Nordic American Voices Nordic Heritage Museum

Interview of Henrik Sortun February 20, 2010 Auburn, WA Interviewers: Gordon Strand, Mari-Ann Kind Jackson

Mari-Ann : [0:03] Yeah. And we'll just leave this one right in the middle, like we won't touch it.

Gordon : [0:08] Strand: Yeah. OK. Is it going?

Mari-Ann : [0:12] Yeah.

Gordon : [0:13] Today's date is February the 20th, 2010. And I am Gordon Strand. And we are at Auburn, Washington, and we're going to be interviewing Henrik Sortun for the Nordic American Voices Project, of the Nordic Heritage Museum. Henrik, would you repeat your full name, and when you were born, and where?

Henrik Sortun : [0:33] My name is Henrik Olav. "V", with a "V", not an "F". Olav. [laughs] Sortun, and I was born.[September 5, 1922]..Our farm was where we took our name from. It was called Sortun. It was part of a description of that area. [0:56] We had a huge farm, probably a couple of hundred acres. But probably 10 acres of it was tillable. The rest was all mountains and rocks. But it allowed us to graze sheep. Our main income in was from sheep.

[1:14] But my dad came here first, when he was 17 years old. And stayed with - he had an aunt called Ullaland, Marianna Ullaland - and he stayed with them, and worked in logging camps. Then, when he became about 24, he got a letter from his dad saying that if he wanted the farm, he had to come to Norway.

[1:38] The oldest son always got the farm. So he then went to Norway and took over the farm, and [got married and] proceeded to have 10 children. [laughs] And when we came here, nine of them were girls, eight of them. Excuse me. Eight of them were girls. There was eight girls and two boys, at that time when we came here.

[2:00] And we took a little putt-putt boat from Florø [to ]. Our place was called , a very small town which was, the closest town of any consequence was Florø. And from our farm, down to Eikefjord was about seven miles, English miles.

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[2:26] I wasn't old enough, but the girls had to walk when they went to confirmation. They walked all the way down to Eikefjord to go to church for their confirmation. And I don't know what...how to prattle on. But my father said, when he was home, after he could see he wasn't getting anywhere...

[2:48] Norway was a hard country during those days. It was not the affluent country it is today. And he said [my father], he could see he just wasn't gaining anything, and he was struggling to make ends meet. So he came to America again, strictly to make money to bring the family [to America].

[3:06] We had a farm that was fairly self-sustaining. My mother was a working fool, and she had a hired man. And so what he made when he was in America, he could save, and he was pretty frugal. So he worked about four years, and then had saved enough money to bring his family to America.

[3:27] And of course, we left [from] Bergen. There's a cute story there too. We stayed overnight with an aunt in Bergen. And she took us all downtown and bought us hats. She said, "You can't go to America without hats."

[laughter]

[3:38] In our first picture you can see all the girls with their big hats on. And the boys had hats too. So we came across the Atlantic on a boat called the Stavangerfjord. And we went - my father, or somebody, found it was cheaper - we went to Halifax, Canada.

[3:57] We didn't have to go through Ellis Island because, I guess, he had proved that we had all our shots. So we went to Halifax, Canada. Then we went, by rail, across Canada. And the first place we hit the United States was at Blaine, Washington, and that was on Friday the 13th, of September.

[laughter]

[4:15] That's what changed my mind about Friday being an unlucky day. Because it was a lucky day for us.

[4:23] And my father had already purchased the farm in advance, so we had a 40 acre farm up on the east hill of Kent that we moved into almost immediately when we came here. Thank God for that farm, because, also, that was when the Depression hit, so we had some tough years there. But we had that farm, and we raised practically nearly everything we needed, except for sugar and flour. White flour, my mother used to say.

[4:52] We had 40 acres and five of those were in raspberries. So, that was a fairly - even during the Depression, that was a pretty good income. My dad used to take the berries, and then sell NORDIC AMERICAN VOICES Page 2 of 22

them house-to-house, in Seattle. He made more money that way, than he would have if he'd sold them to the canneries.

[sighs]

[5:13] I don't know what else I should prattle on about.

[5:18] Of course, I started school. We were about two weeks late. School had already started, and we had a teacher named Espeseth, Marie Espeseth. And she always talks about how -it was her first year of teaching, and here came 10 kids in there that couldn't speak one word of English. [laughs]

[5:41] And she is still alive. She is 101 years old, and lives in Bend, Oregon. Her name now is Marie Hauge. She was married. Her married name is Hauge. Anyway, I talked to her about three weeks ago, I guess. She's getting kind of feeble, but her memory was good. She remembered me. I tell her, "Why do you like me so well? You kept me in the first grade for two years." [laughs] Because I did spend two years in the first grade.

[6:10] But, to me it was kind of a blessing, because my younger sister - her name was Solveig-- she caught up with me, and so we went all the way through school together, and we were bosom buddies. To me it was a blessing that she caught up with me. We had some great years together.

[6:29] And, let's see. After [grade] school, I went to a high school, called Meridian High School, and graduated there in 1942 with no specific honors, or anything. I was really into athletics. In every season, I loved each athletic event - baseball, football, and basketball. I played all of them. And, because it was a small school, I was also adequately good to be able to play in all of them.

[6:58] Then, when I graduated - within three days after graduating from high school, I was on a fishing boat, on my way to Alaska. [laughs] I went in to talk to skippers, and kind of get acquainted. And, some way - there had been a strike - and the strike got settled. Everybody, of course, was in a hurry to go up, too. I got a call. If I could be in Everett by 10 o'clock, I had a job. So, I got to Everett by 10 o'clock, and I was on my way to Alaska. And I fished and for the first 10 years of my life. Mainly fished halibut.

