Following Where the Nails Are by Harley Refsal
My first Christmas holiday spent away from home and apart from family was in the late 1960s, while I was a student enrolled at the University in Oslo. During November, as street lights came on earlier and earlier in the afternoon, I began to watch for announcements of upcoming Christmas concerts or pageants, holiday craft markets, etc. I didn’t have any firm plans for the holidays, but I was certain I would be able to find a wide variety of Christmas-related events and activities in the Oslo area. But then an unexpected invitation arrived. A Norwegian friend, then living in the United States, asked if I would be interested in spending the holiday with his mother in a small town in the fjord country of western Norway. Although widowed and living alone, she would have plenty of company—children and grandchildren—for a few days right around December 25, but if I was interested, I was welcome to spend two to three weeks with her, from mid-December until early January, when classes resumed at the University. Great! I immediately answered “Ja, takk. . . with pleasure.” And soon a handwritten letter of invitation arrived—in Norwegian, of course—from Anna herself, saying that I was welcome to come and spend as much time as I wanted. She would appreciate the company, and if I arrived a while before Christmas, I could help her with preparations. “Take the train to Bergen, then the northbound Coastal Express. Unless the weather is bad, the boat trip won’t take you more than ten hours or so. “Hjertelig velkommen, og god tur. (A hearty welcome, and have a good trip.)” On the evening of the day my fall semester classes ended, I shouldered my already-packed backpack and made my way to the Oslo East railroad station, where I joined a throng of fellow travelers bound for Bergen. As we left the lights of the city behind, I looked out the train window and realized that my eyes soon adjusted to the level of light out in the countryside. Despite some of the rumors I had heard about it being pitch dark during the long nights of a Norwegian winter, it wasn’t really dark. Okay, it wasn’t exactly light either, but I could easily make out snow-covered trees and fences, farm buildings, and—as we passed through small stations— the occasional spruce tree decorated, not with colored lights, but entirely with white lights—an Advent spruce. Away from the distraction of lights and colorful advertisements of the city, my thoughts began to reel back to Vol. 12, No. 2 2014
. . . the farm . . . was watched over by a little fellow called a haugbui, or “the one who dwells in the mound.” When the weather turned really cold, it was thought that the haugbui may well have spent his nights indoors, in the warm barn, with the cows. (Doesn’t it sound like he could have eventually evolved into the nisse?)
Haugbui and nisse, 2013, carved by Harley Refsal. Photos courtesy of the artist.
the twenty-some Christmases I had experienced growing up in America. What would I be doing right now if I were back in Minnesota? What would family members and friends be doing? Having been raised in a Norwegian home, on a farm in a community peopled primarily by Norwegian and/or Swedish Americans, I was certainly familiar with foods that graced our holiday table: lutefisk, lefse, krumkake, potato sausage, etc. In our local school we always performed a Christmas concert, complete with a carol or two sung in Norwegian or Swedish. The year I was in fourth grade, Esther, one of the cooks in the school cafeteria, left her apron in the kitchen, gathered all of us in grades one through six around her in the gymnasium, and taught us the words to the Swedish carol När juldags morgon glimmar (When Christmas morn is dawning). Jeg er så glad hver julekveld was pretty standard at Christmas events too, regardless of the setting: school concert, a church service, or a Sunday School program. 5