Twenty-Three

Solveig—June 1912

“Amalie!” Britta called. “Don’t chase the chickens! Did you finish hoeing the garden?”

Solveig saw her mother Britta standing in the cabin doorway, knitting basket in hand. Solveig’s younger sister, Amalie, stopped racing about. “Almost.” Clucking indignantly, the brown and yellow Jærhøns scurried away from the seven-year-old.

“Please get back to it.”

Solveig shook her head indulgently. It was the first warm day of summer. Bluebells blossomed in the woods and tender fiddleheads uncurled from the damp soil. Spruce trees were tipped with bright new green. The lambs and calves were safely born, already cavorting in their fenced pasture. She could hardly blame her sister for playing—especially since their father was not at home to beat such a “willful indulgence” from Amalie with a switch. But today Svein had taken his son fishing. His absence felt like a field of purple heather had burst into bloom.

Solveig bent over her laundry tub, closing her eyes as she often did to better listen, better hear. A gentle breeze sighed through the apple trees, suggesting the faintest of melodies. Solveig knew she could capture it, shape it—

“Solveig!” It was Britta, standing right beside her. “I’ve been calling you. Sometimes you’re no better than Amalie.”

“I wasn’t daydreaming,” Solveig protested mildly. She’d learned long ago that no one else experienced the world in music, as she did. “Do you need something?”

Britta’s exasperation faded, and she smiled. “Come sit with me.”

Mother must feel peaceful too, Solveig thought. She draped the last wet shirt over the line and followed Britta through the front meadow to the cliff edge. They settled on a stone ledge where yellow saxifrage bloomed, thread-thin roots clenching tight in any crevice. Sunlight glinted on the snow still streaking the ravines.

Britta pulled a small leather-bound book from beneath her wool and held it out.

Puzzled, Solveig accepted it. “What is this?”

“It’s a book to capture stories.”

“Stories?”

“I grew up hearing stories from my mother, Torhild, who’d collected them from her mother, Lisbet. Lisbet learned them from her grandmother Gudrun, and some are even older. Some of them reflect the old ways.” Britta paused before adding, “The old religion.”

Solveig’s eyes widened. This was dangerous territory. Father would take a switch to Mother if he heard her speak of such things.

Britta gazed at the distant waterfalls, swollen with snowmelt, cascading down the mountainsides. “I want the stories to be written down. They musn’t get lost. And you’re the best one to do it.”

The charge made Solveig feel a little breathless. “But where did …” She gestured at the blank book.

Although Britta’s cheeks flushed, she held her head high. “Last time I sold wool in Utne I held a few skeins back and traded them for the book. I got it from a peddler who doesn’t know us.”

So he can’t carry tales to Father, Solvieg thought. She was amazed at her mother’s daring. To her knowledge, and growing annoyance, Mother had never crossed her husband. Never argued.

“You’re seventeen,” Britta continued. “Surely you’ll marry and leave the family farm before too long.”

Solveig’s flicker of admiration faded. “Oh, Mother. I have no such plans.”

“You need a man, Solveig. A woman does.”

“I don’t.”

“Your older sister was married and gone by your age.”

“And she’s already a widow.” Solveig’s brother-in-law had drowned just a year after the marriage.

Britta fixed her with another exasperated look.

I do not need a man! Solveig thought. Trading life in her father’s house for life with a husband she didn’t truly love held no appeal. Besides, she was too quiet for the local young men. Too different.

Britta may have discerned her daughter’s thoughts, for she abruptly changed the subject. “Solveig, have you ever felt that you understood something without knowing why?” Britta hesitated as if groping to find the right words. “Perhaps you sometimes get a sense of things long gone, things unseen?”

Solveig sucked in her breath. She knew all too well the snatches of prescience her mother was trying to describe. As a child, she’d been bewildered to realize that she sometimes sensed things that her companions clearly did not—overpowering sensations of long-ago happiness or grief or anger. The feeling of joyful anticipation or uneasy forboding that occasionally consumed her, and were always born out.

“I understand what that burden feels like,” Britta said. “But your father … well. This conversation is not for his ears.” She tapped the book in Solveig’s hands. “And you understand that he must never know about this.”

“I understand.” Solveig watched a golden eagle glide silently past the cliff. “Mother? Why did you marry him?”

Britta caught her breath. She glanced over her shoulder at Amalie, dutifully hoeing weeds from between fledgling rows of peas and turnips. Finally she said, “As you know, my brother Erik was killed by a rival fiddler in 1888. My parents were dead, and my other brother was already dead too. I was alone, and desperate to keep this farm from being sold. Without Erik, I could not survive here. I needed a husband.”

There must have been other choices, Solveig thought. Better than taking marriage vows with someone like Svein.