[7:37] That is one of the reasons I still speak Norwegian fairly well, because during those years, there were always Norwegian newcomers that were fishing with us. And they kept me up, so I could retain my language, and I helped them to speak English.

[7:56] [After two years] I was married, and then had five kids. My wife pleaded with me -- they were all boys -- and Doris pleaded with me to stay home and help her, before they killed each other. [laughs] So then, I quit fishing, and I went to work for Texaco Oil Company. And I worked with Texaco then, until I retired at 65 years old, so that was a good company to work for.

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[8:22] I started out as a truck driver, and became a dispatcher. This was the title. Then, I became an agent. I got transferred up to Anacortes and I kind of ran the sales part of Texaco out of Anacortes. I wasn't at all involved with the refinery. I handled all of the products that came out of that refinery except by sea. Truck and trailers, tank cars, and things like that I handled out of Anacortes. Then I got transferred back to Seattle and ended my career with an oil company called Seattle Fuel. Texaco added their own oil company, and it was right by the Ballard Bridge, Seattle Fuel Company. I managed that then for about five years. Then I retired. So that's pretty much my working year’s story. I really don't know what else is interesting in life.

[9:30] I’ve belonged to a Kiwanis club. It's a community service organization that I've belonged to since 1964 I think it was. They sponsor a youth group called Key Club which is a high school youth group. I have been working with Key Club also since 1964. I still work with them at Kent Meridian High School. I have 96 paid members this year. It's the biggest Key Club I've ever had. Very active group. Amazing group of kids really. Kent Meridian is a very diverse school. Out of 96 about 85 of them are Asian kids. There are a couple of blacks and a few whites. They are great kids, they really are.

[10:17] We are involved right now in a big fundraising deal for Haiti which was, I guess, a mistake on my part. We didn't collect food, but we collected clothing. I bet I've got a thousand items of clothing in my garage and nobody will take them. They say it is too expensive to ship it over there. They want money so they can buy stuff over there. I've been to St. Vincent DePaul, to Goodwill, Red Cross. None of them want it. [laughs] I even tried to talk them into taking it and giving me at least a couple hundred bucks for it so I can send some money.

[10:56] These kids worked so hard to do this. Now we are going to have a garage sell at Kent Meridian High School. We are going to have a two day garage sale and we are going to sell this. I'm sure I've got at least a thousand items of clothing. We figure we will start with 50 cents, a dollar, and two dollar. Whatever we make, that money is going to go Haiti. The kids have done all this, not me.

[11:28] So, I don't know, anything that I skipped?

Gordon : [11:31] What was your dad's name?

Henrik : [11:32] My dad's name was Martin [Sortun].

Gordon : [11:33] And your mother?

Henrik : [11:35] My mother was Olianne.

Gordon : [11:36] Olianne.

Henrik : [11:37] Olianne. NORDIC AMERICAN VOICES Page 4 of 22

Gordon : [11:39] And where was she from in Norway? Tell us about her life.

Henrik : [11:43] She was from Romsdal which is in the same community kind of as we grew up in, although probably five or six miles apart. Romsdal is right on top of the hill before you go down into . That was the old road from Florø. You used to have to go through Romsdal and go down. Now they built this new tunnel from Førde and that tunnel, by the way, the road that comes out of that tunnel comes right across our farm on the hillside. It didn't take away any of the tillable land. I have a son to a double cousin that has our farm in Norway so it is still in the family really. [12:29] It was a kind of a little river valley. It was very small river or a big creek that ran along one side and a huge mountain on the other side. That is kind of another memory I have on Jonsoksdag, which is mid summers day before that there was old goat barn up there with a cement floor in it. All of the people in the whole neighborhood gathered wood. We had this huge bonfire, and we'd have kind of a picnic up there. It would last all night. Half of them got drunk. [laughs] That's where all the people in that neighborhood gathered, up on that goat barn on our hill.

[13:16] My memory of Norway is not too good. I remember we always had a lot of snow. We had so much snow, that you never let the critters out of the barn. You had them in the barn the whole winter, the sheep and the cows. We had enough cows for our own use. We didn't really sell milk. We used to have to heat water and take down to the cows. I remember we had a huge caldron. I don't know what it was made of, a cast iron type of caldron. We'd build a fire under it to heat the water up. We had those straps you'd put on your shoulders. I would carry two buckets [at a time] of water down to the critters. It was almost like going in a tunnel. There was so much snow that when you shoveled it up on each side the snow was really almost over my head. [laughs] I kind of remember that.

[14:07] I don't have too many memories of Norway. I remember the trip like it was yesterday really. It was an adventure to me, that whole trip. The girls were all sad and crying, and I was happy as a lark. [laughs] Also, I remember when we started school the girls had a tough time too. They had the old fashioned clothes. My mother made all the clothes that they wore. Heavy wool skirts...they used to get teased so bad by the boys.

[14:43] I had an older brother, his name was Einar, he died in World War II. He was a feisty guy. He used to get in fights all the time protecting the girls. I wasn't going to fight. Let them tease the girls. [laughs] Life was a bowl of cherries to me during those years, really.

Mari-Ann : [15:02] Will you tell us the story that you mentioned earlier about what your mother said about leaving.

Henrik : [15:09] Yeah. This may be a story, but it's something that went around our family and I think it's kind of cute. My mother did not want to go to America. She was leaving her father who

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was getting really old. She wasn't very anxious to go. She would have gone anyway, I'm sure. She would have followed my dad anywhere. They were a very loving couple. [15:31] But anyway my dad supposedly said to her, "Do you want these girls marrying the boys in this neighborhood?" And she said, "No, let's go to America". [laughs] My mother really never [became American]... she could speak English. She had all these kids and didn't get out very much. She was pretty much Norwegian all the way through. My dad was American first and Norwegian second.

