Marta Ringset – A Memoir

Introduction by Harald Sundlo: The following memoir was written by Marta Baade Ringset for a Sunnmøre project recording the reminiscences of elderly residents, conducted in the 1990s. Marta herself once said that "the housewife and the farmer's wife are the most important occupations of all." It is presented here in her own words, translated from the original New Norwegian.

Origins

I was born on the 23rd of April, 1883, at Voksa in Sande. The Baade family had come to Sunnmøre originally from Germany and Denmark; Daniel Baade had served as chief wreck surveyor in Trondheim, his son Peter Daniel had been rural dean of Borgund — a theologian of note — and his son Fredrik Kristian had been a first lieutenant who purchased Voksa and acquired an Icelandic wife, Anne Snorresdottir — which gives the family, one might observe, a rather more international flavour than is common in the genealogy of these parts.

My grandfather Peter August Friis Baade and my father Fredrik Baade continued the family's connection to the island. Father was born in 1858, and was a farmer and fisherman who attended the very first folk high school on Sunnmøre — Skavlan's school at Skodje in 1880. He was a man of liberal and local-government inclinations, much involved in the community.

On the 22nd of June, 1896, my father was lost in a storm in Breisundet together with his two eldest sons, Peter (fourteen) and Kornelius (twelve), and two other young men from Haugsbygda. They were on their way to a sailing regatta in Trondheim. I was thirteen years old. My mother was left with five children not yet confirmed; the youngest was barely one year old.

Growing Up at Voksa

Voksa is a small island; when I grew up there were about eighty people on it — now about forty. Our house was the one my grandfather had built when he first moved to Voksa as a newly-wed. There was a very large main room running the full width of the house, painted throughout; at one end a narrower chamber used in my childhood as a sleeping room for my mother and the youngest children; this also served as the living room in winter, since the other rooms were far too cold. The whole ground floor had very high ceilings, with very tall windows, so that when the west wind was blowing it was not exactly mild. On the opposite side of the main room was a square vestibule with a door to the outside — a semi-circular stone staircase in front — and a slanting stair up to the loft.

On the other side were a door to the kitchen and a door to the larder. The kitchen was long, with two windows. Beneath the south-facing window stood the kitchen table, with benches fixed to the wall on two sides and a loose bench at the front, so there was good room for many people. All our daily meals we ate in the kitchen.

Along the long wall between the kitchen table and the hearth there was a great plate-rack running to the ceiling — two shelves, with a wide middle shelf for large platters and narrower ones on each side for plates. Then there was the hearth — spacious, cast iron at the base, with an iron bar across from which pot-hooks hung, so that pots could be raised or lowered as required. There was also the trivet, a round iron ring on three feet on which smaller pots or pans could be set, and on which the baking stone was placed for bread or lefse, potato cakes, or pancakes.

The kitchen floor was stone, and under the east-facing window stood a small table near the hearth; further along was a bench where buckets of fresh water were kept. Under the plate-rack was a narrow shelf or table, useful for setting things down.

I think anyone accustomed to a modern kitchen would find it tolerably difficult to do passable work in such a kitchen. When I was little, there was not even a range.

On the loft there were several smaller rooms fitted out for various purposes. Above the kitchen and larder were two rooms for clothes: one where my mother kept a couple of chests with her own and the children's things, mostly best clothes, while everyday things found a corner wherever they could. The other was for the servants — their chests and their good clothes. Further in was a large room, the sleeping room for the servant girl and the older children; there stood the loom also. And there was a smaller room for the farm lad. Furthest in was the guest room, with a large double bed and a great eiderdown quilt. In the open loft all the bedding hung freely and aired.

Furniture throughout the house was as simple and as sparse as possible. In the main room there was a very large table — when fully extended it seated twenty-four — and a smaller table and a writing desk we called "the flap." We had a sofa with, above it in a row, old photographs in dark oval frames, and a number of chairs — I doubt I ever counted them. We also had a large carved oak cabinet, three or four hundred years old by those who understood such things. The cabinet is in the farm still.

A little way from the main house stood the storehouse on high posts — large and spacious, with bins for flour and grain and shelves for flatbread and lefse. On the verandah on one side were salt-tubs with meat and pork; on the loft the cured meats hung. Across the yard, on the other side of the road, there was a small hillock we called Borgstovehaugen where the old workers' cottage stood. One end was fitted up as a kiln-house with a hearth and formerly a baking oven, long out of use. There the grain was dried before milling, and similar work done.