Britta picked up her knitting and began a new row. “Twenty-four years have passed since Erik was killed. I’ve been married to Svein for almost as long. He had no property of his own, so of course he moved here.”

Solveig had always known that her mother’s marriage was not a good one. Svein’s religious beliefs were more fervent than those preached by the pastor at the new Utne Church. “You would have been better off without him.”

“Not here, all alone. And in fairness, Svein has worked hard. This farm has produced more since our marriage than it ever did before. He’s carried logs here on his back, and soon we’ll have a new home.” Britta nodded. “I came close to losing this place, so I am grateful.”

“You could have left here, found work,” Solveig dared. It seemed so obvious.

But Britta looked shocked. “I couldn’t abandon this!” Her expansive gesture took in the house and barn, the fjord and ring of mountains. “I promised my mother to safeguard this holding. The thought of letting everything go was unbearable.”

“But … was keeping this farm really worth sacrificing your happiness?”

“Do not judge!” Britta snapped. Then she sighed, and let her knitting fall to her lap. “This place makes me happy. I am rooted here.”

Solveig tried to imagine how it might feel to be so rooted. Did her mother truly not dream of new possibilities? Or did she simply not dare?

“You don’t understand.” Britta’s gaze grew distant. “Erik never understood why I stayed, either. He longed to wander.”

Solveig knew well the urge to wander. To wonder what lay beyond everything comfortable and familiar.

“I do regret Svein’s harshness toward you children,” Britta added. “Your brother is lost to me, already molded in Svein’s beliefs about good and evil. But you girls … I didn’t know how it would be. You’re a clever young woman who knows how to avoid trouble. But Amalie isn’t sturdy like you older girls. I know you’ve often shielded her. I’m grateful, Solveig.”

Solveig waved that away. Keeping an eye out for Amalie’s welfare was a deeply ingrained habit.

“I wish …” Britta began, then bit her lip. “Solveig, I wish you could go to dances. I know you’ve missed things, simple harmless things, that would have made you happy.”

Music, Solveig thought, with a familiar ache of longing. More than anything she wanted to learn how to play the fiddle. But Father believed that the hardingfele was the devil’s instrument. And in her family, the topic was not philosophical. Fiddle music had been at the heart of several tragedies.

Just as frustrating, fiddling was a man’s occupation. Women might play a langeleik, a rectangular instrument with only one melody string contrasting the drone strings. A langeleik was placed flat on a table to play, unlike hardingfeles, which seemed to become an extension of the musician’s body. Playing the langeleik had never appealed to her.

But her mother’s acknowledgment of Solveig’s unattainable dream was an unexpected comfort. Although part of her was still frustrated with Britta, another part—a new part, tender as the first sprouts poking through the earth in spring—was pleased to be having such a conversation.

“That child,” Britta murmured. Solveig followed her mother’s gaze and saw Amalie squatting in the dirt with hoe lying idle.

“That’s enough talk for now,” Britta said. She stuffed her knitting away and got to her feet. “But we will look for another opportunity to talk. I don’t want to waste time, especially since you will soon leave for the seter.”

Solvieg held up the book, savoring their shared secret. “Until then, I’ll hide this away.”

When Solveig’s father and brother returned to the farm that afternoon, an unexpected guest was with them. “You’ve met Gustav Nyhus,” Father said.

“Welcome, Gustav,” Britta said. “You’ll want to spend the night, I imagine. It’s a long walk back down the mountain. Amalie, set an extra place at the table.” The words were right, but Solveig heard the sudden tension in Mother’s tone. Gustav was perhaps fifty or fifty-five years old, with a long gray beard and deep-set eyes. He had the wide tough hands of a boatman, and he always smelled of cod. The fisherman was a widower who sometimes attended the Utne Church. He and Father were friends. She’d seen them deep in conversation in the churchyard after services. And when her father held his own meetings, preaching from a stump to whomever was passing by, Gustav often joined him.

Gustav was a dour man. During the meal he showed no interest in the farm or the family. He didn’t make eye contact when Solveig served the brined herring and flatbread. Her father steered the conversation from the weather to the changing price of stockfish to the local pastor’s inadequacies. “I’ve heard plans for a Midsummer dance above Utne,” Svein said grimly. “And the pastor says nothing!”

“It’s a disgrace,” Gustav agreed.

When the table was cleared and dishes washed, Solvieg reached for her shawl. “I’ll tend the animals,” she murmured to her mother.

Gustav rose. “I’ll come with you.”

Startled, Solveig groped for words. Finally she stammered, “But—I—there’s no need to …” Then she noticed her father’s scowl. “Very well.”

They walked to the barn in silence. Solveig crossed her arms uneasily over her chest. I don’t want this, she thought, even though “this” had yet to be defined.