[15:57] My mother was Norwegian first and American second. My dad loved this country. He said it was the land of opportunities. He was a hard-working guy too. Nice guy, though, nice guy. My mother was a sweetheart. She had ten children and I never heard her raise her voice once. I remember a lot her pet sayings. My dad would get after us for something, and she'd say "Oh, Martin, they're only kids ya know". [laughs] She was a sweetheart.

[16:31] I don't know, do you have the names of all the girls?

Gordon : [16:34] Why don't you give us...

Gordon : [16:38] If you could, describe them, what their personalities...

Henrik : [16:44] The two oldest were twins. They were Herbjorg, Hulda. They were probably as different as any two people could be. Herbjorg very interested in life and outgoing and studied and Hulda was just meek and mild. She married also when she came here and had two children. That's all, two boys. Herbjorg, of course, married Einar Pedersen and had that family. She was always involved in fishing and in the home community in Ballard, really. Anyway, Herbjorg and Hulda. [17:22] Then the next one was Magnhild. She was also married. She moved to Idaho. Her husband went to Idaho and they farmed over in Idaho. My mother's brother was named Ed Ramsdal and had a lot of land in Idaho and became a multi-millionaire. He didn't farm his land, so some of my sisters and their families would go over there and farm the land for him on a share basis. His name was Ed Ramsdal. He left an estate of 35 million and came to this country with about five bucks in his pocket.

[18:07] That's another story too. They said he wanted to come to America and his dad wouldn't give him money to go to America because he didn't want him to go. He didn't want him to leave. Then Ed went to another uncle and got money from him. My grandfather made him take that money back and he gave him the money. He came to Idaho. He had two, I think they were uncles but I'm not sure, that owned farms over there and he worked with them. They were much older.

[18:38] When they died, one of them left his farm to Ed and the other one left his money to Ed, so he had a good start. During the depression, he was - never got married and so he had money. I think he was generous enough, but if people were losing their farm he would buy it from them rather than they lost it for taxes. So he accumulated a lot of land.

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[19:11] The next one was Klara. Klara is still alive. Her and I are the only two living that came from Norway. She lives in the Norse Home in Ballard. She is 95 years old. She just had her birthday.

[19:26] The next one was named Tordis. She also married a fisherman named Roland Linvog. She died of Lou Gehrig's disease which is a horrible illness.

[19:41] The next one was Kjellaug. Kjellaug stayed around Kent. She married a guy named Ralph Posey and had a boy and a girl, two very nice kids that I still have great relationships with.

[19:56] There was Asluag. She also, her and her husband, ran a farm for Ed in Idaho.

[20:05] Then there was Einar, my brother Einar. He got killed in World War II. He was in the navy. He was on an oil tanker that got bombed and he died there.

Gordon : [20:21] In the Pacific?

Henrik : [20:22] Yeah. And then there was me. And there was my other sister named Solveig. She was the one that - her and I went off after school together. Great gal. She died of Alzheimer's. My wife also died of Alzheimer's, so I've had my share of Alzheimer's. Believe me, I hate that illness with a passion. [20:50] I don't know if I can remember anything else to talk about.

Gordon : [20:54] Did you all, pretty much, when they married stay in this area?

Henrik : [20:58] Pretty much, even though they went to Idaho and farmed they usually came back. Kent was where we stayed. Most of them lived in Seattle. There was two of them that farmed in Idaho, Aslaug and Magnhild were two that farmed in Idaho. I think they still thought of Kent as their home base.

Gordon : [21:23] And who continued the farming on your father's property?

Henrik : [21:27] When my dad got too old, we actually sold part of that farm. We sold part of it, there is a school on called Martin Sortun Elementary. We sold 20 acres to the Kent school system and they built the school on there. The majority of the farm we bought from my father but with the idea that he could live there as long as he wanted to. There were seven of us children who went together and bought the farm for my dad. Eventually it all got sold. There was a greenhouse there, and the city of Kent owns all that land right now. They bought it for various shops and stuff. The school plus the city of Kent has all that acreage.

Mari-Ann : [22:19] And you are still living in Kent?

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Henrik : [22:21] I still live in Kent. I did go to Anacortes for a while - in 1963 my job took me to Anacortes. I was in Anacortes from ‘63 to ‘78. Then I got transferred back to Seattle. My job took me back to Seattle. I was thinking then about buying something in Seattle on Green Lake so I didn't have to drive so far. But my folks were still alive and they were in their latter stages so I thought it would be nice if I stayed, so I came right back to Kent and bought a house pretty close to where they were. [22:57] My mother lived to be 97. I have her genes, because I always brag that I don't have an ache or a pain anywhere in my body. I remember her saying that when she was 97 years old. She was so fortunate. She had no aches or pains.

[23:13] My dad lived to be 94. He was younger than my mother when he died. That's also a story in itself in a way. After my mother died my dad lived on the farm. We used to buy a calf every year, and my dad would raise the calf. I bought it and he would raise it. In the fall we would butcher and I got half and he got half. So, this one time we used to have a butcher that came to the farm and did the butchering right on your farm, and then we would take it somewhere and have it cut and wrapped.

[23:50] So we were going to have a guy come on this Saturday and I was up helping my dad get that critter in the barn and be ready for this guy to come. I remember it was pouring down rain that night and I told my dad, "You're amazing, Pop. You're lighter on your feet than I am". I could see he was kind of proud of that. I went in the house, sat down, warmed up some food. He started eating and I left.