A little further stood the barn — my father had built a large new one a few years before he was drowned. In those days they never built the byre adjoining the barn; whether it was the fire risk they feared or merely a desire for inconvenience, I cannot say. The byre stood some way apart: cows and calves in one pen, sheep in a lean-to to the side, and at the front end a couple of spacious sties for two or three pigs.

But all these animals needed feeding, and the weather out on the coast was not always perfectly calm, so it was often hard going. My mother made hay-bundles for the cows — she took a core of loose hay and wrapped it round with straw, winding two or three layers tight enough to hold. We pushed these up our arms as many as we could carry, but it happened that the gale took both us and the bundles, so it was not always simple going.

Food and Daily Life

Food in my childhood was simple. On weekdays and for dinner there was much fish or herring, for those were things we had ourselves. The herring was generally salt herring, or — as spring advanced — dried herring: great herring split open, backbone removed, lightly salted, and dried. We children liked that particularly, with hot boiled potatoes. Sometimes earlier in the season there was slightly ripened herring, prepared the same way but used before it became too dry and hard. Fish was mostly salted; fresh fish was had when they were out on the small inshore fishing and lucky enough to catch something — then there was fresh fish for dinner, with liver or kams (liver mixed with flour into flat cakes boiled in the fish stock).

We never cooked the fish caught in winter — that was for stockfish and sale, and the liver too. The only exception was codheads, which we occasionally ate, though even those were saleable. Alongside was generally a milk soup or fish soup, and sometimes bread pieces — pieces of oat flatbread with butter.

There were four meals each day: breakfast when we had finished the byre work; dinner at twelve (in summer there was always an hour's rest for the adults); afternoon tea at five; supper at nine. Afternoon tea and breakfast were mostly bread — lefse and potato cakes or pancakes. Actual bread we rarely had in those days, for we had no baking oven. At holidays they baked bread in pots: they made round loaves and let them rise, then placed two pots with tight lids over them, hung them on the pot-hooks, and applied heat carefully. When half-baked they had to be turned — which could be something of a problem to do precisely. For supper there was oat porridge. Almost all this food was home-made and home-grown; very little was bought.

Sunday there was mostly meat, though no dessert in my very early years. Vegetables were little used — some carrots or swede, but cabbage was not common until much later.

Our clothes and shoes in childhood were all home-made. The cloth for clothing was home-spun and home-woven, for both boys and girls — first entirely home-spun and home-dyed, but later factories came that took wool for spinning, which made things very much easier. They wove much of the dress-cloth with a cotton warp, so it became lighter and thinner. The first dress of bought cloth I ever had was my confirmation dress — and the same for the shoes. Growing up, there was nothing but home-sewn shoes of home-tanned leather. Several cobblers worked in each parish, some going round the farms, others sitting at home and working — and it could be a long wait. They even sewed sea-boots of home-made leather; the shoes were half-soled and resoled twice and more, so they were not exactly elegant. But they were cheap, and that counted for much.

School and Confirmation

Our teacher was Mathias Støylen, a nephew of Bishop Bernt Støylen. School was fourteen days on Voksa and four weeks at Hakallestranda. The confirmation was a large one — seventy-five children — taken by a priest from Oslo who knew nothing of local conditions. After confirmation I was reckoned half an adult.

The first dress of bought cloth I ever had was my confirmation dress. The same applied to the shoes.

Youth

There were six of us who were roughly the same age — three girls and three boys — and we had stayed together since we were small and continued to do so. The IOGT lodge at Sandsøy was growing strong at that time, and many of the young people from Voksa joined. It was pleasant for us who had not been members of anything before. It was mostly young people involved, so the whole thing was very much like a youth meeting — apart from the traditional opening and closing and the formal ceremonies when new members were admitted. We had a handwritten paper in which we could write about one thing and another; we took turns as editor, and there was reading aloud and discussion on various subjects. There were some older members who now and then gave talks or told of this and that, and there was a great deal of singing.

Sandshamn was a large fishing port in those days, so in winter there were many visitors. After the lodge meetings there would always be one of the sons of a merchant who suggested a dance down in his father's fish warehouse, and we were very willing. There was always someone with a mouth organ in his pocket or an accordion up his sleeve. We thought it just as entertaining as a fine band in a fine hall — and it cost us not a penny, which also counted at that time.