She didn’t expect Gustav to help milk the cows and goats, and he did not. Instead he grabbed a pitchfork and tossed animal waste onto the pile waiting to be spread on the barley and wheat patches. Neither spoke until they were walking back to the house. “Your father,” Gustav said abruptly, “believes we should marry.”

Solveig clutched the shawl more tightly around her shoulders. She waited until they had reached the house before speaking. “Thank you,” she said carefully, “but I have no wish to marry at this time.” She went inside.

That night she lay awake, listening to Amalie sleep beside her, and to the snores coming from the pallet of sheepskins and blankets Mother had made for Gustav by the raised hearth. Solveig didn’t regret what she’d told him. But she knew the matter was not closed.

When she woke the next morning, Gustav was gone. Solveig slipped from the house to begin morning chores.

This time her father followed. “Solveig,” he snapped. He grabbed her arm and jerked her around to face him. “I brought Gustav here for a reason.”

Solveig forced herself to meet her father’s furious gaze. “I do not wish to marry him.”

Svein gave her arm a hard shake. “You want to be a burden for the rest of your life? I feed you. I clothe you. One day your brother will take over this farm, and his wife will take charge. What will you do then?”

I’ll fly away, Solveig thought. I’ll find work in Bergen. I’ll emigrate to America. I’ll—

“God intends you to marry,” Svein muttered.

She blinked, willing back tears as his fingers bit into her skin. The wild look in his eyes frightened her. “Father, I—”

“Your perversity is a sin!” He pulled her, stumbling, to the small rowan tree growing beside the barn and broke off a narrow branch.

Ten days later, Solveig and her brother took their livestock up to the summer farm.

“It will be nice for you to be away,” Mother whispered when Solveig said goodbye. “I will come up when I can, and Amalie too.”

Solveig grabbed their oldest cow’s halter and led her to the trail. The backs of her legs still hurt, but she’d managed to wrench away from Father before he’d struck too many blows. All she wanted to do was leave the main farm, and her father, behind. The cows were eager, knowing fresh grass awaited. The sheep bleated with apparent happiness as well. The goats danced and pranced.

The procession moved up the mountain with a constant jingle-jangle of the animals’ bells. When they arrived in the high meadow, Solveig felt something tight inside ease. She loved the seter, and this year she’d been given responsibility for the summer farm.

Her brother stayed only one night. “I’ll be back on Saturday to pick up your butter and cheese,” he told her the next morning as he shrugged into a pack basket. He lifted one hand in farewell and strode down the trail.

“Well.” Solveig turned back to the low log building where she would work and cook and sleep this summer. Everything needed cleaning, but soon enough she’d have her buckets and churns, strainers and paddles, bowls and ambars arranged on the shelves just where she needed them.

First, though, she wanted to hide the book her mother had given her. In the past week or so they’d snatched a few quiet minutes when Svein was elsewhere. Britta shared a story, and Solveig wrote it down. It took a long time. But these stolen moments with her mother made Solveig content. And her mother’s ability to save a bit back from the family account, and secretly buy the notebook, had given Solveig an idea. In the fall, after she closed the seter, she’d be expected to take some of the cheese and butter to sell in Utne. If Mother can take some money for herself, Solveig thought, I can too. The prospect of saving even a few kroner was tantalizing. And she would ask the pastor for an attest—a letter of recommendation she could use if she one day looked for work in Bergen … or even America.

Now she considered where to hide the book of stories. Her father might visit the seter at any time to bring supplies or check production or patch a leaky roof. Best to get into the habit of securing the book out of sight.

The back room of the cabin had been built against the mountain wall, which helped keep cheese and milk cool. Over the years a few broken domestic tools had been shoved into a far corner, including an old churn with dry staves. “This will do,” Solveig murmured. She lifted the dasher and lid, peered inside … and her jaw dropped with astonishment. Standing inside the hollow churn was a small wooden fiddle case.

She pulled the case free, carried it into the main room, and opened the lid to reveal the hardingfele. Where did you come from? she demanded silently. But almost as quickly, she knew. This must be the fiddle once owned by her long-dead Uncle Erik, who’d inherited it from his grandfather, Lars. Her mother must have hidden it here when she married Svein. Solveig had always assumed that Erik’s fiddle was long gone, perhaps even destroyed. It pleased her to imagine her mother defiantly tucking away Erik’s hardingfele.

And now, Solveig thought with a sense of awe, it is mine. The spruce fingerboard had been overlaid with horn, and she traced a finger over the precise pattern formed by imbedded pieces of clam shell. She turned the fiddle to better see the intricate designs inked on the curving sides.

But after so many years of neglect, the instrument was warped. The thin wood held several small cracks. The brittle strings had snapped. Solveig had no idea how to bring the instrument back to life.

Nonetheless, she was determined to try.