[24:18] After I got home I got a call from his butcher saying that he couldn't make it the next day. I decided not to call my dad. It was about nine o'clock. I went up the next morning to let my dad know we had to let the critter back out. I drove up the driveway. My father always sat right by a window so you could see him when you drove up the driveway. My dad is sitting there just like always. I walk in the house, and he is stone dead.

[24:45] He had died of a massive stroke, probably right after I had left on Friday night because he hadn't eaten anything and he is sitting there. He must not have suffered because if he did he would have been crawling on his hands or knees or something. He is sitting exactly the way I left him. When I drove up the driveway, I looked in the window and he was sitting there just like Pop.

[25:06] Anyway, when you're that old it's not a bad way to go either. He was 94 years old. He couldn't have suffered very much, like I say.

[25:17] Those are memories.

Gordon : [25:23] What sort of traditions did the family maintain from Norway?

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Henrik : [25:28] Oh yeah. I remember this on the questionnaire. We always celebrated the 17th of May, of course. We still do. Then after my father died, the Saturday closest to my father's birthday which was in August we have a huge get-together of the family, kids, and everything. We did that at a place on Lake Goodwin that Herbjorg owned. We have probably up to 100 people for that. When you were 10 originally it doesn't take too many to create 100. We still have that. [26:07] We celebrate that day, and then Christmas Eve is usually our big.... We still have our big lutefisk dinner every year. I buy the lutefisk. We went through thirty pounds of lutefisk this year. [laughs] I have it one year, and I have a niece named Susan Stromer who was Kjellaug’s daughter. She lives on the lake also. She has a big, nice house, so she has it one year and I have it the next year.

[26:32] We have a full sit-down dinner of probably up to 90 people on Christmas Eve. So Christmas Eve and the 17th of May are our...And then my father's birthday we still have this reunion at Lake Goodwin every year. We have a great turnout there too.

Mari-Ann : [26:52] Did you all maintain your Norwegian language?

Henrik : [26:56] I think, yeah, I think I probably had as little of it as...my younger sister couldn't speak English. But the rest of the people I'm sure they all retained the language. But the one thing when you were with my mother you spoke Norwegian. You didn't speak English because she didn't speak it very well and she was always kind of embarrassed that she didn't speak it well. She used to send me in the barn to get bottles instead of jars. She couldn't say jars. [laughs] There is no J in the Norwegian language. [27:35] I don't know. Our family life on the farm was really, even though it was the depression and a tough life, I don't think any of us kids.... We didn't suffer. We had food every day. We played games in the haystacks. My memories of youth are very pleasant, really very pleasant. No hard feelings at all and no problems.

[28:02] I think we were also, still are and were a fairly amazing family. I know after my folks died we had a day at the farm where everybody took what they wanted and we kind of had a lottery. We put different things in different categories and we'd draw lottery to see who would get what. I remember that day so well because, usually there would be a lot of arguments but we got along so well. I was so proud of the family that day.

[28:39] My youngest sister was born here, and she was the last one to leave there. She was quite a bit younger than the rest of us. I remember very well every time something came up she had to have that. She couldn't make up her mind. She'd walk up the driveway and cry. [laughs] So I told the people, "Let Sonya have what she wants because she has got fonder memories of it than you guys have." Anyway, we got along really well that day I thought. I was really proud of the whole family. We didn't have a bad argument all day.

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Mari-Ann : [29:12] Your children, do they maintain some of the Norwegian traditions outside of these gathering times.

Henrik : [29:20] No, not very much really. They always attend our Christmas. We have Christmas Eve like I said. Then Christmas Day... I have one daughter. I have five boys and one girl. She's the one who did stuff. We have Christmas Day. She lives in Anacortes. She never moved. She was born up there when I was up there. [29:47] There really isn't much... I'm kind of, in some ways, disappointed that they don't take too much interest in the old days and ways. Let's see, I was going to think of another thing. When we first came here we had talked about, they had 17th of May of course. Also, most of the area where I came from, where I settled rather, where we settled rather, was in Kent on East Hill, the church there had nothing but Norwegian services on Sunday, because there were that many Norwegians there. That went on for four or five years, and then it became over other Sunday that it was Norwegian.

[30:31] We came from, I came from, but I think Naustdal was sort of a key area around there. They had these Naustdal picnics every year usually at, what was the name of it, on Lake Sammamish, Vasa Park. Every year they would have a Naustdal picnic. There were a lot of people there. Usually it was at Vasa park, but sometimes it would be at somebody’s house. But usually it was at Vasa Park.

Gordon : [31:02] So there was a Norwegian community around here in this area?

Henrik : [31:05] Yeah, oh yeah. On East Hill in Kent like I said, there were solid Norwegian immigrants there. The (unintelligible) and Espeseths and Moe and Tim Swann. I don't know if you remember Tim Swann. That's a Norwegian name too. There was Hansens, Ellingsens...

Gordon: [31:24] Farmers, all of them?

Henrik : [31:25] Pardon?

Gordon : [31:26] All farmers?

Henrik : [31:27] All farmers, or had farms. Almost everything was divided into 40 acre farms during that time. A lot of them worked...my father was a logger by trade.

Gordon : [31:38] -hmm.

Henrik : [31:39] Yeah, he was a faller in the woods. During the depression there wasn't much logging going on so that's when he farmed and we did the berries. Usually when he was working my mother was the farmer, not my father. [laughs] She was a working fool. The raspberries were good to us. We had a huge field of raspberries. My dad took the berries in and sold them house to house in Seattle and made a lot more money than if he sold him to the cannery.

