Nordic Heritage Museum Nordic American Voices

Interview of Eva Isaksen On January 28, 2012 At Seattle, Washington Interviewed by Caitlin Cotter and Lise Orville

Caitlin Cotter : [0:00] Interview for the Nordic American Voices Oral History Project, today is January 28, 2012 and I will be interviewing Eva Isaksen. We are at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Ballard, Washington. My name is Caitlin Cotter, and I am here with Lise Orville. Can you say your name?

Eva Isaksen : [0:30] Eva Isaksen.

Caitlin : [0:32] OK.

Eva : [0:33] Thank you.

Caitlin : [0:34] Thank you, welcome.

Lisa Orville : [0:35] Thank you, we're very happy to be able to interview you. I wondered if we could start with your childhood in north ?

Eva : [0:50] I was born in Bodø in Northern Norway. It's a little bit north of the Arctic Circle. At the time, it was probably a city around 15,000 people. It's a city that was totally bombed during the Second World War. It's a new city. It was rebuilt after the war. Just a couple of the buildings survived. Most everything was leveled.

[1:28] I was born in 1955. My father, [inaudible 00:01:35] , he came from Tromsø in further north. My mother's home was at Finnsnes, which is also further north of Norway. All my family is from Northern Norway.

[1:54] I grew up in Bodø. We lived in a couple of kilometers outside the city. It was easy to walk there, a couple of kilometers away. In the place called [inaudible 00:02:14] , which was ideal for a place to grow up. It's right where the ocean.

[2:23] Bodø is surrounded with very, very beautiful landscape, the mountains, and the water. Bodø is on the peninsula. Its water surrounding the peninsula and beautiful mountains in all directions. You can actually see out to [foriegn language] on a clear day. You can see [foreign language] islands in the distance.

[2:51] My childhood was a very good one. Like most families, somewhat, I was born ten years after the war ended. I guess Norway was rebuilding. We didn't have much money or wealth when I grew up. But, we certainly didn't lack anything. In the area where we lived was very few houses at the time and a lot of nice areas outside to play in.

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[3:38] As kids, we spent lots and lots of time outside. It was not common, like now, that we played inside with your friends in houses. You were asked to go out. When dinner was done, my dad would come outside the house and just have this whistle. He would whistle and I knew that was the signal to come home.

[4:06] I had several friends. There were lots of kids there. Several good friends. Every summer, we would visit my aunts and uncles and grandparents in Finnsnes and in Tromsø, northern [inaudible 00:04:25] . My grandparent, on my mother side, were at Finnsnes. I was their oldest grandchild, so I spent a lot of summer with them. Really great memories from that.

[4:41] My grandfather was a very interesting man. He collected everything. He had huge collections of books. He also had a book store. Stamps. Coins. Cactuses. He had nothing but cactuses in his house. North of the Arctic circle, he was fond of animal. He had little tortoises. He had exotic birds. I don't know where he got them all from but he had them. Dogs. Aquariums. He was an interesting man to be around.

[5:30] The book store was really interesting to me. Being able to look through the books and I developed very early, I loved reading. That stayed with me always. I was always very fond of drawing and art in general. I was good at drawing. I would spend many, many hours just making up stories in my head and drawing them.

[6:11] I was lucky, my best friend at the time, her father was a painter. His name is Oscar Boutigoy. He just passed away this December. He was 88 or 89. He was, at the time, the only real artist in Bodø. I was so impressed by him getting into his studio to work while all the other dads put on their suits and went to the office or wherever they worked. [laughs] .

[7:02] He was a very early big influence on me as an artist. Of course, he didn't want us kids running around in his studio when he was working. Sometimes, he would tell us to go down to the ocean and draw the mountains and not be back for at least two hours. We would go down there and work and come back and he would take a look at it and critique it.

[7:36] And he became a very famous painter in Norway. Eventually, through the years, he and his son Harland who also is a good friend of mine, founded a historical museum on their property where they collected lots of things from northern Norway, from households, from tools, from boats, showing them the history of northern Norway.

[8:16] They also, eventually, opened a gallery. I was invited to have an exhibition there in 2000. It was really nice to come back there and actually show my work in a very beautiful gallery that was ran by Oscar who had such an influence on me when I was little.

