dough, and she put it on a big, huge plate. You know, the type that you put on your table. And she put them in a cold room, and then in the evening she’d stay up and bake. Sometimes she would fall asleep, and some of the cookies would get brown, and then we got to eat them the next day.

[12:06] She made milk pails full- I mean thousands and thousands of cookies. Big drawers full of cookies, I mean thousands. And of course there were at least seven different kinds. It was krumkake , it was berlinerkranser , and smultringer , and fattigmann , and so on. Sandkaker , sandnøtte . So we had all of the food prepared for the winter.

[12:38] And Christmas, the day before Christmas, my dad would go out and cut the Christmas tree and put it in the hallway so it could get dry, you know. And Christmas Eve, my mother would decorate the tree, and we didn’t get to see it until after dinner. And then of course we had the big dinner, and all the people on the farm. We had a long table, and we had ribbe og surkål and all that good stuff, you know.

[13:13] I remember the boys that worked on the farm- my mother would get a bottle of some kind of liquor, and she’d decorate it like a woman, and that was the gift for the boys. I don’t remember what she gave the girls. And then after… well, at four o’clock, Christmas Eve, we all had to go outside and listen to the church bells ringing. And that was always nice. And of course, my dad would put out julen nek , you know, for the birds, and feed the animals something special for Christmas.

[13:51] And then after dinner then, we all got into the parlor. There was a beautiful tree with live candles, of course. And then we had to go around the Christmas tree, and my grandfather was sitting in his rocking chair, watching. And then a knock on the door, and there comes Santa Claus. Well, he wasn’t dressed like Santa Claus today, of course. He was, you know, he just had a red hat and… And I do remember the first time I discovered that he had the same socks as one of the boys that worked on the farm. That was a great disappointment.

[14:35] And then we got our gifts, which was… you know, not a lot, but we did… My mother had met this lady where she worked when she first came down to our area. And we called her Tante Elsa. She was from Trondheim, and she moved back there and she never married, so she had a store up there, and every year she sent us gifts. And that was very special. And I remember when they came, we’d sneak into the parlor and smell the packages. And I remember smelling shoes one year. So, we always looked forward to the packages from Tante Elsa.

[15:19] And then of course, after Christmas… well, Christmas Day, we never… everyone stayed home. But the rest of the… we called it a romjulo [second Christmas Day], we had visitors. Every day

Nordic American Voices Page 4 of 20

we had people coming… relatives and friends. And my mother would put out huge plates of cookies, and we’d eat cookies. And since my birthday was on the seventeenth, and my oldest sister was on New Year’s Eve, instead of birthday parties, we had a Christmas party with our friends. And I remember when we got older, some of the boys in the neighborhood would crash the party. So that was lots of fun.

[16:08] Can we stop? I need a drink. My mouth gets so dry. Am I doing okay?

[TAPE BREAK 16:14]

Mina: [16:16] Actually, I never did know my grandmother on my dad’s side or my grandparents on my mother’s side. Because my grandmother… Both of their names were Anna. And my mother’s name was also Anna. But both of my grandmothers died young, and actually, I never met my mother’s grandfather. He was up in Jostedal in Faaberg, which is the end of the road. It’s very beautiful up there. It’s just all rocks. I really don’t know how people survived.

[16:52] My mother grew up in a tiny little house. And of course the house is gone, but we still see the foundation. It was not much bigger than this room, I think. It was just very small. And they had… my mother had four brothers and one sister that immigrated to the United States in the early 1900s. And my mother remembers when her sister was getting ready to go. She sat for days and made flatbrød . . Because that’s the only thing that would last, you know, and they had to bring all their food, you know, when they came over.

[17:30] So then there was left my mother, and she actually had two younger siblings, a boy and a girl, but they both died. So then there was my Tante Johanna, and one other girl left. And the two other girls, my mother’s sisters, they married and lived up there. So, we would go up there later and see them. That was quite interesting.

[17:57] My grandfather’s name- my dad’s father was Torvald Bjerknes, and his wife was Anna Bjerknes. And I guess I didn’t mention, my grandfather, my mother’s father was Peder Faaberg and almost everybody up in this little village, their name was Faaberg. Almost all of them.

[18:22] Anyway, so I want to tell a little bit about seventeenth of May, because that was of course a big event, too. When we were younger, my mother would have a seamstress come to our house and make clothes for us. Of course I didn’t get that much new clothes because there were a lot of hand- me-downs, of course.