Another fine thing was the great summer gatherings. Sunnmøre Liberal Youth Federation held a large youth gathering for all of Sunnmøre every year — at least two nationally known speakers, sometimes a youth chaplain. The gathering was always held in a larger village; it started on the Saturday evening with a festival, and the local people were remarkably hospitable. We went round asking after lodgings for the night, and people were incredibly obliging. Many had quite full houses but some even made "flat beds" — straw laid out on the floor, with clothes on top of the straw and covers on top of those — which made room for an extraordinary number. As a rule it was people from the same village who shared such a bed, and it was understood that everyone should behave decently. Sometimes we were even invited to breakfast, and they would not take a penny for food or lodging. There could easily be four or five thousand people at such a gathering, and one made new acquaintances, and friendships formed that lasted a lifetime.

One man I should like to mention in connection with the youth work is the teacher Henrik Straumsheim — a youth man heart and soul, from Sykkylven, later a teacher and then headmaster at Møre Folk High School in Ørsta. He was a poet, a speaker, a singer, and created merriment wherever he went. He and Nils, who later became my husband, had been good friends from their young years, and when he later came to Liabygda to speak at a festival he naturally stayed with us. The nights then tended to be rather short, for there were so many things to talk about that we did not think of the morrow.

Marriage and Liabygda

I was betrothed and was to marry a farmer from Liabygda in Stranda municipality, Nils E. Ringset. The wedding was held at Ringset, as was most appropriate.

Liabygda is a small pleasant village lying on a shelf some two hundred metres above sea level. At that time, in 1918, about two hundred and fifty people lived there, most of them farmers. Many of the young men worked as carpenters travelling round the villages; some came home for a time in midsummer to help with the hay and other necessary work, for there was not much machinery in those days to help. By about 1923 or 1924 we got a mowing machine and some years later a rake, and then the work was easily done.

The farms were mostly small — seven or eight cows, fourteen or fifteen sheep, and a horse. Many of the farms were little cleared and on many there was an overwhelming quantity of stone. Hence perhaps the saying: "Stone-heap, stone-heap, starve to death." On the farm Nedre Ringset two households lived — as on so many places at that time — with all the houses clustered together as they had stood for hundreds of years, the land round about them broken up and the fields laid out accordingly. The soil here was good and everything grew well, for the village lies full in the south-facing sun.

My grandfather-in-law had looked about him and thought this was no way to work a farm, with the tenants' strips running intermixed with one another. He demanded an enclosure and obtained it. In the first year he worked his new farm he had two acres of cultivated land. Later the breaking of new ground became regular work, and Nils made it a rule in his early years on the farm to break at least one acre a year. In one year they carted away twelve hundred loads of stone from a single acre. It was slow going, but by degrees it came to resemble a farm.

One good thing in the village was the forest, which grew better here than elsewhere; it was good to have some few crowns from timber sold to other villages. Originally there was only pine here; the spruce came only when they began to plant trees. But it throve well — a forester said it grew significantly faster here than in the east of the country.

Nils Ringset and His Work

Nils was not the eldest son on the farm. In those days all the young men went to America, or so it seemed, and in time he was the one who had to take over the farm. He liked farm and forest work, and it suited him well. But as with my own father, he liked to be involved in whatever was happening here, there, and everywhere, so it was not always that he got everything done on the farm that ought to have been done — and that fell in part upon me. I had been used to working since my youth, so it came naturally.

In addition we had three retired old people to care for. There was no national insurance in those days, and no old people's homes to move into, so we had to keep them at home and look after them as well as we could. There was Nils's grandmother, who was generally bedridden and confused in her mind, and needed to be looked after and fed like a child. I shall honestly confess that I did not always find that work easy, not being accustomed to anything of the kind. She lay in that state for three years after I came to the farm, and when she died she was one month short of a hundred.

Nils's parents were healthy and energetic in the early years, and his mother in particular was something of a workhorse and could often be a great help with the work.

In 1917 Nils joined the board of Sunnmøre Liberal Youth Federation, and in 1919 became chairman — a post he held for twenty-seven years. In those days the federation was an exceptionally active organisation with over eighty individual associations, many very vigorous. They arranged various courses, and it was part of the tradition that the chairman should attend the closing ceremony as often as possible. Able speakers travelled round the associations giving talks, and there was always a large turnout to hear them. The youth associations were something of a cultural factor in the villages, and everyone reckoned with them.

Nils became more and more absent from home. In 1917 he joined Stranda parish council and served there for thirty years. I said to him once, when he was about to set off on some trip: "I can hardly think you're away more than at home." "Oh, not at all," he replied, "it's just that you only think of the times I'm away and never think of all the times I'm here." I said nothing, but I started keeping a diary — writing down when he left, where he was going, and when he returned. It emerged that in one year he was away for two hundred and forty days.