[8:46] I went to school in Bodø, all through the first years and middle school and high school. I traveled a lot, like teenagers and kids do in Norway, work for a few weeks and then take off in Europe. I had very many interesting trips in Europe. I have never visited the . It was so far away, I wasn't even thinking about that as a possibility or interest.

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[9:44] In 1976, a friend of mine contacted me and her name is Ginette Boutigoy. She is the niece of the painter. She had married an American she'd met hitchhiking in Europe and settled with him on a farm in South Dakota. She's a weaver, and I have some background in weaving.

[10:12] After going through the years of schooling in Bodø, I worked there in at a weaving school, and I also had a couple of other years of schooling in Norway, I went to an arts and crafts school in Narvik for one year, and I also went to what we call a [foreign speaking] after [foreign speaking] which is like high school, and this was in Denmark.

[10:50] It's very popular for Norwegian kids to take that year [foreign speaking] school. It's a year where you can pick the school that has the subjects that interest you, so I picked one that had art and theater and some psychology and philosophy, and spent a year at that school together with maybe 40 other students, so we lived there for a year.

[11:16] And that's where I also had my second big inspirational person as an artist, and Karl Andriessen was his name, he was the painting instructor and also ran this school in Denmark. And he took my work very seriously, he was very, very encouraging, so him and Oscar Boutigoy was really very instrumental for me in those days.

[11:50] So my friend Ginette that got married and settled on the farm in South Dakota, she came back one summer to Norway and called me up and wondered if I would come over for a year. She had two small children and I could help her take care of the children, and then I could also help her weave because she had this big weaving studio in South Dakota, and she had lots of sheep, and she would plant dye and spin and weave from that yarn she made.

[12:26] And I had totally other plans, but decided that's an opportunity. So in 1977, I went to South Dakota, and actually I left the 7th of the 7th in 1977, which is kind of funny... And I ended up on her farm outside Vermillion in South Dakota, and lived with her and her husband and her two kids for a full year.

[13:02] It was a very different place to land. From coming from northern Norway or Norway in general, the nature with big mountains, lots of water and ocean, and coming to South Dakota where it was just flat in all directions as long as you can see and extremely hot in the summer and extremely cold in the winter.

[13:33] I think the first two weeks I was there it was never under 100 degrees and 100 percent humidity, and I thought, "Oh my gosh, what have I done."

[13:46] [laughter]

[13:48] But Ginette is a fabulous person. She actually used to babysit me when I was a little girl when I lived in Norway. We became really good friends, and it was fun to be there. I also took classes at the University of South Dakota, in art classes there. During that time I also meant Jeff Svenson, who's now my husband, and made many other friends.

[14:25] It was exciting to be so far away from home because you're really on your own and you can kind of create your own life in a way. It's a beautiful state. I don't think I can live

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there longer than I did, but the storms coming in over the prairie. In a lot of ways, it's almost like being on the ocean because you have the same view. You can just see forever.

[15:07] The stars in the sky was really impressive for me, there weren't so many cities around, so it's quite dark at night and beautiful, the stars. I spent the year there. Actually, I spent two years because it took me about a year before felt like I really had friends and figured out how it worked, so I decided to spend another year before I went back to Norway.

[15:39] I went back to Norway in 1980 and then I worked one year as an art teacher in a small school in Kolvereid, which is in northern Trondelag, middle of the country, off by coast. And at that time, I had decided that I would apply to continue my art education in the United States.

[16:06] I applied to get student loans in Norway, and they gave it to me. I went back to South Dakota and I moved in with Jeff, and I continued going to art school and took my bachelor degree, it took me a couple of years to do that, and I wanted to continue and do my Masters.

[16:41] I thought I needed to go somewhere that was different than South Dakota. I didn't really know so much about the school system in this country because I just kind of happened to end up in South Dakota and go to the school there, but I've heard beautiful things about Montana and the mountains, and I like outdoor life, and applied to Montana State University in Bozeman and was accepted, so I moved there.

[17:16] I took my Masters in painting, and I lived there for three years, and that's another gorgeous state, beautiful mountains, lots of hiking, and it was a somewhat small art program there, so we weren't too many students in the graduate program.

[17:43] One of the things that attracted me to that particular to that school was Debbie Butterfield. She is a very well-known US sculpture. She is a big, big name. She makes these very abstract life-size or bigger than life-size horses of scrap metal or sticks or sometimes put them together with sticks and then take them apart. Each part would be casted bronze and then put together. She has shows every couple years at Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle.