[18:49] But I do remember one Christmas that I got this beautiful red velvet dress with a white collar. And then we had [inaudible 18:57 – 18:58] white stockings, and Laksko, you know. And actually, we used to go to jule -tie festen , you know, at the school. And we’d all dress up, and of course, no cars, so we drove in the sleigh. My grandfather had this beautiful sleigh with green velvet seats.

Nordic American Voices Page 5 of 20

[19:21] And you know, the driver was sitting back on the kuske sete , and then we cuddled under a bearskin that was lying. That was how we traveled, in the winter. And school Christmas party was also very special because they had a Christmas tree with real electric candles. And of course we thought that was very special. And we’d all walk around the Christmas tree. The little kids one way, and then the bigger kids, and then the other way, and then at the bottom, at the end was the adults. So there were probably seven rings.

[20:01] And then we had hot chocolate and cookies, and julekake , and all that good stuff. That was a lot of fun. And of course, seventeenth of May, we all had to have new dresses for seventeenth of May. So again, the seamstress would come and make dresses for us. Well, we didn’t all get new ones, of course. But I remember once I got a new dress. It was a red plaid with like we call a bondepike kjole , you know, with little tufted sleeves.

[20:36] And seventeenth of May, of course, there was a big party at the school, too. And we went to the parade, and it was just a lot of fun. Lot of fun.

Mari-Ann: [20:48] Was your school all seven grades in different rooms, or was…

Mina: [20:54] Yes. Actually, our school… I went to school only every other day. I think I had only two teachers, and we went every other day. I think the first grade you went by yourself. Second and third was together, and fourth and fifth, and sixth and seventh. But we did go Saturdays, too.

[21:12] Of course, we walked. It was a long way. Walked. My husband says we walked uphill both ways. [Laughter] It seems that way. And we went… you know, we never… I can only remember once when I think my dad drove us. We were walking through the snow up to here, you know. Up to your knees, practically. But there was no question about going.

[21:35] And when my oldest sister started going to school, she started teaching the rest of us. And actually my next… My oldest sister was Adele. Then came Tordis, then Liv, Bjørg, myself, and Anne, and my younger brother Johann Petter. So we were actually… Oh, I must have missed somebody here. Adele, Tordis, Liv, Bjørg, myself, my brother Torstein, Anne, and Johann Petter. And yeah, we all learned to read and write long before we were ready for school, because what do you do in the evenings, you know? So we loved that. She was our teacher.

[22:28] Oh, and I also remember we all had to learn to knit, of course, and crochet. And I remember my first potholders that I crocheted. I worked so hard. They were blue and white. And my mother would teach me. By the time they were done, you know, they were so dirty. And then my mother washed them, and then I said, “But Mama, you know what you’ll get for Christmas.” And my mother said, “Oh, no,” she said. “I’ll forget. I don’t remember.” And then when she opened it, she was so surprised.

Nordic American Voices Page 6 of 20

[23:06] And that’s a kind of tradition that we brought to my kids. You know, when they were little, they couldn’t wait. So, I said, “Oh, I’ll forget.” So, that was kind of fun. And… oh, I have to tell this, because this is a funny story. There was this man that would come around with his suitcase, you know, and sell little stuff. His name was Karl Kremar. And he’d come in the summer, and he’d come before Christmas.

[23:37] And I remember particularly before Christmas, because he… you know, he stood outside the door, and he’d say, “Anna, Anna, this is Karl!” He had this high-pitched voice. And he… so my mother would have him come in, and he always came before dinner because we had dinner at twelve. So, he came, and he opened his… He wore this long, brown worn out coat. And he had this worn out leather suitcase. And he opened it up, and he said, “Oh, come on, kids; come on, kids.” So we all sat around the suitcase and looked at the spools and little [inaudible 24:14] and stuff.

[24:15] And he said, “Don’t you like this? Don’t you like this?” And so my mother would buy from him. And then he had dinner with us. And I remember he had long whiskers that came down like this. And he’d slurp his soup, and the soup would drip down and we were just staring at him. And then he’d say, “Oh, Anna, don’t you have something good for me?” And so my mother would get some bacon. “Oh,” he said, “Oh, you’re so nice, Anna, you’re so nice to me.”

[24:45] And this happened twice a year. But then I think it was during the war, all of a sudden he didn’t come. And we missed him. And I guess he had died. But that was his livelihood. He went from farm to farm with this little worn out suitcase selling spools and little stuff.

