The fractured relationship between leader and followers caused the initial breakdown of the community. Similar collapses occurred with other utopian efforts. Later in this book, for instance, we will see parallels between Metlakatla and the Finnish settlement of Sointula on Malcolm Island—and, of course, with the Brother XII cult. In the early stages, when a spirit of openness was fundamental to getting a community up and running, there was a certain unanimity of vision. But as time passed, the leader turned dictatorial, and the followers either left or became very passive. What was once guidance became law. Dissent was forbidden. The leader’s views were sacrosanct.
Bella Coola Area
Quatsino Area
Chapter 2
New Fjordland
The Norwegian Colonies of Hagensborg and Quatsino
My mind is now on Canada bent … On Bella Coola River is very likely my future home. There will latent powers possessed by me come forth, and the air castles of youth become a reality.
—Iver Fougner, diary
The walls of the valley rose steeply to a cap of grey cloud, which parted from time to time to reveal snowy highlands. A grey river raced through lush, lowland forests. Dozens of icy, long-tailed waterfalls coursed down the granite flanks of the surrounding mountains. Yet the mouth of the valley was at sea level, and the climate, influenced by an ocean fjord that burrows deep into British Columbia’s central coastline, was fairly mild. The name of this remote place did not derive from Spanish or Italian, as many have assumed, but from a neighbouring band’s description of the aboriginal inhabitants. Still, the words—Bella Coola—had a mellifluous lilt.
It was early June, and the weather was cool and wet, as it had been all along the coast that year. Peter Solhjell was showing me the sights. His great-grandparents, Ole and Johanna Gaarden, had colonized the valley in the mid-1890s, along with more than two hundred fellow Norwegians. The Gaardens emigrated twice—once from Norway, and then again from Minnesota—enticed by an “immigration lease” offered by the BC government. Free land was the main attraction. Provided they lived in a remote part of the province and met certain conditions of settlement, members of select foreign groups could, with five years of back-breaking labour, each claim a complimentary quarter-section of about sixty-five hectares.
Today, the Bella Coola valley reflects the perseverance of those early settlers. The region remains isolated, and the countryside is as rugged as ever, yet the valley bottom has been transformed into a patchwork quilt of fields, fences and neat homesteads. Many older log cabins survive, often with crisp window-curtains and blooming flower boxes. Vegetable gardens flourish and horses graze in sweet-smelling meadows. In the past, grain and cattle were raised, as well as cabbages, root vegetables and other crops. Bella Coola potatoes, said Solhjell, are famous far and wide for their flavour. Now, only a few people farm on a large scale, most having turned to logging and other trades. But the valley maintains a rare air of rural contentment.
There are many reminders of the first Norwegian colonists. In the graveyard, a large granite stone commemorates their leader, Reverend Christian Saugstad. On a clear day, you can look up from his grave and see the peak and glacier named after him. At 2,908 metres, Mount Saugstad is the highest in the region. And if you arrive at the Bella Coola dock and glance at the big Shell Oil tanks, Saugstad is the first name to greet you: his great-grandson Gerrald owns the local fuel agency.
Reverend Saugstad gathered the original colonists. He searched out the valley and inspected it personally in advance of the move. He drew up idealistic laws to govern his disciples, whose behaviour was stalwartly co-operative and, in many respects, communal. Only “moral, industrious and loyal Norwegian farmers, mechanics and business men” would be accepted, according to the colony’s constitution. More importantly, the rules prohibited, on pain of expulsion, “the use of intoxicating drinks.”
Bella Coola’s remoteness did not bother Saugstad, as he had in mind a place where upright Christians could grow in spirit and virtue, far from the evils of the world. His own devout faith carried him through the hard early years, and his tireless example and personal charisma carried the rest of the colonists. But the Lutheran preacher paid a high price for setting his utopian goals in motion: he was among the first to die in the new land, in 1897, aged only fifty-eight. His family flourished, though, and his dream lived on, even if it never quite gained the momentum Saugstad had originally hoped for, and veered towards cultural assimilation rather than spiritual refinement.
Nevertheless, all up and down the valley, Norwegian names prevail: Brekke and Brynildsen, Frostrup and Fredriksen, Harestad and Hansen, Knudsen and Nygaard. Few Norwegian descendants still speak their native tongue, but most continue to take pride in their heritage and customs. “My mother always used to say that you’re in this country now and that’s the way to go,” explained Merroly Frostrup, born a Saugstad. “It was hard enough eking out a living without worrying about your culture. As long as we had flatbread at Christmas, that was good enough.”
“And lutefisk,” added her brother Gerrald, referring to another much-loved Norwegian snack: cod preserved by soaking it in lye.
At the mouth of the valley, the Bella Coola River reaches saltwater in a maze of grassy mudflats. On the south bank, however, is a firm, flat area, where trading posts have operated since the 1860s. Now this spot is home to the village of Bella Coola, located beside the main reserve of the Nuxalk people, which extends to the east several kilometres. A picturesque old church sits beside a ceremonial longhouse, while derelict grave markers peek from a snarl of brambles along the riverbank.
The villages of the Nuxalk—who are more closely related to the Coast Salish, far to the south, than to any of their First Nations neighbours—once extended the length of the valley. The largest one was twenty-five kilometres upriver. The valley had a strategic location: the trails that allowed BC’s coastal bands to trade oolichan grease with those of the interior terminated there. (By following those trails, Alexander Mackenzie reached Bella Coola—and the Pacific Ocean—in 1793, the first European to cross Canada by land.) The Nuxalk were friendly towards the Norwegian settlers and welcomed them to the valley. The relationship between the two groups has always been co-operative; without Nuxalk help the colony might not have survived.
Due east of the reserve stand a handful of pioneer homesteads where enterprising white settlers put down roots in the 1880s: men such as Tom Draney, who worked at canneries up and down the coast, and young Fillip Jacobsen, who combed British Columbia collecting curios for European museums. For the next thirty kilometres or so, one passes the tidy farms of the former Norwegian colonists. A focal point for their strung-out community was established about fifteen kilometres east of Bella Coola and named Hagensborg, after Hagen Christensen, who built an early store there. The entire sixty-five-kilometre-long valley has a current population of about two thousand.
We stopped at Hagensborg to tour a heritage farmhouse, which the local Sons of Norway branch had helped restore and furnish as a typical turn-of-the-century valley home. The weathered building, constructed of massive, hand-trimmed ten-by-fifty-centimetre logs, once belonged to Andrew Svisdahl, another Norwegian pioneer. In 1988, with funding from several community groups, the house was purchased from the Svisdahl family and skidded three kilometres down the highway to its present location.
A heritage farmhouse at Hagensborg, restored and furnished by the local Sons of Norway chapter. The hand-trimmed logs, connected with intricate dovetail joints, fit snugly against one another and still keep the home warm in winter. Andrew