[18:31] I knew about her work. She was working with the graduate students at the time and so was John Buck who is her husband now, also a famous artist. They drew a lot of people because they were working with graduate students. They were fabulous teachers to work with and so were many other of the teachers I had in Bozeman. That was three fun years.

Lisa : [19:11] Is your husband an artist?

Eva : [19:13] He is a carpenter, but he blows glass for fun. He actually didn't go to art school. He didn't quite finished the degree, but he is very creative, very good with his hands, whether it's carpentry or whatever. He got into glassblowing at Pratt in Seattle. I think he has blown glass down there for 20 years. Every Friday he goes down.

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[19:59] Seattle was kind of an actual move from Bozeman really. I knew I wanted to go to a little bigger city as an artist and try in a little bigger environment. Also, I desperately needed to go to the ocean. Growing up on it and having it is just part of me to be on the water. We looked at San Francisco. We looked at Portland. We looked at Seattle and ended up in Seattle. We had some friends here.

[20:38] We came to Seattle in '86. I have lived here since then. We built a studio. It's hard coming out as a graduate student, of graduate school and then starting up being an artist. Discipline, you really have to learn fast. We built a studio. I had a job for a few years and then we built a studio. Once the studio was finished I quit my job and then have been full time in the studio working there. It is a good job. It doesn't give the best income necessarily.

[21:22] [laughter]

Caitlin : [21:24] It takes some years.

Eva : [21:26] It is a very rewarding job. It is nice to have gotten the opportunity to work with it seriously cause its has been such a passion of mine since I was very young.

Lisa : [21:44] Your method is so interesting.

Eva : [21:52] I would say working with art full time things evolve. Your ways of doing things and your techniques and everything involved. When I was in graduate school I was working mainly with oil painting, more traditional, which I also really like. I didn't have a good setup of a studio in the beginning in Seattle, it's hard to paint with oil in the spare bedroom because fumes and all that.

[22:30] I did get into Pratt Fine Arts Center early after I got to Seattle. Somebody suggested me for teaching some classes down there. I taught monotype, which is a way of painting. You paint on plates and you print the plates. It's kind of like a one of a kind print, but it's really a printed painting. I was able to use the press down in Pratt for years.

[23:04] I did monotypes for many years and then slowly I started collaging a little bit of paper into these pieces. Little by little the papers took over, and they became more and more about the collage elements and papers. The last 10 years or so, it has been collage of papers only. I use very thin papers I get from Katmandu in Nepal. I print on them. I have hundreds and hundreds of these stacks of very thin papers. I would print. I would press plants, use fabric, yarns, and seeds, whatever I can and a lot of organic material.

[24:07] I would print them onto these papers, and then cut them out, and then collage them onto the surfaces. The work is very organic and it's very inspired from the landscape or the plants in the big yard with lots of plants. Some of them I grow with the thought of printing. It is kind of my own technique that I have just kind of evolved little by little. Work on anything from four by four inches to six by five feet. It's a big span, sizes.

Lisa : [25:07] So you have exhibits all around the world? Haven't you?

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Eva : [25:11] Not all around the world. I have exhibit in Norway and several group shows and then have had solo show there with my friend Oscar Boutigoy gallery. I've been in several group shows around other European countries. Some of my work has been purchased by the American embassy so I have a couple pieces hanging in the Riga, Latvia in their permanent collection. Also have some work in collections in , but mostly local here. I am definitely more known with my work in Seattle than other places.

Lisa : [26:12] Do you go back to Norway to visit your relatives, friends?

Eva : [26:17] Yes. The last years, my mother passed away two years ago, a little over two years ago. She was quite ill for a while before that. So I would go back a couple of times a year to see her and help with all kinds of practical things. When she was gone, my father is there and he is alone. He is 85 years old. Very, very sweet man.

[26:54] I like to see him as much as I can cause I don't know for how long I am going to have him. That's very, very hard when being so far away. When you are young and you end up like I said I never planned on coming here. It's still kind of a shock to me that I am here. It was never my intention and I have a very good life here it's not that but you kind of get caught up between two lives. It's a strange thing.

