Anna Hansdatter: Hunger In the Dale

Chapter 4

As the full story of Knut Flaate unfolded in fragments over the coming days, Mari began to feel a deep connection with the hermit she never met. According to Ole, Knut, in his younger years, was a highly successful sea-captain. He sailed the world over, commanding the largest vessels in the merchant fleets of Stavanger, and later, Oslo. He eventually became a rich man, with thriving business interests of his own. At the pinnacle of his career, he undertook a voyage to Africa for a consignment of slaves, bound for the New World.

Knut was not a religious man, but he had a strong moral sense. Part of his success as a commander lay in his fairness and honest dealing, with ship owners, merchants, junior officers, and common seamen alike. The very idea of slavery made him uncomfortable. On the way to Africa, he became more and more distracted. He kept to his cabin for long periods, and began drinking heavily.

As the ship lay at anchor waiting for her load to be assembled, a sudden storm struck. The anchors would not hold her, and the ship broke in two against the rocks. Luckily, the water on the leeward side was only waist-deep, so the entire crew was able to safely abandon ship, except for the captain himself. He remained aboard until the last crewmen were in the water. Before he could follow them, a swinging yardarm struck him in the head and knocked him overboard, unconscious.

He fell into the water near the last of the sailors, who carried him to shore. Using materials salvaged from the wreckage, the men built shelters in which to await rescue. Knut remained in a coma for several days, and when he awoke, he could not speak. As weeks passed, he regained his physical strength, and the ability to understand what others said, but he still could not utter a single word. By the time another ship arrived at the anchorage, he had developed a sort of crude sign language. He was able to negotiate with the captain of the newly arrived ship a complicated rescue for himself and his crew.

Some of Flaate’s men signed on as additional crew to sail the ship with its load of slaves to the New World. But first, the ship made a side journey north to the Ivory Coast, where Captain Flaate and the others could await passage on a cargo ship bound for Europe.

Before he arrived home, an influenza pandemic had ravaged the entire continent. In Oslo alone, hundreds perished in a matter of weeks, including his only child. Devastated by the loss, delirious with fever, and thinking her husband lost as well, Knut’s wife jumped to her death from her bedroom window.

Deprived of his career and his family, and cut off from society, Knut decided to take himself far from the city and the sea. He purchased the wild property later named for him, and lived out his life with human contact kept to an absolute minimum.

Ole was the hermit’s nearest living relative, and he felt a sense of responsibility as Knut grew older. He began skiing to the cave each spring and fall to check on the old man. He was always greeted silently but cordially, given a cup of tea, and sent on his way with Knut’s gestures of assurance that everything was fine, thank you for coming, see you next time.

After several years of this routine, one spring, Knut was looking a little less vigorous, and when Ole was about to leave, Knut gestured for him to wait a moment. Knut went further into the cave, and came back with several papers. The first was a deed to the land where they stood. The second was a passbook for a bank account in Oslo with a sizable balance. Finally, there was a document in Knut’s own shaky handwriting. Ole could not completely make this out, but Knut told him with gestures that it was a will granting everything to him, Ole.

The nephew put up considerable protest, but even though he had the advantage of speech, his arguments were no match for the old man’s hand-gestured ones, and he finally left the cave with the documents in hand. The next time Ole came, his uncle was dead.

Ole took the documents to a lawyer, who verified that they were authentic and even redundant: the will merely reinforced the blood relation, making Ole the legal heir to the land and the money.

“One more thing,” said Ole. He turned the will over and they looked at the back side. Scrawled in Knut’s hand was a single word, ‘guano,’ followed by some kind of symbol, like an elongated ‘M,’ or the line drawing of a distant sea gull in flight. “Any idea what this means?” Ole asked.

“Hmm,” said the lawyer. “That isn’t a Norwegian word, nor German, or Latin, that I’ve ever heard of. I can read all those fairly well. And the symbol? No idea on that either.”

Ole later found out that the word was Spanish, something that Knut must have picked up in his seafaring days. It referred to a strong fertilizer made from the excrement of sea birds, or the offal from fish processing. That may have explained the symbol Knut had scrawled, it did look a bit like a gull in flight. But what could it have to do with Ole’s inheritance? The nearest sea birds in any numbers, or large fisheries, were many miles away.

Ole took Johan with him to the cave when the snow had receded. They explored the area described in the deed. Before long, they found the meadow, with its rich soil, a weedy patch of barley, and some potatoes, growing on their own, without human attention. Nearby was a small stone hut where Knut had lived during the summers. That same day, they found the back trail to the Ringebu wagon road. Inquiring in Ringebu on their way home, they found out that Knut had visited the farms there about every two years, apparently alternating supply runs between there and Froen.