We had a good marriage. We always got on well together. He was the centre of my whole life, and I cannot leave without speaking of the many things he was involved in — which I also cared about.

The Lyngvin Housewifery School

In the youth federation committee they had discussed whether something ought to be done to provide a housewifery school for northern Sunnmøre. A committee was appointed, with three from the youth federation and four others; Nils became its chairman. He wrote to all the municipalities that might be interested, and all responded positively. In spring the committee toured the various places that had offered to take the school. They settled on Nordal municipality's offer as the best, and the farm at Linge — a lovely village on the south-facing coast — as the most suitable property. There was a childless couple who owned it, and the houses were of good size and well-maintained. A contract was drawn up with the owner, L.P.Linge, whereby the youth federation should lease Linge as a housewifery school for twenty years; the school was to be called Lyngvin Housewifery School.

Lyngvin Housewifery School opened in the autumn of 1921. Compared with housewifery schools that came later it was modest enough — most of the pupils had to lodge round about the farms in the first years — but the people at Linge were helpful and agreeable, everyone liked it there, and there were always more applicants for places than there were places available. Later an outbuilding with an auxiliary kitchen and other rooms was added, and most of the pupils could be accommodated on the school farm.

One of the farm managers, Oskar Indreeide, was an outstanding man. He brought the garden into good condition, and the farm's surplus contributed usefully to running the school. He also built the first two greenhouses in Storfjord, for tomatoes and cucumbers.

As the twenty-year lease drew towards its end, the federation asked to purchase Lyngvin, but the owner's brothers — living in Oslo — said no; they wanted it themselves. Captain Martin Linge was one of them. A memorial stone has since been erected to him at the school.

The federation now had to look elsewhere. This time they settled on Ørskog, where there was a childless couple willing to sell a suitable farm — but new buildings would have to be put up. The architect Asbjørn Barstad drew the plans for a school for forty-eight pupils, which would make it the largest housewifery school in the county. It was to be finished in 1941. But other things happened. The war had come.

Everything they had moved to Ørskog was requisitioned by the Germans; in the confusion they managed to save some of the most valuable items. The garden teacher at Amdam in Ørskog, Jørgen Amdam, who had for many years run courses in horticulture and vegetables on his own farm, offered the federation the use of his large house for the duration — there was room for twenty pupils, and in the cellar a spacious kitchen. The school spent the rest of the war at Amdam.

When at last the Germans left, the board made a tour of inspection. The state of the building was not cheerful — it needed thorough repair, costing more than the whole house had been new. The federation could not manage more. They offered the school to the county, who took it over.

When the housewifery school had its inauguration ceremony, the county governor came, and presented Nils with the Civic Medal in silver for public service.

Sunnmøre Museum

It was Nils who called the meeting that founded Sunnmøre Museum at Borgundgavlen near Ålesund, and it was he who negotiated the lease and subsequently the purchase of the seventeen acres of land on which the museum stands, from a lady in Ålesund, Mrs Jervell. He was chairman of the museum board in its first year, then said that it would be better to have museum specialists in that position — but he sat on the board for many years.

Forestry and Iceland

Nils was chairman of Møre Forestry Society for thirty years, and during those years — when he was simultaneously chairman of the youth federation — a great many tree seedlings were planted. The youth associations generally took on the planting for private individuals and communally owned plots. He was also a member of the Norwegian Forestry Society and served as its chairman for five years. In one of those years the Swedish Society for Forest Preservation held its fiftieth jubilee, and it was Nils who represented the Norwegian Forestry Society. In a great banquet hall before fifteen hundred people — including representatives of the royal house — Nils gave a speech. The following day the Stockholm newspaper reported that the representative from Norway had given the best speech of the evening.

While chairman of the Norwegian Forestry Society he organised exchange visits to Iceland — Norwegian young people going to Iceland to plant trees, Icelandic young people coming to Norway. He also arranged the gift of a sizeable cabin to the Icelanders, erected near Reykjavik at a place called Skógarmörk. He visited Iceland three times, and also travelled several times to each of the other Nordic countries.

In 1958 Nils received the Icelandic Order of the Falcon for his work on Iceland's forests, and in 1971 the 'Family Tree' award for his forest work in Iceland and Norway.

The War Years

We got off comparatively lightly in our village during the war of 1940–45. We very rarely saw a German soldier here — chiefly because of the poor road connection with other villages. The main road between Stordal and Liabygda was old and poor, and in winter it could not even be cleared, our small home-made snowplough not being up to any real snowfall. Germans seldom came.