[27:27] I never feel like I can put down my roots here and then I've been away from Norway long enough that it's not totally...there are new things there too. I don't know how to say that. It's a little foreign to me in some sense also. I . I miss Norway a lot, and would love to spend more time there than I do, even though I probably go back more than most.

[28:12] The last few years I have been back, a couple times a year. I was last time back in December right before Christmas cause my father turned 85 in December. My sister and I went back to visit him. What he wanted to do for his birthday was to take Hurtigruten, the coastal boat that goes around the coast from Bodø, where he lives, to Tromsø, which is his hometown. We did that. We had an amazing trip. We were lucky, it was a week between two large storms so it was calm.

[28:55] We had Northern Lights. We spent a couple days in Tromsø, had a good dinner at a very nice restaurant. It was a very, very nice trip. I talk to him every day, every morning. 8 o'clock in the morning, he knows it is 5 o'clock in Norway and he is sitting there so I would call so that's nice. It is interesting to think back, when I first came to South Dakota it was so far from Norway.

[29:35] There was no Internet. The only way you could contact was through telephone and telephone was hugely expensive. It was a dollar a minute to call then. I would call, talk with my family maybe three or four times a year. It was usually short cause you were afraid it would cost so much and then it was letter writing, lots and lots of letters, tons of letters, to all my friends and family. I just wrote so many letters and received so many letters.

[30:17] It felt really far away and today, it doesn't feel that far away because so many airlines going there that you can get very good deals at least certain times of the year. You

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are on the Internet. You have Skype. I can talk to my sister, I can see her. Phone calls don't cost that much. It's a very different situation than it was the first years I was here.

Lisa : [30:55] Did your sister com here, too?

Eva : [30:57] She's visited, but I'm the only one from my family in the States. She has visited and her kids have come. They're in their 20s and they have come and visited. My parents were here when my mother was doing better and they were younger. I wish my father could come but it's just too much of a trip for him. Too far. It's better for me to go there.

[31:34] It's hard. You don't think about that when you're younger, your parents getting older. I guess that's the one thing that I'm having a hard time with, that I'm not closer. I live so far away.

Caitlin : [31:58] In what ways do you think you've brought Norway with you? Your traditions?

Eva : [32:06] I have a 16-year-old daughter and she probably spoke Norwegian before she spoke English. In the first series of her life I only spoke Norwegian to her so the first word she said was a Norwegian word. I brought tons of Norwegian kids books from Norway that I would read to her. That's probably the main thing when it comes to my first.

[32:40] Also, traditions like we walk in the 17th of May parade with the Nordic Heritage Museum ever since she could walk. I have a [inaudible 00:32:56] . One time of the year I wear it. She has had [inaudible 00:33:05] , too. That has been one thing. I don't think I would have gone if she wasn't interested but she still is. Still is. When she was little we spent lots of time at the Nordic Heritage Museum because there was so many, probably still is, I don't follow it the same way, but there was so many fun programs for kids.

[33:32] Summer, a week-long class for kids. What do you call it? Summer school? Then there was a Pippy Longstocking breakfast where dressed up like Pippy and there was these Christmas advents, all of those things. The museum, I thought, was great being here and made it easier to keep up some of these traditions that I wanted my daughter to have. We used the museum lots.

[34:22] I know there will be a new museum some day and I'm sure it will be fabulous but I know she will miss the old one because she loves the atmosphere here and running in and out of the rooms. She's always liked the museum here. That's one thing I did.

[34:41] Of course, there is some food things that you can't live without. Also, in Seattle there aren't a lot of Norwegian people anymore that probably speak as much Norwegian as I speak English because I spend a lot of time of Norwegian women. We have a group that meets every couple of months and we see a lot of each other.

[35:17] At the same time, it's different. You can't do it just like it was in Norway. Christmas, for instance, I have a little hard time with here because it's just one day and it's so much

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commercial going up to Christmas. It is in Norway, too. In Norway you have a week off when it's Christmas. You can really enjoy it. There is some things I definitely miss.

Caitlin : [36:06] Can you describe Christmas for you in Norway as a kid?

Eva : [36:09] As a kid? Yes. My mother came from a home where Christmas was very, very important. She brought all of her traditions with her. We would spend the month of December every weekend, and maybe some other times in the week, making stuff for Christmas, different cookies. We had probably seven kinds or more. We were not allowed to touch it. We could not eat it before Christmas. We made [inaudible 00:36:54] . We made all kinds of goodies that were just stored for Christmas.