[25:08] Anyway, so then of course the war started. And I remember that so well. My sister Bjørg and I were supposed to go to school. And we… I came down the stairs and my dad came out from into the hallway, and he looked so angry. And I thought, “Oh, what have we done?” And he said, “Oh, Mina,” he said. “The Germans have attacked us.”

[25:37] And of course, that changed our life forever. We were supposed to go to school, my sister and I. We were supposed to go to school, and we didn’t want to go, but my mother said, “Yes, you have to go to school.” So, we started on the road, and then some planes came, flying really low. And we got scared and we jumped down in the ditch, and we laid down there until the plane had gone. And then we got up, but then one of the neighbor boys had already been to school, so he came back and said that there was no school. So we were happy. We ran back home.

[26:12] I need another drink of water. [PAUSE 26:14 – 26:21]

[26:22] So then the Germans came around with their horses, and they wanted to put their horses in our stable. My dad said, “No way.” And I think they were a little scared of my dad, because my dad, he could act a little funny sometimes, you know. [Laughter] So then some of the neighbors thought

Nordic American Voices Page 7 of 20

maybe we were Nazis, but of course they learned pretty fast that wasn’t true.

[26:49] And then of course the Germans would come around and search our house, and take our food, which we had to… We had to give food to the Germans, but we always tried to hide some, you know. Almost every night, somebody would come from town at dark with their little spann , you know, little… what do you call it?

Mari-Ann: [27:18] Bucket?

Mina: [27:18] Bucket, yeah, with something to get milk. And they’d stand outside by the kitchen door, and my mother would call them in, and say, “Why don’t you all come in? You are all coming for the same…” She always gave food to the people.

[27:34] And we had a cabin quite a ways from the farm, actually out where my grandfather grew up. We had some forest there, and we had a cabin up there. And that cabin was used to hide people. And once, my dad… I guess my dad came out there once with my sisters. I wasn’t there, but this is what they told me. And then there were also people that had built little shelters out there where they were hiding, you know, during the war.

[28:15] And there were also some Russians that had escaped from prison, because there were a lot of Russian prisoners in Norway, and they were living out there, too. And once my dad came out there and there was Nazis with the lensman…

Mari-Ann: [28:35] Sheriff.

Mina: [28:35] Sheriff, yeah. And they were out there looking for people, so my dad had to sort of play some tricks on him because there were people hiding in the cabin. He said, “No, there’s nobody here.” He told them where to go so they wouldn’t go by that shelter where they would have found them, you know. But anyway, that was people hiding out there, all during the war.

[29:00] And I remember once… I think maybe I was sick, because I was sleeping in my parents’ bedroom, and all of a sudden, somebody threw rocks on the window. And my dad went down, and I found out later that was a man from Vestfossen that was collecting food. You know, they did that. They came at night and collected food for the people. Gutta på skauen , you know, the boys that were hiding in the woods up in the mountains.

[29:30] And so my dad took him out to where the food was, and he gave him a skinke . You know, that… What’s a skinke ? Ham, I guess.

Mari-Ann: [29:40] Ham.

Nordic American Voices Page 8 of 20

Mina: [29:40] Ham, I guess. Well, later… of course, I wasn’t supposed to know this, but I was listening in. Apparently this man stole one, and we later heard that he was selling… he was collecting food, and he sold it on the black market. And then it just happened that I was going to… I guess my dad was taking me to the doctor, and he was taking the milk to the…

Mari-Ann: [30:07] Dairy?

Mina: [30:07] Yeah, the dairy, because the farmers all took turns driving the milk to the co-op. And then when we drove by, he actually had a fish store, this man. And he came out and he stopped my dad, and he was so angry. He said that my dad had been telling that he had stolen stuff. And I was petrified. I thought, you know, he’s going to kill my dad. But anyway, apparently he did a lot of this.

[30:34] And the story went, after the war… you know, after the war, we had to turn in… If we had money, we had to turn it in to get, change money, of course, so much for each person. And of course, being a big family, we didn’t have enough money. But the story tells that he got drunk and he burned his money, because he had too much money. So, he got his reward, didn’t he?

Mari-Ann: [31:00] [Laughter] Wow.

Mina: [31:01] Yeah.

Mari-Ann: [31:04] Was he also a sympathizer, do you think, with the Germans?

Mina: [31:08] We don’t know. I don’t think so. We don’t know. But you know, there were people… We didn’t know who it was. Though we did have a neighbor that was a member of the party, but he never did anything. But you never knew. You never knew who you could trust and who you couldn’t trust.

