December 1, 2022
* Music Credits *
Bonn Fields / Cordierite / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Amaranth Cove / When We Were Friends / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Luella Green / The Forgotten Memories / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Plain Stroll / Come Out and Play / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Won’t You Stay (Instrumental Version) – The Eastern Plain / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Narration
We start this episode at the end of the war. It was April in 1945.
The soldiers left.
One detail I am not clear on, is exactly how long the soldiers stayed in Bjorg’s home, and in Drange. It could be that only some of the soldiers stayed in Drange until the end. Regardless, when the war was over, they were all gone. The Russian prisoners were allowed to return home.
Bessa: I remember Mama coming to me and saying, Krig er slutt, the war’s over.
I was ten when the war was finished. So I had four more years in school. Yeah. Four more. I just remember going to school and doing the best. I always got good marks. Not knowing what was going to be or what am I going to do.
Kristen: So when the soldiers were gone, what changed?
Bessa: More freedom. The buses – the bus got back on schedule to go to town once a week. The boat would come in once a week to go to town. And once in a while, we were allowed to go, with Mama of course. More freedom. And I remember the first time the bus came from Lyngdal and stopped in Drange. And he had a whole case of bananas. And I have never seen a banana in my life.
And I said, What’s that? He said, It’s bananas. So I said, What are you gonna do with those? I’m gonna take them out to the store. They’re going to sell them. I said, Wait, I’m going to get Mama. I want Mama to buy some. Mama bought the whole case. Get off the bus and then forget. And mama gave to the kids. That was the first experience with bananas after the war. Boy.
Kristen: So did they have to show you how to peel it and everything?
Bessa: Yeah. Bananas are very special fruit to me.
I really don’t remember much from those four years after the war. Did a lot of playing in the summertime. But we had to work. We had to work in the hay. We had to work in the potato field. If it wasn’t weeding, it was – there’s always something that the kids had to do.
Narration
I asked my grandmother if they talked about the war after it was over.
Bessa: You know, it’s so funny, Kristen, because so little of the war years were ever mentioned. I think we had it up to here that we never talked about it. It was like I remember when – when the war was over and we were all so happy. But once it was over we we we didn’t dwell on it. We didn’t talk about it. We just. Started our new life now.
Narration
Bjorg’s biological dad Ivar came to Drange when the war ended. My grandma told me about this visit. This might have been the last time that she saw him.
Bessa: He came back just to to, to see us, but only for one night. And I had no feelings for him because we didn’t know him. We got a phone call one day that Ivar is in Lygndal and he wants, and wants to see the kids. And he was there one night.
Bessa: And he had soap. We hadn’t had soap the whole time. Mama made soap from fat and boiled it down – she made soap, which was okay for washing clothes and stuff like that. Then the first soap that came out during the war, right after the war, I don’t remember.
It was called (Norwegian word.) It was like sandpaper. It was like rubbing your hands. You got a little foam but it was like sand in it. It was terrible. So when he came home, he had a pack of Lux Soap. Do you remember Lux Soap?
And it smelled so good. To us, it was $1,000,000. A real soap.
Narration
Life began to return to normal, although it took some time.
When she wasn’t at school, Bjorg was often with her little sister Reidun, or her friend Hildur.
Bjorg would have one more little brother, Boa, and two more sisters, Wenche and Lilla. All of them were born at home, except for the youngest, Lilla. My grandmother really cherished her brothers and sisters.
Bjorg was growing up. She finished school in Drange at the age of 14, she was confirmed, and then Bjorg started working.
I asked her about when she started to like someone. She told me about her first boyfriend – I had never heard about this guy before.
Kristen: How old were you when you started to like somebody?
Bessa: I had just become 16 and Mama told me I had to go to cooking school. I said, But I can’t go to cooking school because they don’t let the girls in until they 18. So Mama said, Yeah, I got you in because your sister, Henny is going and they need one more. If they don’t get one more, there won’t be a school.
And Henny and I had a room together. Mama paid the rent on it. There was two beds and pitcher of water so we could wash in the basin and we had to walk to school. It was a long walk too.
Kristen: So you stayed there.
Bessa: Yeah. Very homesick. I called Mama. I said, I can’t stay here. I can’t sleep. Mama said, why can’t you sleep? I said, I don’t hear the river. I was used to falling asleep to the sound of the river. She said, You’ll get used to it.
So we went to a dance. There was a place where they had a dance once a week. And Henny and I went with all the other girls. And that’s where I met this boy. Endre. And he became my boyfriend. And boy was he handsome.
Kristen: What did he look like?
Bessa: I have pictures of him in the attic. Oh, he was tall and good-looking. He looked like a movie star.
Naration
Next time you’ll hear a little more about Bjorg’s time with Endre, and the job she was hired to do when she finished cooking school. Bjorg would soon live with a wealthy man and his elderly mother, and she was hired to cook and clean for them. She told some stories from that experience.
Also, I have some stories to share with you that I’ll post on the website, bessastory.com. The audio quality is pretty poor from those recordings, so I won’t share them to the podcast. There are at least two good stories that I will post. One is when Bjorg was chased by a bull in her first job, and the other is the first time she went to a dance. (Will share soon!)
Thank you for listening to Bessa’s Story. Thank you to our sound engineer, Kalyn Pedde. You can subscribe on iTunes and on Google Podcasts. Please visit bessa story.com to read the full transcripts and to find photos.
Thank you!