[37:07] We had this advent star up in the window, the advent candles. I don't think you see so much of that anymore, but the house had to be super clean. My parents would start in December. The rugs would disappear from the floor because they would get washed. All the silver had to be polished. The curtains came down. For weeks before Christmas it was just empty in the house and then everything came together again right before Christmas.

[37:54] It was a beautiful decorated house. We never got to see the Christmas tree, my sister and I, before my parents put that together on the 23rd so when we get up on the 24th in the morning the Christmas tree was just there and the whole house had transformed overnight. We didn't take part of it. I know people have different traditions but that was something my parents did and it was just getting up in the morning.

[38:31] Then, of course, from there on we would go to church on Christmas Eve. I just remember Christmas as being a very relaxed family time. I think, also, now this has changed. Christmas Day was so much of a family holiday that we were not even allowed to go out and meet our friends. If you got new skis for Christmas you just so wanted to go out and try them. Not on Christmas Day. Christmas was really, really nice.

[39:22] We got presents, of course, but it's nothing like maybe it is today. Much more focused, I think, on the commercial part of Christmas. We call it [inaudible 00:39:44] , the time between New Years and Christmas. It's a very celebrated time, too. That's the time where you visit relatives, there's all kinds of Christmas parties for kids, and get-togethers with friends. Good food, friends. That's kind of what it means and New Year's Eve is a big celebration, as well.

Caitlin : [40:23] Sounds wonderful.

Eva : [40:24] Yeah. It is. I know it's changed. I know some of the core values are still the same in Norway, though I know it has changed since then, too. That's how I remember it. The food and the decoration of the home and really relaxed family time.

Lisa : [41:04] I'm curious about the darkness in the winter and then the sun all summer. How did that affect the way you lived?

Eva : [41:15] If you're born there it's supposed to be like that. I remember, I don't know how old I could have been, but I remember going on a summer vacation to Oslo, or that

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area. People would say it's really dark in Oslo and it is in the winter and very light in the summer, but it's a big difference from there to the Arctic Circle.

This was a summer vacation and it got dark around 11: [41:45] 00 at night in Oslo and it would stay dark until, I don't know, maybe 3:00 in the morning and that was so exotic to me because it got dark in the summer. I remember that very, very specific, that experience.

[42:10] I think if I move back now it would be something I would really have to work on getting used to. I always liked all those. It's a big difference. The seasons are very different. Spring, summer, fall, winter. I think I almost liked fall the best when it was really getting dark and the little light you have is very unique. When I was in Norway now in December and we took the [inaudible 00:42:50] , the light we have in those few hours is just amazing.

[43:00] I think now, if I was there, I would probably have to cover my windows in the summer to sleep, but we didn't then. We just had normal curtains. People are more outside in the summer, of course, and often late. You can be out visiting some friends and coming home late or early in the morning in the summer.

[43:31] It's not uncommon to see people standing and washing their car or painting their house or bicycling at two in the morning. It's not uncommon. That's different. The summer is often short so people want to enjoy when you have it.

Caitlin : [43:59] Do you know much about your family's experience during World War II?

Eva : [44:08] They were teenagers in the beginning part. I've heard lots of stories. I know that my grandparents, my mother's parents, in Finnsnes, it's a small place, it was a very small place then, and they had a radio that was hidden that they could listen to the news from England and then they would disperse the news to the community.

[44:47] I have heard stories, my mother telling me how it was always dark because they had these really, really dark curtains in front of the windows so that the Germans wouldn't see light when they flew over. Also, stories about how little people had, food. I think my mother's family did well and they also gave away food. They had contacts with farms and could maybe get eggs and bacon and stuff like that and they had several other families that they would help.

[45:36] I also remember her saying the first time when the war was over to get chocolate and bananas was the two things. It was just absolutely amazing because I don't think she'd had a banana before at all and chocolate was hard to get. My father, I know he had tuberculosis at that time from that. He was in the military but that was later. That was after the war was over.

[46:29] Yes, he has told me things. A lot of people from northern Norway, from particularly, had to escape and all people just came south and would stay in different parts of the country. My father and another team would go around and try to find these people and try to reunite them with their families, find out where they were, locate them because they were all over.