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Gordon : [32:10] Where did he go in Seattle?...

Henrik : [32:12] Yeah know, I don't really know. He just would pick a neighborhood with solid houses and go door to door and sell raspberries. He said one time the police came and shut him down because he didn’t’ have a permit. So he said he drove around the block and sat for about 10 minutes and then went right back. [laughs] He said he had to do it. He had to have the money.

Gordon : [32:36] You said when you graduated you went into fishing.

Henrik : [32:38] Yeah.

Gordon : [32:39] Why was that? Why...

Henrik : [32:41] I guess it was heritage kind of. You know, Norwegians were fishermen. I had no yen to go to college for some reason or the other. I just... fishing was a good job too. I fished for about 10 years then, like I said, I went to work for a Texaco Oil Company. Great company to work for.

Gordon : [33:04] Do you remember any of the boats that you were on or any of the stories that come out of that experience?

Henrik : [33:10] I fished with a guy named Anton Hogland. I don't know if you've heard of him. The name of the boat was the North Pacific. I fished with him. I fished with Einar for a while too on the Susan. His first boat was called the Susan. I fished with him too. I fished halibut then. We used to fish in the winter time. There was an area there we would fish shark. I don't know if you've heard about the area. [33:39] There was something called the soupfin shark that had liver that was so potent that they used it instead of cod liver oil, the same thing as cod liver oil. Sharks had huge livers. It was a bonanza for a while. Guys really made good money fishing shark, the ones that started it and if you were lucky enough to really get shark you did really well.

[34:03] During the war I fished year round because if I didn't I was going in the army. [laughs] So I stayed on the boat. I fished winter and summer.

Gordon : [34:15] And why was that?

Henrik : [34:16] Basically...

Gordon : [34:17] Was that exempt?

Henrik : [34:17] Yeah, it was exempt. Yeah. I was actually an engineer on the boat so you were exempt - skippers and engineers were exempt from the army. I actually ran the engine. I ran the engine with Einar. His first boat was called the Susan. Then he built one called the Atomic. I don't know if you heard about that. That was a beautiful boat. It was 72 foot. The first year he

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had it, it sunk. [34:46] They were fishing shark in the winter. I wasn't with them. I was on the Susan at the time, his other boat. They were up off of Vancouver Island somewhere fishing shark and somehow they took an odd wave and just flipped the boat sideways. It didn't have enough balast or something either maybe, but they flipped on the side and they could not get the boat up again. So it sunk.

[35:12] The first year he had it, it sunk. Beautiful boat. They called it the Atomic. Then, of course, Einar became quite a fisherman. He had the Vesteraalen and has had interests in five other good sized boats – ninety footers. He always had the philosophy that if you build a boat, the skipper of that boat had to be a half owner in it. That way he figured they had more interest. He was half - he owned half in five other boats besides the Vesteraalen. That family still has those boats.

[35:50] They have good income from those boats. They also had a processor that they fish for this processor and during the winter when they make surimi. It was after I quit fishing they started this. They fished a fish called pollock and then they grind that up and mix it up some way so it's almost like crab meat. It's called surimi, and there is a big market for that in Japan and China. I didn't fish that type of fish. I did only halibut. In the winter we used to drag until that shark era came along. But that didn't last too long because they started with synthetic vitamins instead of fish oil for pills. That only lasted three or four years, that shark bonanza. I had one really good year on that.

Mari-Ann : [36:49] Did you ever go back to Norway to visit?

Henrik : [36:52] I've been there five times. I went first in 1972. I went back with one of my boys and his family. His name was Gary. He was an architect. He kind of talked me into it, and I'm glad he did because we had a great trip. [37:13] I was back the year before last, in fact. That was kind of a strange deal. They had a reunion in Naustdal- it wasn’t a family reunion - of anybody who immigrated from Naustdal after 1900. Believe it or not, I was the only true immigrant there. The rest of them were all sons or daughters of immigrants. [laughs] I got recognized as being the only true immigrant in that reunion which is kind of strange. I had to give a little talk there too and stuttered and stammered and talked a little bit about America and our trip.

Mari-Ann : [37:50] What changes did you see there then? Huge changes?

Henrik : [37:54] Oh, huge changes, yeah. When we left there were no automobiles yet. We still had a horse and buggy. We didn't have, even though my father built that house, we didn't have inside plumbing and no running water in the house. We had to bring water in. We used that same cauldron that we heated water for the animals, we used that for our bathing too. [laughs] [38:22] There were massive changes in Norway. In 1972 I don't know if they were that affluent, but Norway right now is more affluent than this country. They have more goodies than we have, I

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think. Like I say, I've been back there five times. I'm going again in the spring. I am going to take the last of my children. I am going to go in June. My oldest boy is the last one. His name also is Henrik. He has one daughter and his wife. We are going to go in June. That will probably be my last Norway trip.

[38:56] I've been doing a lot of traveling. I have another son named Wayne, he's number four. He was a teacher and a coach at Capital High School. They were very successful and won the state championship a couple of years and did really well. Him and his wife have been for the last five or six years, they teach. They taught in Shanghai for two years in what they call an international school. They sign up for two years. I don't know why they have to be two years. They were two years in Shanghai, so I got to go to Shanghai twice and visit with them and travel. I saw China. Then they went to Lisbon Portugal for two years, so I got to go to Portugal twice and visit with them there too. Now they are in Cairo, Egypt. I have not been to Cairo, but I might go there too before they are through.

[39:53] China was fascinating to me. We took a, cruise ship up the Yangtze river almost all the way to Tibet. That was a neat trip. We went up through the farm country and saw how China was 100 years ago. People were out there plowing with oxen and women out there hoeing with a ho.

