trip03: Northern Coast of Norway
Excerpt of a PATREON post from October 10, 2022
“Northern Coast of Norway”
I've written and said those four words so many times in the last 20 months, that it feels surreal to actually BE on the Northern Coast of Norway as I write them this time. At this very moment, I'm tucked under a down comforter in a bedroom of a house in the tiny village of Kjækan, Norway. I have returned to Wilhelmine's birthplace. The journey to get to this place was as meaningful as being here.
I woke-up in Kautokeino this morning and made one of the most amazing drives of my life. It rivaled our 2016 family road trip to the Southwest, in the way the land transitioned from one dramatic landscape to another. But, my roots are not tied to the Southwest like they are here. That really is the difference in experience right now. I will try to articulate it, without going too far out on a limb.
I drove in silence, my eyes on the road, my hands on the wheel, and my thoughts flying around, racing ahead to the emergence of mountains on the horizon, the sudden view of a village nestled in a valley, green farm grass like an emerald in the mostly grey mountains - bare branches creating skeletons, smooth glassy water of rivers and the sea. A friend's words echoing in my head: "it takes effort to travel that far north" - my effort merely a fraction of theirs before cars and paved roads and gps. I am repeating even without knowing. I feel this place in my cells, even though I've never been here before. It's real and a mirage simultaneously.
I found myself thinking of my grandpa, Helmer. How amazed might he have been to know his grandma's history, her grandparents' history, their grandparents' history. Technology has blown open research, and suddenly I can benefit from the hive of all the research. Every generation has their own vessel and if I am this generation's vessel, the hive is making me look good .... but really, how lucky am I to be asking these questions now, when there seems to be potential for really answering some of them?
After my grandpa, my thoughts shifted to my mom, Gladys, and aunt, Ilona ... the two in my life most directly tied to me and this journey and this family thread. I heard their voices in my head as the "highways" I was driving became more and more narrow and the big trucks still came down them lickety-split. I heard their ooos and aaahs as I rolled up and down mountain roads, curved back and forth around the edges, and descended from sharp rocks into a pine-tree filled valley before emerging at the coast.
After the ladies, I heard my uncle Greg (their brother) admitting he's more of a "here and now" kinda guy (aka not too interested in the past, like lots of folks) ... and also, how I grew-up living out the epic camping caravan journeys of my parents - but really, I suspect it was Greg hatching the plan and route each year. Packing kids, gear and food into VW vans and traversing the United States. Pitching camp, sleeping in tents, living outside, cooking over a fire. In the present "here and now" he is still hatching plans and traversing the country in an RV - and marveling at the fact that his daughter (and by extention, he) now owns land. These all felt like echoes of history, of ancestors, living on through him - here and now - even if he doesn't see it, or see it that way. That's when it hit me ....
I may be conscious of the ways I am seeking, and still the energy of discovery is all around me, meeting my foot as it lands whether I see it or not. I don't know the circumstances that brought Wilhelmine's parents to Norway, I don't know why they chose Kjækan, I don't know when they came here, but I know Wilhelmine was born here in 1859 and I know they left Norway in 1873 when Wilhelmine was 14. They left Sweden for Norway, and they left this dynamic place for flat prairie Minnesota (and before that, copper-country in the Upper Penninsula of Michigan). I don't know so many important details, but I know what it's like to move as a young teenager and I know how memories of a childhood home can remain vivid even in old age. I can't help but feel like she was pulling/pushing me here - that I am meant to remember something about her, about me, about all of us, that didn't make it into the narrative of my life.
And all immigrants, all people for that matter, adjust their narratives for many reasons. The more I learn about her family roots here and in Sweden, the more I see that survival tactics were really embedded. We do things without knowing. We don't know the depths of what we do. I don't know the depths of my own survival tactics, my coping mechanisms ... that's really where this all began - trying to heal something that evades me. Trying to explain behaviors that I can't seem to let go of. How will this place impact that? No clue. It just seemed the most logical next step.
So, here I am. In the pitch darkness, wintery cold, utter silence, at the top of an entire continent ... understanding how this could feel like home. Cold, harsh, extreme. Bright, rich, vibrant. "I am here"
