Nordic American Voices Nordic Museum Interview of Yngve Hveding ID: 2017.036.001 March 18, 2017 Seattle, Washington Interviewers: Brandon Benson; Marjorie Graf Marjorie Graf: [0:00] This is an interview for the Nordic American Voices oral history project. Today is March 18, 2017, and we will be interviewing Yngve Hveding. We are at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, Washington. My name is Marjorie Graf, and also here interviewing is— Brandon Benson: [0:22] Brandon Benson. Marjorie Graf: [0:24] So, we’d like you to start by just stating your name and date of birth, and go on with your family history. Yngve Hveding: [0:32] My name is Yngve Hveding. I was born in Tromsø, in northern Norway, in 1945. My grandparents came from Lofoten and Vesterålen, just south of Tromsø. My grandfather’s name was Johann Hveding. He was born in 1867, in Lofoten. And my grandmother was born in 1878. Her name was Hilma Hansen. They were married in 1905 in [unintelligible] Kommune, Nordland, just north of Lofoten. [1:13] They had two kids— my dad, who was also named Johann Hveding, born in 1908, and he had a sister called Gunvor, born in 1911. My dad married my mother, who was from southern Norway. Her name was Fredis Stannis, born in 1908. They met at a place up in Lofoten where my dad was working, and they got married in 1937. A year later, they moved to Tromsø. They lived there before the war started. After a few years, my older sister was born in 1942. Her name was Hilda. And I was born in 1945, in July, just after the war ended. They called me a “peace child.” So, that is my family. Marjorie: [2:24] What did your grandparents do for work? Yngve: [2:26] My grandfather worked in a shipping company. It was actually part of the Hurtigruten system, the coastal express in Norway. He was a bookkeeper. He worked there until he retired, just before the war started. He passed away in 1945, in June, a month before I was born. My grandmother was a homemaker all the time. Marjorie: [2:52] Is this your father’s side of the family? Yngve: [2:53] That’s my father’s side. Nordic American Voices Page 1 of 11 Marjorie: [2:54] What about your mother’s side? Yngve: [2:55] On my mother’s side, my grandfather was a school principal in a little town called [unintelligible]. It’s a few miles up from Drammen in Norway. And my grandmother was a homemaker. They had eight children all together. My mother was number five, I think. Marjorie: [3:27] What kinds of things did you learn from your grandparents about their history? Yngve: [3:32] They were a little strict, as it was back then. They taught me to respect older people, and everything around me. I think that was a good learning for me. I had a very good relationship with them. Of course, it was only my grandmother, since my grandfather passed away. I always spent my summertime down at their place. In the wintertime, I couldn’t wait for summer and school to get done, so I could go down and spend the summer. I had friends there, too, my age. Marjorie: [4:15] What kind of things did you do in the summer with your friends? Yngve: [4:19] Well, my aunt lived with my grandmother. She was married to a man from Finnmark, who was evacuated at the end of the war from Finnmark to Vesterålen. They met there, and got married. He bought a little boat called a [Norwegian word], a wooden boat, 26 feet. A little gas engine onboard. We were cruising around in the summertime, islands around Vesterålen, fishing, and staying overnight. That was what I enjoyed the most. It was a good experience. Marjorie: [5:03] So, it was a free childhood. Yngve: [5:05] Yes. Marjorie: [5:06] A lot of freedom. Yngve: [5:07] Lots of freedom. Yeah. Marjorie: [5:09] What kinds of things did you hear about that had happened to the family during the war? What kinds of experiences did they have? Yngve: [5:18] My parents… I think they all were affected by the war, but not too much. There was a limited supply of food, and housing was a little different, too. I know they moved around a little bit. The family had a big house, and it also housed a few German soldiers or officers. That was a little experience, too. One story I heard— my grandfather was more in the countryside. He had easier supplies for food. He was going to send a bag of potatoes up to my parents in Tromsø, but he had to apply for a permit to do this. There was a government system that controlled all the supplies, and food and some other things. His application was rejected. [Laughter] So, it was kind of strange [inaudible]. Other than that, I think they were doing all right during the wartime. Marjorie: [6:34] Did they still occupy the house with the German soldiers? Yngve: [6:39] No. I can’t remember what they said; how long they lived there. But they moved to another place with a colleague from the company he worked for. So, they each had a floor. Behind them was a prison camp the Germans had built. One day, there was something going on up there. Nordic American Voices Page 2 of 11 There were gunshots fired, and a bullet went through the house where they lived. That employer said, “Okay, we’ll move you to another place. Get away from there.” I think that was the closest they got to any serious interaction with the Germans. Marjorie: [7:25] About your childhood— was that like for you? Yngve: [7:29] This, I don’t remember, but we lived in an attic of a house when I was born, only three months after the war ended. It was kind of difficult to find a house. After two years, we moved to a house that was two apartments in a house. We had one apartment. The company he worked for owned the house, and they said we could have that apartment. And that’s where I start having memories of my childhood. [8:06] Really, memories I can tell in detail were from 1949. My mother took a trip down to her place in southern Norway with my sister and myself. The way we traveled back then, we couldn’t hop on an airplane at that time. So, we took a bus to a neighboring town, which has a rail connection through Sweden. It was Narvik, where they were shipping iron ore by train and shipped them out to the world. It was an eight-hour bus trip, and it was a 20-hour train ride to Stockholm, and then overnight to Oslo, where we stayed all summer. I have lots of good memories from that. Marjorie: [8:55] How was that different from where you were living? Yngve: [8:59] It was a more populated area, for sure. My mother had the seven siblings around there, so lots of family. More family than we were used to. We went from family to family and stayed in various places. We had an extremely hot summer down there, which northern Norway doesn’t have very often. So, we were playing in the water, and swimming. I remember I had a good time, and I got to travel by train quite a bit, and that interested me very much. There were no trains where I come from, and there still are not. Marjorie: [9:40] What kind of work did your mother’s family do in southern Norway? Yngve: [9:46] Three of them were teachers, like their father. There was one aunt who was never married. She worked for a publishing company— books. She had a good job. She sent us books all the time for birthdays, and stuff like that. And one was an auditor for a company. I think that was what they were doing. Marjorie: [10:22] Was your grandfather that was involved with the Hurtigruten, or was that your father? Yngve: [10:30] My grandfather. Marjorie: [10:33] What happened to that boat during World War II? Did it still carry people? Yngve: [10:41] Yeah. They were on schedule all the time. Some of them got torpedoed, or ran into floating mines. So they hired smaller boats, even fishing boats, to carry people around. But they kept the same service going all the time. Marjorie: [11:04] Because that was the ferry system. Nordic American Voices Page 3 of 11 Yngve: [11:06] Yes. Actually, they went from Bergen up to Kirkenes in the northern part, up and down there. Marjorie: [11:14] Tell us about your story, then. How did you get here? What brought you here? Yngve: [11:23] It started out after high school. I went to Trondheim to go to technical university, where I met my wife. I was studying mechanical engineering, mostly. After school and service in the military, I got a job at a shipyard in Stavanger, in the southwestern part of Norway. We stayed there for 14 years all together. All three kids were born there. We have three kids— Cecilia, the oldest, was born in 1972; Frederik in 1973, and Camilla in 1977. So, we raised the three kids there. [12:11] In early 1980, started thinking maybe we should try to go to America and work.