On another visit, in late summer, Ole and Johan spent the short night in the meadow. As darkness fell, the air was filled with whirring and shrill squeaks. Wave after wave of small bats flew over the meadow and on toward the valley. In the course of a half-hour, tens of thousands of them swarmed past the amazed men and disappeared.

Several hours later, in the long twilight before sunrise, the bats returned from where they had gone. The men saw them converging somewhere in the cliffs to the east. When daylight permitted, they explored the cliffs, finding a well-worn foot path directly to a small cave opening where the bats must have entered. After the bats came out that night, Ole and Johan returned to the cave with torches. Inside, they found Knut’s secret fertilizer.

The cave was large, at least fifty feet across, the ceiling was high, and the floor was covered unevenly with up to three feet of bat guano, except where Knut had removed it. There was a strong odor of ammonia, so noxious that the men had to exit the cave even before their small torches were exhausted. But they were both aware of the significance of their discovery. They soon learned that the bats only used the cave for about a month each summer. When the creatures were not present, the odor, while still powerful, could be tolerated for short periods while gathering the fertilizer.

But they also observed that the bats only leave a thin coating of guano each year. The cave must have been in use for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years to build up the large deposit. Unfortunately, this meant the supply was being used up much faster than it was being replenished.

“This year, we took out about a third of what was left.” said Ole, as he recounted the tale to Mari and the boys. “So there’s only enough for another two or three years.”

Mari gestured, and struggled to put the question into words, “Wh … what … then?”

“The Lord has already provided for us in abundance,” said Kari.

“Indeed,” agreed Ole. “You see, the money we inherited from my uncle is enough to buy a large farm and operate it profitably if we wished to. But other things are more important. Since we do not wish to be servants to any man, so, then, we cannot require anyone to be subservient to us.”

Mari was fascinated with this simple but innovative application of the Golden Rule. In the normal order of things at that time, one was either a servant or a master, a peasant or a landowner. Most, but not all, landowners had their own peasants and/or servants. On one hand, the Norwegian social system, unlike other European countries, was never feudal in nature; that is, peasants and servants were legally free to relocate or change employers, and in theory even to acquire land of their own. On the other hand, in practice, the landed aristocracy held the power; the poor for the most part had no feasible options for bettering their situation. Furthermore, since they were not “owned” by a feudal lord, they could be much more easily evicted. Mari gestured and asked, “Brethren … believe … this?”

“Only a few of us,” said Ole. “Many of the Brethren have servants, others are servants themselves.”

“Our family is a bit radical in our views on this,” added Johan. “It has even caused some dissension at times. The more conservative among the Brethren say that such thinking will lead to violence and revolution, like those raging even now in France and in America.”

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” said Ole. “We abhor violence of any kind, most certainly including revolution. Our vision is to maintain a thrifty farm together with other families of the Brethren, where decisions are taken by consensus, and all share equally in the gains or the losses. Politics, at least any which may lead to violence, are of no interest to us.”

Ole’s carefully thought-out arguments, and his knowledge of world affairs, impressed Mari very much. Here was a family from which, even without the gift of speech, she could learn many things she had only wondered about before.

As spring gave way to summer, bonds developed quickly between all members of the newly extended family. Work soon began on a house for Mari and her children, and indeed, the house was finished well before the onset of winter. Mari often walked to Ringebu on Sundays with Kari and Ole. Father Nygaard accepted Mari gladly, and recognized immediately her ability to function at a high level in spite of her impaired speech and partial paralysis. The Brethren were equally welcoming, including Mari in their meetings by carefully following her improvised sign language, and offering her questions that were easily answered with the simplest gestures. When they sang, Mari’s lips moved as she tried in vain to sing along.

The crops grew splendidly that season. There was a bumper harvest of barley. When the grain was dried and winnowed, friends from the Brethren came with pack animals to take it to the mill, and later delivered the flour back to Flaate. Potatoes were as plentiful as the best crops in the valley. Diseases like the blight that ravaged south Froen potatoes the previous year had not found their way to this remote meadow.

Neither did the blight return to the valley that season. All the farms experienced good yields of potatoes and other crops.

Little Ole and Torger were true to their words that first day on the trail. Despite the difference in age and interests, the older boys were patient and loving toward Poul and Nels; more so, in fact, than many adolescent boys were with even their biological siblings.

Berit visited Flaate several times. At her urging, Mari took her into the mountains to gather medicinal herbs. Mari had already taught her to identify a dozen or more of the most important ones, and that summer, Berit learned several more. As Mari plucked stems from a large flowering weed, Berit asked, “Mari, what is that one?”