[31:26] And my… when the war started, my mother’s cousin that lived in Oslo, she came to stay with us. Her husband was actually… They were from Jostedalen, too, from Sogn. He was actually part of the government, and he was one of the people that traveled north with the king, all they way up north. And then of course, he came back, and he was, of course, what we call Jøssing .

[31:56] And he was working with the underground. He used to actually ride his bike from Oslo at night to get food. So, his family… so then we were eighteen people in the household. I don’t know where we slept. I can’t imagine. Even if we had a big house, I can’t imagine where we all slept.

Mari-Ann: [32:20] How many bedrooms were there in your farmhouse?

Mina: [32:22] You know, there were five bedrooms, but we must have slept everywhere. And then my grandfather had his own room, you know, too.

Nordic American Voices Page 9 of 20

Mari-Ann: [32:27] Yeah, yeah.

Mina: [32:29] So, I don’t know. But my mother used to bake bread. We had a brygerhus - another house, you know, where we did all the baking. She had a big brick oven, and she’d put the fire in, you know, and burn, and then she’d rake out the…

Mari-Ann: [32:52] Ashes? Or the coals.

Mina: [32:52] The ashes. And bake eighteen . Eighteen breads, she baked at a time.

Mari-Ann: [32:58] Oh, my gosh.

Mina: [33:00] And of course, out there we had to stand and wash clothes. We had a big kettle, huge one, that we had a fire under, and that’s where you boiled your white clothes, you know. We used to do that. I can remember standing out there with my sister. It was actually ice on the floor. And we were standing there, scrubbing on the scrub board, you know. And then we had to rinse the clothes outside. In the winter we’d hang the clothes up inside in the big hallway. And that… I don’t know how my mother managed with so big family.

[33:40] You know, even if she had help, she was responsible for everybody. She was… my mother was a tiny little woman, obviously, and she worked hard. And I think I’ve learned a lot from my mom. She was really quite a woman.

Mari-Ann: [33:59] Yeah.

Mina: [34:00] I still remember, you know, all her sayings, you know. “It’s never so bad it’s not good for something.” It comes to me all the time, all those sayings that she said.

[34:13] And of course, war lasted for five years. And I remember when I was in sixth grade, we decided we were going to have a party; a seventeenth of May party. I was very surprised, but our teacher let us do it. So we all brought food, we brought our flags that we decorated, and we had a big party.

[34:38] But what happened is that you know in the classrooms we used to have a picture of the king, but now we had a picture of Quisling. So, some of the boys decided they were going to take all the pictures of Quisling down and they ran, put them at the end of the hall, and they ran, and they kicked, broke all the pictures. And we… you know, the girls were just petrified. We were so scared. But I can’t believe our parents let us do this, and the teacher.

[35:09] But anyway, we never heard anything, so apparently… obviously, the teacher found out.

Nordic American Voices Page 10 of 20

There were rumors about that the teacher had a radio, so he was very nervous, because the rumors start going. You know, everybody had radios. And we kept getting these secret newspapers, you know. And we would be hiding them. And I remember once the Germans came and we saw them come down the road, coming up, and my mother went through the drawers and took all the secret papers out and hid them. Or burned them, actually burned them.

[35:48] And I remember towards the end of the war, they came, and they were searching our whole house. And it was SS soldiers, too. My dad had a desk that one of the locks was put in upside down, so they couldn’t open it, you know. And they got really mad. But my dad just took the key and turned it around.

[36:16] And towards the end of the war… actually, I think it was the fall, the last year of the war, something had happened. You know, you heard about people being killed, sabotage, you know, on the railroad and so on. We all were… the Germans came around to every house, and we were not allowed to leave. Well, it just so happened that that was my grandfather’s birthday. And my mother had saved sugar, you know, and coffee for a whole year. And she baked, and she made fårikål . The cook came from the town to do the cooking, and help with the cooking, and everything.

[36:59] And all of a sudden, nobody could leave the house. She could not go back home. She had to stay with us. And we were not allowed to leave the house. And they went around in the fields with some sticks, and we thought they were putting down mines, you know. But I think they were just scaring us. And so the Germans went around to neighbors and said they had been celebrating my grandfather’s birthday, which of course wasn’t true, you know. That wasn’t true at all.

[37:35] And, you know, we were such a big family, and we had an outhouse. And we had been escorted… the Germans had to escort us to the outhouse. [Laughter] So, that was quite a job.