[40:14] Next year we took a trip down further and climbed the China wall. We had a little Chinese man, he was smaller than I, as our guide. He took us up there. He kept pushing me up the hill. We climbed the steepest part of that wall. There were stairs going up some, so you kind of had the feeling you might fall backwards so he was behind me pushing me. "You tough guy, you tough guy" he'd say and got me to the top. Then when I got to the top he said "now when you get home you tell everybody to bow to you. Only great men climb to the top of the China wall". He was kind of a comedian. [laughs]

[40:55] I've had a fascinating life in a way, a pretty full life. Life is good. That's my mantra, that life is good.

Gordon : [41:05] Did your folks belong to any organizations or specific churches?

Henrik : [41:10] No. They weren't very much joiners. We did belong to Zion Lutheran church. We all went there. The ones that were adult enough, we were baptized or confirmed at Zion. They weren't much for joining, I think they were too busy. [laughs] They weren't much for joining anything. And my mother was very shy and soft spoken. She never got out very much.

Gordon : [41:44] What was the house like with that many kids?

Henrik : [41:47] We had a pretty good sized - we had one, two three, four bedrooms. One of them was kind of a loft. My brother and I slept in this loft room. It wasn't very long after we came that the older girls all got work. They did housework. They were nannies in various places

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in Seattle and then Auburn, the older ones. So there weren't that many of us at home really not too long after we came, especially during the Depression. [42:18] They were a great help to my dad too. He didn't have to supply food, and they actually gave him some of their money, in fact. This farm he had bought, he was making payments on that farm yet. He kind of struggled with that. He was so afraid that he might... If we lost that farm we would have really been in trouble. Because, we could raise darn near everything we ate. My mother said the only thing we bought was sugar and white flour.

Gordon : [42:49] So how has the valley changed since then?

Henrik : [42:53] It's changed a lot really. We weren't valley. We were up on the hill. Of course the whole Kent valley is nothing but industry. It used to be a great farming valley. They raised lettuce. It was known for a while as the lettuce capital of the world, in fact, Kent valley was. Now it's almost solid industry. I don't think there is a dairy farm left down there in the Kent valley. I don't think there are any on East Hill either, to tell you the truth. [43:33] When we first came there was very little small acreage. Almost everything was divided into 40 acre tracks. Like I told you, the church was all Norwegian for years really.

Mari-Ann : [43:56] Have you been involved in Norwegian organizations yourself?

Henrik : [44:02] Well, I belong to the Sister Cities. We bring Norwegians here, two of them, and we send two American kids to Norway. I belong to that organization.

Mari-Ann : [44:14] Is that the Seattle-Bergen Sister City or Kent?

Henrik : [44:18] This is Kent Sister City. It is the same thing as Bergen Sister City, but we are sister cities with Naustdal or Forde. That area is known as .

Mari-Ann : [44:32] Oh yeah.

Henrik : [44:34] Naustdal, Forde, and Eikefjord was in that too. It was the Sunnfjord commune they called it. That's why I was late here. We had a meeting today with the Sister Cities deal. I've been working with them for a long time. We also once in a while get a high school soccer team to come and play soccer here and then we send a team to Norway too.

Mari-Ann : [45:05] Any other Norwegian organizations?

Henrik : [45:09] No. I do belong here to the Sons of Norway. That's the only organization. We do always celebrate somewhat the 17th of May.

Mari-Ann : [45:24] .

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Henrik : [45:25] I usually go into Ballard. In fact, this was our 80th year since we came here, so we had a special, probably had 20 of our family march in a parade in Ballard because this was our 80th anniversary of coming to America.

Gordon : [45:40] In 2010?

Henrik : [45:44] No that was last year. We came here in 1929, so it was 2009 that was our 80th anniversary. We had a pretty good gathering. Einar Pedersen was in that also. We carried a banner. So, anything else?

Gordon : [46:12] So Herbjorg. How did she become the matriarch of the family?

Henrik : [46:18] I think it was just her nature. She was curious. She wanted to learn. I remember her when I was a child even, she went to night school. She was the only one of the girls who went to night school. We always teased her because she tried to use big words. [laughs] That's kind of another story. [46:45] We had raspberries, you know. We picked raspberries. It was kind of neat. The girls would maybe go to a movie the night before and they would narrate that whole movie. As we'd move down the row they would narrate. We couldn't afford to go to the show all of us, so the ones that went would tell us the whole story of that movie. It was kind of interesting. I remember that when I was picking berries.

Mari-Ann : [47:14] Herbjorg was a beautiful lady.

Henrik : [47:16] She was, she really was. She was by far the most interesting of all our sisters. She was anxious to learn. She always did things to increase her knowledge and learning. She remembered so much. She was so much more interesting too. I remember if any of us had any questions about Norway, you went to Herbjorg. You didn't go to anybody else. She would remember. Of course she was the oldest too.

Mari-Ann : [47:46] Now what was her connection with Bird Ivas Thadone?

Henrik : [47:51] That was Einar’s, her husband's.

Mari-Ann : [47:54] Oh, OK.

Henrik : [47:55] That was her husband's home place. Yeah. [48:00] We did have two reunions in Norway. One of them years ago when Einar was still alive. That was in Eikefjord. There was a little church community building that we had, and almost our whole family went to that one. Then we had, maybe five or six years ago in Forde, another reunion. The one we went to Norway was more just our family. The one in Forde was more all the relatives.