Mari smiled and held up what she had picked. “Ya … ya …”

“Yarrow? But I know yarrow, that isn’t … oh …” and she looked more closely at the weed. “The flowers look a little like yarrow, but not the leaves. And it’s so tall! A different kind?”

Mari gestured toward the nearby ridges and peaks.

“Mountains?” said Berit, “Oh … mountain yarrow. Is it used for bleeding, like the other yarrow?”

Mari nodded, made a large gesture saying ‘much better,’ and pulled the leaves off the stems she held. She put the leaves aside, and held up the stems alone.

“The stems … Oh, Mari, dear Mari, the stems … Anna!” The women embraced.

= = =

In late summer, when the bats arrived, the younger boys were amazed at the spectacle. At Johan’s insistence, no one went near the cave while the bats were present, but one day Torger found a dead bat in the field. The boys poked and studied it, wondering at its strange appearance.

“It’s creepy,” said Nels.

“Ja, look how big the wings are, and how tiny the body,” Little Ole observed.

“Can they bite?” asked Poul.

“Probably,” Torger said. “It has teeth, see?” He used a stick to open the creature’s mouth.

Nels became very anxious. “What if they all decide to bite us?” he asked.

“They won’t,” assured Ole, but Nels was not assured.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know why, but I’m pretty sure they won’t.”

Nels was still anxious. “I think they might,” he said.

“Let’s ask Pa,” suggested Torger. At this he ran toward the house, holding the dead bat in front of him, with the other boys close behind.

Johan took the opportunity to share what he had learned about bats, and to honestly admit many things he did not know. “I have heard of rare cases where a bat has bitten a person,” he said. “Others have told me that such a bat is sick, and should be killed or avoided. Normally, they are not aggressive, and will leave people alone if they can. No one here at Flaate has ever been bothered by one.

“We must stay away from the cave while the bats are here, so we do not cause them to stop coming. Not only because of the guano, but because they are a great help to all the people in the valley. It is said they drive away the mosquitoes and other biting insects.” Johan and the boys examined the bat for a few minutes, and then buried it in the garden.

= = =

As the long Nordic winter approached, the family bought a large amount of wool and flax from nearby farms. Kari was an expert spinner and weaver, and now there was an extra set of hands to help her. Mari had become quite clever at positioning and resting her left arm so that she could work with both hands. She quickly learned the fine points of the craft, and added her own knowledge of herbs to produce colorful dyes; the two women together produced many yards of excellent fabric.

To Mari’s great fascination, Kari established a daily routine of reading lessons for Little Ole and Torger. Kari had no schooling herself, only very informal training from her parents, but she was a natural teacher. This was a very opportune time for the effort, as Ole would be a candidate for confirmation the following year. Mari quickly took to following the lessons with intense interest. Mari could already read at a very basic level, having taught herself during her own confirmation training. Many peasants accomplished this, despite the lack of any provision for their formal education. Sometimes their parents were able to help, having done the same thing themselves.

This is how it worked: Nearly every peasant household, literate or not, possessed a bible. Most of them also had a hymnal or prayer book. When children of thirteen or fourteen began confirmation training, each received a copy of Luther’s Small Catechism, which he or she was required to memorize in order to be confirmed. The Small Catechism consists of the Ten Commandments, Apostles’ Creed, Lord’s Prayer, the rites of Baptism, Confession, and Communion. As he was reciting these texts aloud over and over with the other trainees, led by a priest, clerk, or other official, the child could visually follow the text and begin to recognize the sound of each word, and then each letter, in its context. Then the student would study the family bible, following along when familiar passages were recited aloud, and closely watch the words in the hymnal or prayer book whenever hymns were sung or prayers were recited. In time one could “sound out” new words in new texts.

Of course, not every child could succeed this way. Only the most talented, motivated, or simply lucky did so, but Mari counted herself among that number. The main impediment to these folk was the lack of access to any other reading material. Domestic servants had a potential advantage over farming peasants in this regard; sometimes a liberal (and literate) master might grant them limited access to his library. For the others, those two or three religious texts were the beginning and end of literature.

At Flaate, there were a few other books, mostly revivalist tracts written in very biblical language. In her lessons, Kari skillfully introduced these texts to drill the boys on recognition of new words by sounding them out from the individual letters. Occasionally, the adults might borrow a book from friends in Ringebu; when they did, Kari would eagerly incorporate it into her lessons for the boys.

While Poul and Nels were deemed too young to actually participate in the training, they were usually present, playing quietly or just listening. The daily routine itself, and the diligence with which it was followed, impressed on them the importance the family placed on reading.