November 3, 2022
Listen to this episode. Full transcript is provided here.
Music Credits
Freeform / Rannar Sillard / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Heavy Footed Walk / Franz Gordon / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Coal Miner’s Heartache / Peter Crosby / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
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Where we left off last time, four Nazi soldiers were now living in Bjorg’s home.
During the daytime, the soldiers left her house and then every evening, they would return. There were more soldiers in Drange who stayed in their neighbors’ homes also.
Bjorg’s family settled into a new way of life.
The kids could not return to school at first. Some of the soldiers used the schoolhouse to sleep.
The family continued working on the farm. At home, Bjorg’s family slept in one bedroom, and they could still use their kitchen and living room like they did before. My grandmother said that the Nazis did not eat with them.
Bessa: They used our house to stay and to sleep, but they did their eating – it’s coming back to me now. They all went and ate in the preaching house. They were set up with big tables and they had a cook, a German. You know, probably one of the soldiers or whatever. That’s where they ate. They had all kinds of goodies. We had nothing.
Narration
Bjorg’s Mama cooked the food that they had. Potatoes and fish were the main foods available. As the war went on, food became more scarce.
I asked my grandmother about these uncertain times. She told me about how dealt with it, and what was really difficult to cope with.
Bessa: We just accepted that this is the way it’s got to be. You can’t stop it. You can’t do anything, so accept it. It was rough. I think the roughest of all, Kristen, was always being hungry – always going around looking for something to eat. I mean, we ate the funniest things.
Acorns. They were pretty good. Oh, yeah. Wild apples in the woods. And you know how we didn’t die? I don’t know. They would look when they were on the trees. Yeah. Even worse. The green. Littler. I don’t think you can even find them in this country when you couldn’t eat them when they were on the tree. They were so sour and so. But if they had fallen down and laying under the leaves and they turned brown, they were rotting. Then we ate them – probably half drunk on them, because they ferment. But we ate them.
If we were out roaming in the woods. We ate whatever we could find. I even ate flowers.
Kristen: Why were you so hungry?
Bessa: Because there wasn’t much to be put on the table for us when Mama cooked.
Kristen: Was that because of the war or was that because of that was just how it was before, even without the war?
Bessa: No, it was the war because we couldn’t get anything. You couldn’t get flour.
Kristen: Could you fish?
Bessa: We could fish – we ate a lot of fish. But you get very hungry fast after fish.
Later on in the war, we got some kind of flour. It was very dark and it tasted like bark. I’m sure it was made from bark. It was disgusting.
Narration
In some ways, Bjorg’s family was fortunate that they lived in the country. Living in Drange, they did have food growing near them. People who lived in the cities were far away from farms and wild food.
But there still wasn’t enough to eat. And while it seemed that the Nazis had plenty, while feasting in the church, sometimes they would take from Bjorg’s family.
Bessa: If we had anything that they would take it, like Mama had a few eggs in a bucket.
And the bucket was hanging on a nail up in the ceiling. And the soldier just took his wife unhooked, took it down and took the eggs and left. And I remember Mama saying, Oh, there goes my eggs.
I never saw Mama excited or she just took it as it came. Now when I think about it, she was marvelous. If that had been me, I would’ve been scared stiff.
I think I was too young to really get too scared.
Narration
Bjorg may have been too young to understand everything that was happening. At the age of seven, she was naive. This left her pretty vulnerable to the dangers of this new situation.
She told me about one time when she was alone outside, and one Nazi tried to trick her by offering her candy. The soldier saw her from a nearby house and called to her through the open window.
Bessa:
And I remember going over there. You know, kids are curious and just to look to see what they were doing, and one soldier was upstairs and he calls me. He says, Come, come, come up here, come up here. I got bum bum. Oh, I was dying for bum bum. That’s candy.
So I went in the house and there was stairs going up. They were like this very, very straight right up. I got halfway up and I could see him in the bedroom. He was laying on his bed, all dressed. And he just went like this (makes a patting noise), Come here, bum bum. And something told me to turn around and go, I don’t know what. I turned around. And I went back down and I went out and I went home and I told Mama what happened. And she said, You are to stay away from that house. Don’t go there. And I never did. So something could have happened there. I’ll never forget that, Kristen. But nothing happened. I was lucky.
Narration
Every night, the soldiers would come back to Bjorg’s house after having their dinner.
From what my grandmother described, the soldiers who lived in their house were not mean to them.
They would all sit together. and they were peaceful to each other.
Kristen: Did they talk to you?
Bessa Oh, yeah. We would play games at night in the living room. Domino, Ludo, Chess. All that stuff – they were nice.
And as soon as it got dark, we had to put the black shades down so that the planes when they flew over didn’t see any light because if they saw light you would get a bomb. They bombed everything that every place they saw a light.
And I remember there was a pin, like a half moon. And it was very popular with the young people. And when it got dark, the light would shine in the dark. I forget what it was made out of. Very, very pretty. And we were not allowed to wear that pin at night. My parents would say, Take that off. It shows up in the dark.
Kristen: Did you hear planes coming?
Bessa: Yeah, we did hear planes. Not often. They were funny planes, not jet planes, you know, very small and very noisy. But we were never bombed and Farsund was never bombed.
*
Narration
The soldiers and Bjorg’s family – they co-existed. It sounded like it was somewhat peaceful, at least as far as my grandmother was aware of. Maybe it was as peaceful as it could be.
But the soldiers were still the enemy, and it was war. The Nazis could do what they wanted.
How they all sat together at nighttime and played games with each other – it’s hard for me to make sense of that.
My grandmother talked about how they had to accept what was. But the more I think about it, they accepted things, but they didn’t give up either.
There are a couple more stories that reveal ways that my grandmother resisted this new reality. Next time you’ll hear one of them.
And you’ll hear about the prison camp that was built in Bjorg’s yard.
Thank you for listening to Bessa’s Story! I’d like to thank Kalyn Pedde our sound engineer.
And also – do you have questions about this story that you’d like me to answer? You can find my email address on Bessastory.com. Feel free to get in touch! If I get lots of questions, I might consider doing a Q+A episode.
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Thanks!