[48:36] There was a clan called Fitsha. They were 12 kids, and they were my dad's first cousins and yet they were my age or younger. It's kind of a funny relationship. They are still alive, most

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of them. Neat people, again. There were three of them that were school teachers. They are the ones that put on this last reunion in Forde. There was a great turnout. I should have brought some pictures. I've got a bunch of pictures of that.

[49:11] I think we were all still alive then. Maybe not. Manghildl was the first one to die. She died in kind of an odd accident. She got lost. She went out to visit one of her sons. It was in the winter, and we had a lot of snow. It was right there on East Hill, and she was going to visit her son. She went down the long, long road and got stuck in the snow and couldn't get out of there. She actually tried to walk out to the road, and they found her dead. I don't know if she had a heart attack, anxiety, or what it was, but she died. She was the first one in the family to die.

Mari-Ann : [49:58] Have you joined the Nordic Heritage Museum?

Henrik : [50:01] I have.

Mari-Ann : [50:02] Good, thank you.

Henrik : [50:04] Yeah, yeah. I have.

Mari-Ann : [50:04] We appreciate that.

Henrik : [50:06] I haven't been very good at attending meetings, but I did join it. I forget when, probably three or four years since I went to the last meeting. I went to one where they were auctioning off things. I have a neat blanket that I bought that somebody made. [laughs]

Mari-Ann : [50:23] Well, we have the next auction coming up May 2nd, so maybe you will come again.

Henrik : [50:27] I probably will now that you remind me of it. May 2nd. I'll try and put that on my calendar.

Gordon : [50:33] And remind Susan too.

Mari-Ann : [50:34] Yes.

Henrik : [50:37] Yeah. Susan and John are neat people.

Mari-Ann : [50:39] Yeah, they are. You've had and still have a very wonderful family.

Henrik : [50:44] I always felt that way really. I was always very proud of the whole family. Neat family. We stayed together a lot, a lot of years.

Mari-Ann : [50:56] And the ones I know have been wonderful supports in all ways of the Nordic Museum which is...

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Henrik : [51:05] Herbjorg especially. Tordis lived in Ballard, and so did Klara. Klara like I say is still alive and lives at the Norse Home. She is 95, just had her 95th birthday. She is doing pretty well.

Gordon : [51:18] Klara?

Henrik : [51:19] Klara, yeah, with a K. Her and I are the only two left of the immigrants who came. Then I have a younger sister and a brother who were born in this country. My mother was actually pregnant with a brother called Al when she came to this country.

Mari-Ann : [51:39] And do they live...

Henrik : [51:40] They live in Auburn.

Mari-Ann : [51:41] Oh, I see.

Henrik : [51:44] In fact, this is Sonya's church, my younger sister. She is very active in this church.

Mari-Ann : [51:52] Very good.

Henrik : [51:53] Anything else.

Gordon : [51:54] I think that's great. At some point I think we would like to maybe copy some of your pictures.

Henrik : [52:03] I have some pretty good things.

Gordon: [52:04] You know, things that will kind of highlight your story here.

Henrik : [52:07] Yeah. I should have looked at this earlier because we were talking about childhood memories. I remember the snow and we actually skied. We had very crude skis. But this hill behind us was a fabulous ski hill, so we all learned how to ski coming down that hill. In the winter that whole hillside was kind of muskegy. You walked in it, you walked in water. It would freeze in the winter, and we used to sit on our butt and go down [laughter] with all these long runs. We had.

Mari-Ann : [52:46] Now was that here on the Camp East Hills or was that in Norway?

Henrik : [52:48] No, this was in Norway. This was in Norway.

Mari-Ann : [52:49] Oh good.

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Henrik : [52:52] Our.. my dad built that house that we had then but he made a mistake. He built that house right up against this hillside and that's where the sun came up. So we wouldn't get sun until mid-afternoon. [laughter] He always talked about how dumb he was when he built that house where he did because we were in the shade all the time so. I have, well I'll tell you. I have, I had some double cousins, my mother's brother married my dad's sister so those children were our double cousins. [53:29] We always figured they were almost like sisters and brothers because they had blood on both sides. So there were three girls there, they're all dead by the way. But one of their children, his name is Arthur Orbust, now has our farm yet back in Norway so. But he has a new house. The old house burnt down some way or the other.

[53:51] But they're also a very nice family, I always can come and stay. I have enough relatives back there I don't have to stay in hotels when I go home but in fact I've got a, I have one of these Ficha, there's one called Inga Ficha lives in Naustdal, I just got an email. He heard I was coming to Norway and he says, in his email he said, "You're welcome to stay any time you want to but I don't cook." [laughter] And he had a couple of exclamation marks after the "don't cook." [laughter]

Gordon : [54:24] I wonder what he does then. Does he go to restaurants?

Henrik : [54:27] I suppose he cooks for himself.

Gordon : [54:29] Oh.

Henrik : [54:29] But I guess he means he didn't want to cook for the whole tribe, so.

Mari-Ann : [54:34] You mentioned that you escaped the military service. Did any of your family members, were they in the military here in this country?

Henrik : [54:43] My brother, Einar, was in the military.

Mari-Ann : [54:46] Oh yeah and you mentioned he was lost.

Henrik : [54:48] And he was the one, he got lost on an oil tanker, yeah. So, but none of the, of course there was, my youngest brother was too young to go in the service, so. Einar served about four years before in the South Pacific, I don't know a tanker, and then they got bombed and he didn't make it so. He always used to laugh about, he said right on the bow of these oil tankers they had kind of a large machine gun. [laughter] You know he thought that was kind of a joke. What would that do against this battleship or anything?

Gordon : [55:23] During the war, did you hear anything after the war about how your family there fared or?

