Happy Times in Norway

Preface to the 1942 Edition

PREFACE TO THE 1942 EDITION WHEN THE GERMANS INVADED NORWAY ON APRIL 9, 1940, the Happy Times in our country came to an end. The two boys whose childhood joys and adversities I have told in this book were young men by that time. Tulla had died a year before. And, since nobody could have explained to her why all the good things and pleasures she was accustomed to had come to an end—why her dear flag could not fly over her home any more, why there were to be no processions and music on the Seventeenth of May and no sheaves of grain for the birds outside her window at Christmas, no rides to the mountains in the summer, no sledges with bells in the winter —it was a good thing that she was dead. She was spared the sufferings inflicted on her people by a nation who has deemed children like her—not able to achieve anything in this world except teaching us love and tenderness, and giving love and tenderness 227 PREFACE in return—unfit to live. On that black ninth of April, Anders and Hans escaped from occupied Oslo. Next morning they both joined the Norwegian army near Lillehammer. Three weeks later Anders was killed in action, up in his home valley. Hans finally joined his mother in Sweden, and was with her all the way through Russia, Siberia, Japan, to America. But when the Norwegian army was being reformed somewhere in Great Britain, he returned to the colors. Bythe time this book had been printed in 1942 he may have had the opportunity he wished for, to fight again for his king and native land. When he said good-bye to his mother in Grand Central Terminal in New York to travel to the secret port where his ship waited, he told her: "You know, Mother, if we get our country back again from the Germans, nothing matters. And if not, and if you and I should live nevertheless, we must acknowledge that Anders was the only lucky one in our family." But we Norwegians know for certain that we shall have our country back again, free and swept clean of the forces of evil. What if the fine old farms up along the river in our valley of Gudbrandsdal, and all our other valleys, are burnt down; what if ever so many of our men are dead on battlefields and in prisons; what if the courteous and happy hard-working peasantry of Norway have been im228 PREFACE poverished, deprived of their horses and cows that were as dear to the owners as if they were members of the family; what if the Germans have destroyed the fruits of centuries of labor and millenniums of cultural development—we still have our land. We are still the same people who built it up to be a place where human dignity and integrity were cherished , where friendliness, happiness, and charity were considered the best things in life. Some day—maybe soon—we will be able to unfurl our flag over every home in Norway—or over the ruins of homes to be rebuilt. Some day, little children and gawky youngsters in high school will march in procession, with flags flying and music playing our national hymns, on the Seventeenth of May. And some time—maybe sooner, maybe later than we expect—we will be able again to offer up to the wild birds of our woods and mountains the sheaf of grain at Christmas in front of our windows , the sacred gift of some thousands of years of Norwegian history to the powers of life and fertility , whatever name our ancestors gave to the Good Spiritual Forces watching over our home. And on that day, when we can again hoist the Christmas sheaves of grain at our front doors, we will finally know that Happy Times in Norway have returned to the land of our forefathers and our children. Sigrid Undset Brooklyn, New York May 17, 1942 This page intentionally left blank ...