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Lisa : [47:11] Had their houses been destroyed?

Eva : [47:13] My parents' houses?

Lisa : [47:15] The people who had fled.

Eva : [47:17] Yes. Most of them were pretty much destroyed, either by bombs or some of them burnt themselves so the Germans wouldn't have the satisfaction. It's interesting. In my home town in Bodø there's lots of, what we call it, Bomkesh. It's the German build. It's just big cement buildings that's partially underground and some of them you could tell where they have cannons fastened. We played in them as kids. They're all over in the forest. Lots of things left around from the Second World War.

Lisa : [48:22] Bodø you said is a new city now because it was destroyed?

Eva : [48:28] Totally destroyed, yeah. It's interesting to see. I've seen a lot of photos from Bodø before the war and then after. It's sad that so many of those buildings disappeared because there were some [inaudible 00:48:44] .

[48:46] Right after the Second World War we had one part in Bodø called [inaudible 00:48:54] , the Swedish town. Apparently there were these factory houses that could be shipped and then just put up really quick and people needed housing so these houses came from Sweden and were just put up in these rows of maybe four apartments or two apartments.

Caitlin : [49:23] That was built after the war?

Eva : [49:25] Right, after the war.

Lisa : [49:34] I wonder if it's very different to be a north Norwegian from a south Norwegian? Or not so?

Eva : [49:47] Probably not so, I would say. Although, the dialect is very different. I think our history is a little different up north than maybe for people south. There's more people from smaller communities in southern Norway. There are differences. They say north Norwegians have a rougher sense of humor and we swear a lot when we talk.

[50:42] I think people are really proud of where they come from no matter where they come from. When I was little, there was still discrimination of people from northern Norway. It was not common to see if you were wanting to rent an apartment from Oslo, for instance, they would say apartment for rent but not for people from the Arctic Circle, northern Norway.

[51:17] I don't know really why that was. I don't really know. I don't think you see that now, at all. The country is getting more international, lots of more people from other cultures that are now entering. When I grew up there was none in Bodø, no people from other parts of the world. Now there's definitely many cultures there. That's a big change too.

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Lisa : [52:07] You think your daughter will go back there and study?

Eva : [52:12] It's a big possibility, I know she wants to. She wants to go and do the folk art school that I did in Denmark. She has a Norwegian passport. The way laws are now, she is supposed to spend six months in Norway to keep her passport.

Lisa : [52:44] Does she also have a US passport?

Eva : [52:45] Yes. I don't. I only have a Norwegian.

Caitlin : [52:56] That would be fun, to have her there.

Eva : [52:57] Yes, because she can go there. With a Norwegian passport she can go anywhere in Europe and get a job. It's not just Norway. It's a huge opportunity, whether she uses it or not. I was definitely going to get her the passport, she has that choice. She has relatives, so we'll see, when she decides to do.

Lisa : [53:34] Your husband's family is Swedish?

Eva : [53:38] He has the US...it is interesting. There are a lot of Scandinavians in Minnesota, South Dakota, and North Dakota. And He comes from a little town called Irene, in South Dakota, a small town. That was mainly Danish, and there would be these small cities around South Dakota where all the Norwegians would gather in one place, and the Danes and the Swedes, and other places from Europe too.

[54:18] I think he has one set of great grandparents that came from Norway, and three from Denmark. He's Danish. But even Tom, he comes from...people still could speak Danish, many of them, or Norwegian. It's interesting. That's the people you should interview.

[54:54] Really. Because they even spoke with accents although they were born there, many of them. These are older people. It's interesting. An interesting group of immigrants that are dying out, that age.

Lisa : [55:20] And they are Isolated.

Eva : [55:22] Very isolated, yeah.

Lisa : [55:26] I don't think that's so true of Ballard.

Eva : [55:29] No, I don't think that's so true. Also, people came here later than, [inaudible 00:55:40] is just 100 years old. Not so old. But Norway is a great country. It would be great to spend more time there. I think ideally, I don't know a few months in a year.

Caitlin : [56:11] Let's stop this, because...

[56:13] [audio stops and restarts]

Eva : [56:25] One sister.

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Caitlin : [56:25] One sister.