Nils was mayor of Stranda during the war. After the fighting began he went to Molde to consult with Utheim, then county governor, who advised Nils to go home and continue as mayor — managing as best he could — and to be careful. But in 1943 he was removed as mayor, having spoken against the NS county governor at the county council when that gentleman wanted the council to send a greeting to Quisling. The greeting was not sent. Documents that came to light after the war revealed that Nils was to have been arrested in March 1945. Why it was not done he never knew. But there were jubilant days when the war ended — and thanksgiving.

The worst of the war years for many was food and clothing. Those who had to buy everything had it hard — rationing, and difficulty getting decent goods. The rye flour we could buy at that time barely resembled food. On our farm, and in the village generally, we grew barley, which is not suitable for bread; but we managed to obtain some wheat seed and sow it, and it grew beautifully. When we mixed it with the rye flour we got good bread. Best of all: we had something to share with those who had nothing — and there were quite a number.

One thing we never engaged in was the black market — demanding an unreasonable price for what one had, or using it to obtain other things. It was rather unpleasant, but some did it.

Family

We had five children — three sons and two daughters. Our eldest son fell into a river and drowned when he was four years old. It was a grievous event. The others grew up and made their way in life. The eldest son has the farm; the second studied and became a dairy engineer, employed by Østlandske Meieriforbund, living in Bærum with his own house and family. Both daughters became nurses. The eldest went after some years to Seattle, where we have a great deal of family; she eventually became head sister of a heart department at a large hospital there. She married there, though her husband died after a few years; she has two stepdaughters. The second daughter settled in Asker.

Nils's sister's son, Leiv Furset, had grown up with us. He was a bright and enterprising young man, and he built a furniture factory in Liabygda. At first the products were small items — pencil boxes and the like; later they moved on to simple models of armchairs. One of the models was a small flat-pack chair they called "Pål" — it is still selling, and they have sold over half a million of that one chair alone. The factory burned to the ground one day, but he rebuilt it larger. At its height there were thirty-eight men employed. Workers had come from outside the village and needed accommodation, and as there was no café in the entire village, I ended up running a boarding house — full board for all who needed it, alongside the ordinary daily work of the farm, with a girl hired to help. The men were agreeable and grateful, and it all went smoothly. After some years Leiv built a boarding house with a proper canteen and kitchen, and flats for workers with families.

Leiv married a neighbour's daughter from Ringset and built himself a fine home. Later his son-in-law took over the factory, and Leiv became a pensioner.

Nils died on the 11th of February, 1976. The days were long and lonely after that.

Retirement

I like being a pensioner. I was healthy enough to take part in the daily work of the farm until past the age of seventy. My son had married and they had three children in time, and there was always helpful work to be done looking after grandchildren. Often old acquaintances would come to visit — always most welcome; then there was much talk of old times and all they had been part of, and a little talk of the new times with their problems, which we did not always like, as all old people do not.

One of the best things, I think, was the old-age pension. That we received this fixed sum in hand every month and did not need to count every penny as our parents had done.

As for organisations, I was never strongly political. I was always a Liberal — or rather a Liberal woman — but sometimes I speculated whether other parties might not have just as much right in some of their claims. I belonged to a mission society and rather more enthusiastically to the health society — the work of that one seemed more directly visible in the world around one.

People in the village had begun talking for a year or two before the end about getting a small residential home for the elderly in Liabygda — many nearby villages had one. After some back and forth a plot was secured, an application sent to the State Housing Bank, rejected at first, then approved. Building commenced; it was to be small — only ten residents — perhaps too small, but that is what was done, and on the 4th of September, 1980, the home was ready for occupation. All the furniture and fittings, everything but what was fixed to the walls, we brought ourselves. The single-person flats each have a sitting room with a small kitchen corner, a bedroom, and a shower room. All of us like it very much, and all are grateful that we got to come here.

All the help is from the village — relatives or neighbours — and all the residents are from the village too, and we are content and have it as good as it is possible to have it.

M.R.

Afterword

As noted above, the factory Leiv had built was taken over after his death by his son-in-law. After a time, however, it became apparent that the son-in-law did not possess the qualities needed to carry on the operation. The factory went into receivership, but the estate was taken over by Jørund Ringset — son of Frøystein, Nils E.'s eldest son — in partnership with two others from the village. They ran the factory in the original premises until 2007, when the business in Liabygda was closed and the operation moved to empty premises in Stordal.

Today a car workshop occupies the premises in Liabygda.

Asker, 12th September, 2008 — Harald Sundlo