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Henrik : [55:31] No I had, I had one of my, these double cousins I had was married to, what the heck was their name? Vian, Vyan, Vian? And he was supposedly in the underground you know and they, he was in that group that bombed that dam on the, you know the Germans were going to use.

Gordon : Hard water? [55:57]

Henrik : [55:58] Yeah. And then Norwegians came down and they went over on skis and bombed that dam or set dynamite in the river so they couldn't do it. And he was supposedly involved with that group. His name was Arthur Vian, yeah, he's dead now. All that clan is dead. All the, I don't think there's anybody in my generation kind of, still alive.

Mari-Ann : [56:24] How did your parents or family receive the new about your brother?

Henrik : [56:31] We got a telegram. A regular telegram stating that he had been killed and he had survived some way and he was in the hospital. But he had burns all over, so he didn't live. But they sent us an email or a telegram stating that he was in this hospital and, but that he was not expected to live. And then we finally got a message that he had passed away so.

Mari-Ann : [57:01] Was his body brought back here then?

Henrik : [57:03] Mm-hm, mm-hm. Yeah. He's buried out in the same cemetery with all our family.

Gordon : [57:08] Which is, where is that?

Henrik : [57:09] It's in Kent actually, up on the hill. What the heck do they call that hill? Boy, my memory's getting terrible. I can't remember. But there's a big cemetery down on the hill, east, a little bit east and south of Kent, a big cemetery. [57:29] We're all buried there. My folks and, I think, everybody so far that has passed away. Except maybe, Tordis. I think Linvog took care of her body. I don't think she's buried with us, rest of us.

Gordon : [57:50] OK.

Mari-Ann : [57:51] Well thank you very much, Mr. Sortun. This was wonderful. We learned a lot. And if you come up with other things, other memories, or so on, that you think we should know. Please give us a call, and we'll come back and interview you again.

Henrik : [laughs] [58:05] I don't know. I think I've gone over pretty much all of it. We do, I'll tell you, we still have our lutefisk dinner every Christmas Eve.

Mari-Ann : [58:16] Yes.

Henrik : [58:17] I bought 30 pounds of lutefisk. We ate quite a bit of lutefisk. NORDIC AMERICAN VOICES Page 19 of 22

Gordon : [58:19] You do the cooking too?

Henrik : [58:20] No. I don't do the cooking. [laughter]

[58:21] No. I buy it. I usually buy it a couple of days ahead of time and soak it. I usually soak my lutefisk in fresh water a couple of times.

Mari-Ann : [58:30] Yeah.

Gordon : [58:31] Oh yeah.

Henrik : [58:33] It becomes a little firmer when you cook it, when you do it that way.

Mari-Ann : [58:36] Yeah.

Gordon : [58:36] Where do you go and get it?

Henrik : [58:38] I buy it at a place called, "Johnny's Dock, " in Tacoma.

Gordon : [58:41] Boy.

Mari-Ann : [58:42] Oh, yeah.

Henrik : [58:43] I've been doing that for years now. I've been supplying the lutefisk for years for this clan. But it's kind of pleasant. The younger kids, like I say. Klara and I are the only two left, like I say, of that generation almost. And we still go through 30 pounds. So the younger generation are learning to eat it. [laughs]

Mari-Ann : [59:01] Good.

Henrik : [59:02] I think they do it out of respect for us, and tradition more than anything else. I don't know. There's Sonya, my youngest sister that was born here, is really into sewing and rosemaling stuff.

Mari-Ann : [59:24] Oh.

Henrik : [59:25] She's pretty good at that. And Klara was too. And we had lots of sweet breads. They're all great pastry bakers.

Mari-Ann : [59:35] What about your wife? We didn't speak very much about her. Was she an American of Nordic descent?

Henrik : [59:40] No. Not at all. In fact, she was a high school sweetheart. And she was known to be part Indian. Her mother had come from part Indian. But I remember this real well. That's

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another kind of joke, because this got discussed one time at the dinner table. And my dad said, "Yeah. It would be just like Henrik to bring home a squaw." [laughter]

[60:06] And Doris knew about this too. So when we got married, they got along really well. But Doris used to tease my dad about that all the time, but she got along real well with my dad. They were good friends.

Mari-Ann : [60:22] Good.

Henrik : [60:24] Yeah.

Mari-Ann : [60:24] So when did you get married?

Henrik : [60:28] Two years after I graduated from high school, so it would have been '44 when I got married.

Mari-Ann : [60:33] And you were how old then? About 20?

Henrik : [60:35] Let's see. I was 18 . . . Yeah. I was actually a year older. I started at seven, which most people started earlier than that. And then I spent two years in the first grade. So I was always a year older than most of my classmates. [60:51] But it didn't bother me at all. All the way through school, life to me, was a bowl of cherries.

[laughter]

Mari-Ann : [60:59] I can tell. I can just tell.

Henrik : [61:01] Yeah.

Mari-Ann : [61:02] Well again, thank you very much.

Henrik : [61:03] Oh, you're very welcome.

Mari-Ann : [61:04] We appreciate your time. . .

Henrik : [61:06] You're welcome.

Mari-Ann : [61:07] ...and your stories.

Gordon : [61:09] Yeah. It was fun to hear. I heard a lot of that with Herbjorg too. Yeah.

Henrik : [61:13] Yeah. Like I say, I miss Herbjorg because there's a lot of things when I think about in Norway, that I'd like to know about. She used to know it all.

Gordon : [61:27] Yeah. She did.

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Henrik : [61:29] Yeah.

Gordon : [61:30] She was a special... [audio cuts off]

[61:32]

Transcription by CastingWords

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