[37:48] Anyway, then of course comes May eighth. Or actually it was seventh, in the evening. And I just happened to be at a girlfriend’s house because we had started… you know, we had sewing clubs, you know. We started, there were four of us. And we were sitting there, knitting, I guess, and her mother came out. And her mother was… and actually her father had died during the war. Her mother came out, and she was crying, and she was going like this with her hands, and she said, “Oh, the war is over, the war is over.”

[38:27] And her daughter, the only daughter, she said, “Mother,” she said. “Mama. That’s not true. That cannot happen.” Well, we were looking down the road, and there was an old man that lived in the house down there, and the flag started going up. We thought, oh, he had died. And then it went all the way up. And we realized. And so we saw people streaming out of their houses.

[38:55] So I went up with my girlfriend, and we got flags with another girlfriend. Her father was out to sea, so they never saw him or heard from him during the war. And I remember her mother- all

Nordic American Voices Page 11 of 20

her mother did was sit and play solitaire. Every time I was there. She was sitting there, and we got our flags, and we went downtown, you know, to the little town, and everybody was… the band was playing. Everybody was just really crazy.

[39:27] And you know how everyone used to meet at the railroad stations? Well the manager, whatever you call him, at the railroad station, he was a very, very angry man. I mean, he was… we never saw him smile. Well, today he was smiling. And he was handing out little flags to everybody.

[39:52] So, I had my sister’s bicycle. So I thought all of a sudden, I better get home. So I went home and my mother didn’t even know it yet, that the war was over. I told her, and she didn’t believe me. Of course, the next day they found out that the war was over.

Mari-Ann: [40:14] What a time.

Mina: [40:15] Yeah. What a time. I think of all the children that grow up during wars, you know? They never… I can remember even lying in bed, and we’d hear the planes going over, because they always went over our area going to Oslo. And I remember thinking, “If I had a gun, I’d shoot all the Germans.” And that is very scary.

Mari-Ann: [40:46] Yeah.

Mina: [40:46] Very scary thought. So, the war was over, and life started getting back to normal, but it took ten years. And I remember… that was probably five years or more after the war, or maybe even more. Yeah. I was about eighteen or nineteen maybe. Two of my girlfriends and I rode our bikes to . To Gøteborg. And we could buy clothes. Oh, we bought clothes. And we could go and have all the food we wanted. We went to Liseberg to the amusement park, you know. We had so much fun.

[41:35] Should we take a break again?

[TAPE BREAK 41:40]

[41:44] So, after the war, then, I finished grade school, and I was the youngest in my class, so my mother decided I could take a year off and stay home before I went to high school. Well, I had to work. And I remember I had to work with the cows, take care of the cows. And I had to get up at five o’clock in the morning. And I hated it. I thought, “I am never going to be a farmer.”

[42:13] I was so tired, I can remember I was so tired, I came in after working there, I just laid down. And you know, we didn’t have a milk machine. We had to milk by hand. It was hard work. So, I was so glad when that year was over, I could go to high school. And then we went to high school in Hokksund, which was the town on the other side of [inaudible 42:35].

Nordic American Voices Page 12 of 20

[42:37] Our farm laid in a valley where there was a river that went down the valley, and then the farm was on each side, were the farms lying. And then behind it were the forests, and then the hills. We didn’t have any big mountains there, but it’s a beautiful, beautiful area. Really beautiful, and also so green, you know, in the summer. Anyway, so I started high school, and of course, we walked again, or we used a bicycle, you know.

Mari-Ann: [43:07] How far was is?

Mina: [43:08] Well, you know, I would say two miles.

Mari-Ann: [43:10] Oh, okay.

Mina: [43:11] Probably both ways, to both schools. And I enjoyed high school, I really did. I enjoyed our teacher. We had to learn German, of course, which we really didn’t like to do, but we had a very good German teacher. And we had a very good teacher teaching chemistry. So, I got interested in chemistry, and I thought I would like to become a chemist.

[43:36] Well, after high school, I checked into schools, and you had to have two years of practice before you could get into school. So, fortunately we had a wool factory in Vestfossen, and they had a laboratory, so I applied, and I got a job in a laboratory, which was very interesting. And while I was working there, somebody in Oslo was starting a textile laboratory. This was the only textile laboratory in Norway, actually. And so somebody from there came to our laboratory, and then I decided I would like to move to Oslo, so I got a job there, and I worked there for two years.

Mari-Ann: [44:22] And how old were you then?

