Henny and Louis Hale, Tacoma
After mother died, it was just me and my older sister that had to take over. I was twelve; my sister Mary was fourteen. We had to do the milking and the baking. Maybe I sound like we worked ourselves to death, well, we did. But that’s how we lived up in the north; it was hard going. In the winter, now here was I, twelve years old, had to hack a road through the snow, hack holes in the river in the ice, carry about fourteen buckets every other day to the barn for the cows and the sheep. We had it to do and so we did it.
We took the sheep in from the barn and I clipped them in the kitchen. I was so short, I sat on the sheep’s back and clipped the wool off of it. There was a lady that used to come to the house all the time and I didn’t like her. She was running after my dad when he was a widower. One time, I was clipping the wool of this sheep and she was sitting at the kitchen table having a cup of coffee. And I happened to clip the skin of the sheep and he didn’t like it one bit, so the sheep leaped into that lady’s lap and spilled her coffee and I was so glad. Isn’t that terrible?
I was the tomboy. Mary was the lady. I ran out and played ball with the boys and went swimming in the river and I’d go fishing with my dad. Summer nights when he was home and the midnight sun was shining, we’d take the little boat and go way out and fill the bucket with little gjedde [pike]. We’d sit out on the water till the sun came to the sea and went up again.* And then we’d go home and cook up a pot of that fish. We worked hard, but there were times when we enjoyed our life, too.
I was confirmed at fifteen and then I quit school. I stayed home for a couple of years just to help. I left home when I was seventeen, though. I went to a neighboring farm where I stayed for about two years and then I came back to work for my schoolteacher. I liked her very, very much and then I decided to go to America and she said, “If you stay another year, I’ll give you a silver spoon for Christmas.” Well, I didn’t want to stay.
Why I wanted to go to America? Maybe it was born in me. Because my dad wanted to go to America when he was a young man. But one after another his brothers and sisters left and came to America, and he didn’t want to leave grandfather alone with the farm so he and his brother Martin stayed home. Of course, we thought America was lined with gold all over the place. My father and everybody else told stories about this. My Uncle George was over here, and Aunt Minnie, and Uncle Ed and Arnt, and Nick and Albert, and Aunt Ellen was here. They were all over here and they wrote home and they’d send packages. Blouses with beautiful lace on—oh it was so beautiful, all of it. High-button shoes.
But I think more than anything was that I couldn’t see. I wanted to see more of the world. There was a hill up above our house and where I really decided to go to America was on that hill. I had a Sunday off from this place where I was working and I came home and I walked up on that hill and I stood on tiptoe. I actually stood on tiptoe. I felt like I was choking, because I couldn’t see over the mountains. And I decided, I’m just not going to live like this. And I went home and I sat down that Sunday afternoon and I wrote to my uncle George Johnson in Tacoma if he would send me a ticket, please, so I could come to America. In short order, I had a ticket.
I was twenty. I left October 10, I think it was, 1923. I got the ticket, and like I say, I had hardly been off of the farm. I didn’t know what the world was all about. But I had to take the boat and go into the nearest city, I think it was Svolvær, to get my papers in order. That’s the first time I saw an electric light. No kidding. I didn’t know what I let myself in for, but I wanted to go to America, period; so I went to get these papers in order and I made it. I was here about three weeks before Christmas. I don’t know what drove me. I was possessed; I just wanted out.
What I remember more than anything was my little brother going with me down to where we took the boat to row across; and he stood there with his fists like this and he stuck them in his pocket and he wasn’t going to cry. My dad went with me; he rowed me across that sea there. Then there was a small place, maybe four or five blocks long, to walk from the boat and over to the ship that I was going on. My dad helped me with my suitcase and he walked half of the way with me. And I turned around and I kissed him before I left—the only time in my life I kissed my father. I never did kiss my mother. Because you didn’t have emotions; you weren’t supposed to. He turned around and walked home again. He was really glad that I could get out of there.
We lived out by the North Sea, right on the sea. The North Sea would come over the rocks and I’d stand there petrified looking at it. It was really fantastic. Our young friends, as well as families, died one after another out on the sea. I remember one Sunday afternoon, a bunch of us friends had been to what they called the ungdomsnøte [youth fellowship] and one of the boys said, on the way home, “In the morning I’m going to take the boat and I will not come back until after potetopptakinga [the potato harvest].” You know, he went out in the morning and we never saw him again. We don’t know what happened to him. He could have gone away some place, or he could have drowned. This sort of thing made an impression on me. I don’t think there was any thought of getting out of it and go to America and marry, because I was going back home again in five years. But you never do, you never do.
We sailed from Eidet down the coast and we stopped in Bodø where my sister worked at that time, so she came to the boat and gave me a blanket. In Bergen, we took the train to Oslo. I was alone till I came on the train; then we met people that was going to America and we got to talking. In Oslo, we had to stay overnight and we went out for a tour of Karl Johan [the main street] and it was fun. I thought I had an awful lot of money, so I went into a butikk [store] and I bought myself a green hat and I paid thirty crowns for it. Oh, gee, I paid thirty crowns for a green hat, a green silk hat. I remember that green silk hat all my life. And I came to Tacoma with, I think, forty-two cents.
I have been back to Norway twice. In 1977 I went for the first time and in 1979 I took my two daughters with me for the family reunion; that was a joyous trip. They say when you have been away from home, anything looks different and smaller. Well, that is not just imagination. I am so sure that all the hills were smaller, absolutely. The hills where I used to run chasing the cows and the sheep, they were smaller and they were much rockier and the river where I used to go swimming was a trickle. But I took my girls up to that place where I stood on tiptoe and that was quite a moment.
*Finnmarken refers to the northernmost district in Norway; the Lofoten Islands are a prime fishing ground just off the coast of northern Norway, close to the island group where Henny grew up.
*She is describing the summer midnight sun, when the sun touches the horizon but never sinks beneath it.
Ester Sundvik
“We never knew what real medicine was.”
Born in the Åland Islands, Finland, around 1903, Ester Sundvik emigrated in 1922 and spent several years doing domestic work for families in New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. Following marriage and the birth of a daughter, Ester continued to work. The family moved to Vancouver, Washington, in 1943. There Ester became the head cook at a shipyard and was chosen to christen a Navy aircraft carrier.
I come from the Åland Islands, just between Finland and Sweden. From our town it took seven hours to get to Turku with a boat, and it took about the same length of time to get to Stockholm. Finnish people are living there, but they speak Swedish. Schools, churches, everything is in Swedish.*
My father was a baker. Mother met him working in a bakery—she sold bread and he baked—and then they got married. I don’t know anything about my father, that’s the saddest thing, because we were separated from him. I was three months old when he left for America. There were just two older sisters, Wilhelmina and Ingrid. When my aunt found out mother was deserted, she said we should go to the family home and stay there, because it was empty.
We had the most beautiful relationship with our mother. She was