Eva : [56:26] She's two and a half years younger than me. She lives in [inaudible 00:56:31] which is not too far from Oslo. She really misses the north. I think she would love to [inaudible 00:56:42] to Northern Norway. I think we would both very connected to the landscape. It's just the landscape of my soul. When I'm there and I see it, it's just kind of such a part of me. I think she feels like that too.

Caitlin : [57:02] Do you think that affects your art being so organic?

Eva : [57:04] Yes, it probably does. I think I bring a lot into my artwork from Norway and from here as well. The light in Norway and the landscape, definitely, it's part of it. I was thinking of having a daughter myself and then how different it is today growing up.

[57:48] With all the media with all the Internet and iPods and iPads and TV and all these electronic devices which is probably very fun and very helpful for them, but I think probably my generation was one of the last generations that grew up totally without it.

[58:20] We didn't get a TV. TV didn't get up to Northern Norway long before it was in Southern Norway. I don't think we even had a TV in our house before I was 13 and had one channel. I think, the early days of my life was spent outside and creating the games and the fun we wanted, we had to come up with ourselves. It was a very healthy upbringing in that respect.

Caitlin : [59:03] Connected to being outside.

Eva : [59:05] To being outside, yeah.

Lisa : [59:08] And not dangerous.

Eva : [59:11] No, that's another thing. Although, we were down by the ocean and jumping from rocks to rocks. There was that kind of danger, but it was a very safe place to grow up. That's for sure. [inaudible 00:59:36] and safe.

Lisa : [59:39] Did you help a lot in the house? Chores?

Eva : [59:44] I had my jobs, but not more than probably every other person did at that time. I know as a teenager, I was probably more out of the house than I was in. I had a lot of friends. I did a lot of travel. That's something that I still would like to do much more of.

[60:24] That's also, I think, one of the things that may be a little hard living here is that not only is Norway so far away, but Europe is so far away. It's very expansive. You can't just go to London for the weekend like you could from Norway. I think that's also something that I miss from here. But we can go to .

Caitlin : [60:55] It's true.

Eva : [60:56] I have my secrets.

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Caitlin : [60:58] From when you were a teenager, is that something you would do? You would just go away for like a weekend or short trips anyhwere or a little longer?

Eva : [61:06] N, we probably traveled for like a month every summer. We had a Europass with on the train. That's what we did. Worked for a few weeks and got enough money to go jump on the train and go down to Greece or Italy or France or wherever, just explore. I think Scandinavian in general they travel, enormously. It's kind of interesting.

Caitlin : [61:47] Did your parents work?

Eva : [61:50] My father was the boss for the bus company in Bodø. I think he worked there for 30 some years. One of the benefits for me was that I had a free bus pass so I could jump on a bus anywhere. When I was young, the bus drivers wouldn't mind if I brought a couple of friends. Sometimes, we'd just take bus around. We'd travel a lot with bus, because the train only goes as far north [inaudible 01:02:27] . From then on, you'd have to either drive car or go by boat.

[62:36] When we were to visit my aunt and uncle in [inaudible 01:02:39] , or my grandparents, I took the bus, always. It was a way to travel. My mother worked in an office. She was home when we were young, and then she worked in an office for quite a few years. She always wanted to be in the workforce. I think she would've been very happy having an...There wasn't that many opportunities. She didn't end up working.

Lisa : [63:22] Did you own a boat? Did you go fishing?

Eva : [63:24] No, we didn't own a boat, but friends had boats. We'd often would go out with a row boat and fish a little bit. Flounder, small fish, then we'd eat that [inaudible 01:03:42] fish. That was a big part of the diet. We had how many fish, five days a week. It was fresh, good fish; somewhat simple cuisine.

[64:01] I think that that's a big change that's happening in Norway, the food has gotten so much more interesting. And of course now, just like here, you can get things that are not necessarily in season; with a lot of other cultures moving in, so as you know foods from other cultures and restaurants.

[64:26] Growing up, it was very good ingredients. The fish was superb, but there was always potatoes, the fish, I don't think we even had salad, could be a little carrot. It was just very plain, the food.

Lisa : [64:42] And some white sauce?

Eva : [64:43] White sauce. It was not very much color on it. We would buy the fish directly from the fishermen when it came in. I remember we didn't have a car for many years, and then we didn't have a freezer in the house for the food either. That was kind of a luxury item. There were places where you could rent a freezer box.