Mina: [44:25] I must have been around twenty. Probably around twenty, yeah. And I remember coming home on the weekends, and my mother treated me like… oh, coffee in bed. I didn’t even drink coffee. You know how they do that. So, I felt very special.

[44:42] And then I worked there for two years, and then earlier, my aunt and uncle from Minnesota had been visiting us. And so did several other relatives, and also my uncle from Canada had come home after the war. She said, “If anybody wants to come to the United States, we will sponsor you.” So, I thought, “Oh, that’s what I want to do.”

[45:06] So, it took about six months to get my visa and my green card, and I had to go to the embassy and be interviewed. And I had to raise my hand and swear that I was not a Nazi, which I thought was rather strange. [Laughter] Anyway, so I came on the boat, on Stavangerfjord . It was in May, and oh, we had so much fun. It was dancing every night, and a lot of boys from Denmark were onboard. And you know, the Danish people are a little more lively than we are, I think.

Nordic American Voices Page 13 of 20

[45:48] So, and then there was a man from our town, too, that was traveling. He was going to Dakota, and I was going to Alexandria, Minnesota. So, when we got off the boat… I missed Ellis Island by one year, which I kind of wish I had come through Ellis Island. But we came into New York in the evening, and we laid out in the bay there. It was a hot, hot evening, and we were just running around on the decks. We saw all the ferries going around, you know, and the lights. Oh, it was just magical, really.

[46:28] And then of course, the next day, we came into the harbor, and all our luggage was put down, and we got our luggage. And I remember, you know, you have the people that pick up your luggage to take it to the taxi. And so he took it in an elevator, and we had to walk down, and I thought, “Oh, he’s taking our suitcases.” Of course they just laughed at us.

[46:54] So, we took a cab, which I think took us a long way to get to the train station. And we took the train to Chicago, and in Chicago we had to change trains to St. Paul. And in Chicago, there were a lot of people traveling, you know, from the boat, and there was a Norwegian lady helping people so they got on the right train. So she helped us, and we came to St. Paul and we got off the train, and here was this black man saying, “Are you Miss Bjerknes?” And I thought, “How does he know who I am?” I got so scared.

[47:30] Well, apparently she had called ahead and given our names. So we had some time, and then we started walking down the street, and he followed us. And we got very scared. But you know, he was the nicest guy. He wanted to be sure we didn’t get lost. And he said, “Be sure you know where you’re going, and this is the name of the train station.” And then we came back. He was there to help us.

[47:55] So, that’s how I ended up in Alexandria, and my aunt and uncle met me on the train, and I stayed with them all summer and got very spoiled. You know, I hadn’t been spoiled, being in a big family. And they had… they actually just sold their house and were renting a cabin on the lake, Lake Le Homme Dieu. And I had such a good time. I met all my relatives, my mother’s sisters and brothers and all of my cousins.

[48:30] But what amazed me was that they lived in such tiny little houses. You know, we thought in the United States everything was big. They lived… they were just not… at least not all of them were not that well to do. But they were like Sognings. Oh, I just loved them. They were a lot of fun.

Mari-Ann: [48:49] Good.

Mina: [48:49] A lot of fun. So, I stayed there for the summer, and then I got a job. I went into Minneapolis and I got a job working for a family, taking care of a child. A very wealthy family, up on a lake. And my aunt went with me to get a job. When we were interviewing, the gal said, “Well, you

Nordic American Voices Page 14 of 20

know, we have this men’s club, that are looking for young Scandinavian girls.” And my aunt said, “No way.” And I thought, “Oh, that sounds kind of interesting.” But no way. No way. [Laughter]

[49:26] So, I ended up working there, and I was very surprised, because you know, coming from a big family and having help, they didn’t treat us like we treated our family. We had to stay in a part of the building that had no air conditioning, while the other people had air conditioning, of course.

[49:46] So I stayed there for the… well, I stayed there for a few months, and then I decided I didn’t want to do that anymore, so I got a job at Dayton’s, which was the biggest department store in Minneapolis. And there I met another Norwegian girl, Erna, and we’re still friends, still good friends. She comes and sees me, and I go to and visit her. And we moved into a house with a lot of Norwegians. And we had a lot of fun, I’ll tell you. It was just a lot of fun.

[50:21] And then after a year, I really didn’t like that area. It was hot in the summer, and humid, and cold in the winter, but not… you know, with skiing, there wasn’t much. So, I went back home, and I got my job back, and I worked for year, and then my girlfriend Erna came to Seattle. She had an uncle here. And she wrote and said, “You better come to Seattle. It’s so much more fun. People are more fun out here.”