Caitlin : [65:16] Cool

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Eva : [65:17] So it almost like a little trailer. You pay, then you got the key to one of these. We rented one and there was probably a couple of [inaudible 01:05:28] to get to it. I remember I went there on the spot. We would go and get the Sunday dinner from the freezer.

[65:43] [laughter]

Eva : [65:49] Things got a little easier eventually. Very healthy food, with all the fish; not much junk food when we grew up.

Caitlin : [66:15] That sounds very fresh, very local.

Eva : [66:18] Very local

[66:20] [crosstalk]

Eva : [66:22] The vegetables that you can grow up north like carrots, cabbage and Brussels sprouts and potatoes, or the root vegetables; really tasty. Just no tomatoes. I don't think I've ever seen apples on a tree. There were apple trees, but there's too far north for you to get apples. But, lots of berries; blueberries, strawberries, that's a good area for berries.

Lisa : [66:57] They could ripen in the summer. Wow.

Eva : [67:02] Lots of berries. We would go out in the Fall with berries [inaudible 01:07:08] can or jam stuff like that.

Caitlin : [67:12] Wow. Nice.

Eva : [67:13] Yeah.

Lisa : [67:17] Is there anything you'd like to ask us?

Eva : [67:21] Now, I'm curious about your upbringing. Have you been interviewed?

Lisa : [67:27] No, but I'll tell you later. [laughter] .

Eva : [67:31] For vacation, the summer, once we got our first car, which I think was late sixties? Our vacation every year was to go for three weeks to Sweden, camping, because it was cheap. The weather, once you cross the border, and inland in Sweden, would be better than we would get in Bodø.

[68:04] We would pack up the car with everything. You know those old big tents, was kind of like this. My sister and I had one room, my parents had one room, and then in the middle was the living room. We would bring rugs. It was just amazing. Then we would drive to the same camping ground every year in Peekyou in Norrland, Sweden, and camp for three weeks straight.

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[68:39] There would be other people, other friends of my parents that would come and camp, too. I have lots of very good memories from those summer trips, camping. We just stayed in one place, so that's why you could bring your stuff [inaudible 01:09:01] . You have to pack it up and move it somewhere else. The weather would be pretty decent and you could go swimming and just hang out, run around.

Caitlin : [69:17] Nice.

Eva : [69:17] Brief, fun. And occasionally we'd go to Denmark but most of the times Sweden, that was close. It's not that far from Bodø and crossing into Sweden and probably an inexpensive way of vacationing also. Very, very fond memories from that.

Caitlin : [69:38] I bet, yeah. Sounds beautiful.

Eva : [69:41] Yeah. Road trip.

[69:42] [laughter]

Lisa : [69:44] And then Easter you got two weeks or one week off?

Eva : [69:50] Probably one week or so, depending on how...yeah. About a week. Yeah, skiing. That's what we did for Easter, usually. The snow is good [inaudible 01:10:05] .

Lisa : [70:10] Do you ski here?

Eva : [70:11] No. I skied in Norway but I wasn't one of the most, really...my sister was much more of a skier than I was, although I would go with my family and I did skiing. I did some downhill skiing in Montana, but I don't like standing in the lines and just, I don't know, it just doesn't appeal to me. So, if I was to try it again I would probably try cross-country.

[70:48] But my husband and daughter, they go skiing a few times every winter, but that's downhill. I guess with young kids [inaudible 01:10:58] .

[70:59] [laughter]

[71:02] I have many friends here that do go skiing. We leave in an area where you absolutely can do that. It's just stunning. A good place if you're an outdoors person because it's so easy to get out in mountains. It's not like you have to get in a car and drive for hours to get there.

[71:44] Nature up in northern Norway too is such that there's no trees on the mountains. The tree line is very low to the water. So the mountains much appear much taller maybe than they are. You really open mountain ranges really fast. Here you have to go through so much forest even to get up. The mountains here are much, much higher but that's one thing that's a big difference from at least northern Norway that is.

Caitlin : [72:28] Yeah. I would imagine it's very unique because of how high you are on the planet, how north you are. Nordic American Voices Page 15 of 16

Eva : [72:38] You are right. Yes, dramatic landscape.

Caitlin : [72:51] Thank you. Thank you for sharing.

Eva : [72:55] Oh, thank you.

Transcription by CastingWords

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