[50:50] So, I thought, “Okay, I’ll do it again.” And I got on Oslofjord , and I came to New York again, and on my way out here I stopped in… well, I stopped at Alexandria, of course. And then I stopped in Montana, where I had a cousin, and I stayed with them for quite some time.

[51:14] And then I came on the bus out here. And my girlfriend was living with two other girls, so I couldn’t live with them. So, I stayed… I got a place to stay in a Swedish boarding house on Capitol Hill. And guess who was staying there? Alf Knutson. That’s where I met Alf.

Mari-Ann: [51:37] Oh, for goodness sakes.

Mina: [51:38] Yeah. And then it was to find a job, you know. My girlfriend worked for a bank, and she said… There was no textile laboratory or anything out here, so I went down to the bank. It was Seattle Trust and Savings Bank. And you know, you could go in and get a job anywhere at that time. It was in 1957, when I came. So I went in there, and the lady I talked to said, “Well, we only have one opening, and that’s for a teller.” So, I thought, “Hm, I wonder what that is.”

[52:14] So she said, “Do you think you’d like to be a teller?” And I said, “Sure.” So I went home to Erna and told her I was going to be a teller, and she told me what it was, and I was petrified. You know, I spoke English, but I didn’t know the terminology and all that stuff. Anyway, so I went to teller training, and we were four girls that were in teller training. The other ones, of course, were all Americans.

Nordic American Voices Page 15 of 20

[52:39] So, one day I went into the bathroom and they didn’t know I was there, and a couple of girls came in and said, “That Norwegian girl? She’s never going to make it. She doesn’t even speak English.” So, I thought, “Oh. Well…” That put me on alert. I thought, “I’ll show you.” So I worked really hard, and I ended up working at Times Square downtown in a bank there. And as it turned out, those two girls didn’t stay very long. [Laughter]

[53:12] So, I got in there, and of course, I didn’t know the difference between dimes and nickels, you know. I put it in… ten cents is a dime. Then somebody came and asked for two bits. And so I learned one thing. If I don’t know what they’re saying, I’ll say, “Please go and see an officer.” So, the customers got to know it, and they were laughing at me. They just thought I was funny.

[53:40] But then I had been there for probably only a month, and this was the first time the bank was held up in years, in Seattle. The girl next to me was held up, and I didn’t know what it was all about, you know. And everybody said, “We’ve been held up, we’ve been held up.” I said, “What’s that?” So, we all thought, “What if he had come to my window? I would have said, ‘Go and see an officer.’” [Laughter]

[54:04] Anyway, so I worked at the bank… Are we running out of time here?

Mari-Ann: [54:07] No, we’re doing good.

Mina: [54:08] So, I worked at the bank, and then Ray, my husband today, came into the bank to borrow money because he was buying a sailboat. And that’s how I met Ray, and I got… Well, I just got to know him then, and then I went to a Norwegian Christmas party, and he was there, and that’s how we met. And the rest is history, I guess.

[54:37] So then we married, and we have three children, Eric, Stein and Siri. And I have four grandkids. Ronan and Eli, who live in Montana. And Fredrik and Julia, who live in Redmond. And we have raised our kids sailing. We have a sailboat; we used to go up [to Canada]. Well, we still do. We still… we have done it all the way up until now. I don’t know if you can do it anymore up in Canada- in the summer, skied in the winter.

Mari-Ann: [55:15] Good.

Mina: [55:16] I’ve done a lot of hiking. And skiing of course.

Mari-Ann: [55:25] Did you work after you were married?

Mina: [55:27] I didn’t work for a long time. My husband actually still has a small company, but I started working for him, actually, in ’82, doing all the bookkeeping.

Nordic American Voices Page 16 of 20

Mari-Ann: [55:37] Oh, good.

Mina: [55:38] And then for a while, I worked in a little boutique out in Gilman Village, which was a lot of fun.

Mari-Ann: [55:46] Which boutique was that?

Mina: [55:47] It was Leather Connection. They had leather jackets, and they had shoes, and gift items. I really enjoyed that. That was a lot of fun.

Mari-Ann: [55:58] That was after your children were bigger?

Mina: [56:00] Yeah. That was after my children were gone.

Mari-Ann: [56:02] Yeah. Good.

Mina: [56:02] And we’re still living in our house. It’s too big. The house is too big; the yard is too big.

Mari-Ann: [56:09] Yeah. When did you buy your home on Mercer Island?

Mina: [56:12] You know, we bought the lot actually before we were married. And you know we paid five thousand dollars for it. And actually I had a down payment. Ray didn’t even… You know, I was the saver. I saved my money. And our mortgage was twenty-five thousand dollars. Can you believe it? It’s hard to believe.

Mari-Ann: [56:38] Yeah. My goodness.

Mina: [56:41] Yeah. And we actually… we pretty much built the house ourselves. My husband was his own contractor, and we did all the painting, and all the staining, and did all the landscaping, and we’re still doing it.

Mari-Ann: [56:54] Well, you have a lovely home, and your garden and all this...

Mina: [56:57] Well, you know, it’s getting old and worn like we are. [Laughter] But we’re thinking of moving pretty soon, I think.

Mari-Ann: [57:06] Okay. Good.

Mina: [57:08] So, that’s basically…

Nordic American Voices Page 17 of 20

Mari-Ann: [57:11] Well, you had a very, very interesting life.

Mina: [57:15] I think so.

Mari-Ann: [57:16] Yeah.

Mina: [57:17] Yeah.

Mari-Ann: [57:17] And here you are, still going strong.

Mina: [57:19] But you know, I’ve had a good life.

Mari-Ann: [57:22] Yes.

Mina: [57:22] And I think back to my childhood, and I think I had the best childhood. I really did.

Mari-Ann: [57:28] Yeah. Much to be grateful for.

Mina: [57:31] There is. There is.

Mari-Ann: [57:36] Anything else that you can think of that you’d like to share?

Mina: [57:39] I can’t think of anything right now. No.

Mari-Ann: [57:42] Well, your children will be very lucky to get your beautiful story, and the museum will, too. So, we thank you very much for sharing your life story with us, Mina.

Mina: [57:50] Yeah. Thank you.

Mari-Ann: [57:54] It’s been wonderful.

Mina: [57:55] Yeah.

Mari-Ann: [57:55] Thanks.

[TAPE BREAK 57:59]

Mari-Ann: [58:00] Mina, let’s go back and have you talk a little bit about your involvement with the Nordic Heritage Museum. You’ve been such a staunch, good, longtime supporter. Tell us a little bit about that.

Nordic American Voices Page 18 of 20

Mina: [58:15] Well, I got involved when we started the different rooms, different nationality rooms, in the Norway room. I heard about it, actually, through a friend of mine, and we came to the first meeting and we started planning the room. And it probably took a year or two before we got it underway. But I remember we had… I think it was Jan Kier that made the plans. And Tore Diflot did all the work. I remember how he was making the different cases.

[58:49] So, and then of course, we started putting together the different displays, and that was really a lot of fun to do. And I worked on that with several people. And then, after we got the room done, then myself and Herbjorg Petersen, and June Bjornstad… what’s their name again? Well, June Bjornstad. The three of us started really doing the work on the room.

[59:22] And we did that, well, until Herbjorg passed away. And then of course, other people came in, like Rønnaug Løkklingholm, who has since passed away, too, and Liv Post, who now can’t do any more. And Elida Teppers. So, we have been working on it now. We’re down to just basically two of us.

[59:45] We all worked on Julefest. I’m in charge of the admission for all the years, and of course the Viking Fest. I’ve done the Norway booth there, and it’s been a lot of fun. I love to come out here. It’s so, so interesting. And I’ve also worked on some special exhibits. I know with Olaf Kvamme when the king was here, we put on an exhibit with different things from when King Olav was here. And of course, I met him. I guess I met all the kings except for King Haakon.

[1:00:31] King Olav, I met him in Norway when I was working in the laboratory in Oslo. And of course, King Harald was here, and Kronprins Haakon was here, so that’s always been interesting. And I hope to keep going. It’s been a lot of fun, and I’m really proud of the museum. I’m proud of what we’ve done here. And of all the good volunteers, you included.

Mari-Ann: [1:01:05] And now we are on the threshold of building…

Mina: [1:01:08] Yes.

Mari-Ann: [1:01:08] Our dream museum.

Mina: [1:01:10] Yes. I just hope I’ll live to see it. And I think I will.

Mari-Ann: [1:01:16] You will.

Mina: [1:01:17] Yeah.

Mari-Ann: [1:01:18] Yeah. Okay, thank you again, Mina. This was wonderful. I know you have been involved with so much at the museum, so we count on you.

Nordic American Voices Page 19 of 20

END OF RECORDING.

Transcription by Alison Goetz.

Nordic American Voices Page 20 of 20