Sara and freedom

September 6th 1900

This summer has been perfectly horrid. Summer up here should be a time for storing up energy in order to make it through the winter; instead, we’ve just used up energy, courage and whatever good humour we had left.

– It’s quite easy to describe the summer. It has rained every day, except for three, when it snowed. The temperature has remained around zero. Not even old people can remember anything like it, etc. The hay stands rotting in the fields, there will be crop failure and cattle starvation. These are the prospects of the poor, and it’s overwhelming for everyone. – But now here I am whining and complaining, and that wasn’t the intention. – It was so nice to read your letter about all your fun and your summer joys, it literally smelled of hay, and it made me think about how it is when the sun shines and it’s warm. I can remember one sunny day this summer, or, I have to be fair, I think I can remember two.

– A bunch of us used the one to climb the mountain Tromsdalstind. It was an interesting and exciting trip. We waded across rivers, climbed across screes and slid down glaciers. From the top of the peak we looked straight out to sea, and the sunset out there was amazing. We got down from the mountain at the last minute because it started raining, and by the time we reached the valley it was pouring. The glorious day didn’t last any longer. On the second sunny day we rowed to Grindøen, an island a little south of Tromsø. We had a couple of hours of rowing in glorious weather. Mountain peaks and forest groves reared up out of the water wherever we went. You can image how much we enjoyed the rowing, soaking up the sun and wading around on the beaches.

– I sat on a beach and painted; it was the only time this summer I was able to.

– I had nurtured serious plans of painting outdoors this summer. I went to bed every night with the hope that tomorrow I would be able to start; but every ‘tomorrow’ it rained constantly, poured, splashed against the windows, so the few small sketches I’ve made this summer also represent rainy weather.

– All winter I looked forward to coming home and painting this and that and the other thing, and nothing has come of it. Instead, I’ve been diligent indoors. I made some unsuccessful attempts to get Jens and Henry to ‘sit’ for me, but had to give up. Then, in my despair, I started painting a picture of myself. I sat resolutely in front of a mirror and started the work; it was at least a model I could trust, and someone fairly easy to get along with. By the way, I’ve enjoyed this work so much. Not because the result is really satisfactory, no, my mistakes stare back at me. I can never get it the way I wanted it to be; but the work has captivated me completely. I’ve become engrossed in it and it’s helped me in so many ways. (…)

(And) you can’t believe how cramped and oppressive it is here, how silly and narrow-minded you can become from living here. I miss you terribly, so I’m quite sick of it. (…)

I’ve joined a small English club. We meet once a week after dinner, read aloud and talk together, in English only. Miss Aagaard has been to England often and speaks the language excellently, so she’s the leader. – It’s really fun –

Now I’ll help Jens with some schoolwork, so should probably end for now.

– Everyone sends their greetings. Please give my warmest greetings to your father and Magna and write to me soon. In doing that you create a small oasis in my desert.

Stella Polaris arrived today! It’s been two minutes of a degree further north than Nansen. Ba, long nose, Nansen!

Maundy Thursday 1901

I’ve thought of you so often, dear Lisbeth, and wished I had you nearby. Then I could talk to you about many things that have been painful to carry all on my own. I’m sure I would benefit from talking to you about them. – To write about them would be a long opus, if I started. …
I’ve had a pretty hard time since Christmas. I dare say, with confidence, that I’ve been chastised about things, but I also understand now that it was needed and that I’ve benefited from it. And that’s of course always a consolation. – On the whole, these three years since I returned home have been a trial. – I’ve lost a lot and gained a lot, and neither of these experiences is completely painless. Maybe you’ve experienced this as well.
Are you going to have a wedding soon? How fun it must be to start planning the things you’ll have around yourself, (…) If I had been near you maybe I could have given you some useful ideas. Such things interest me a lot. One rarely sees something really beautiful or that tells about a person’s taste and imagination. – Up here, in any case, all homes are equally desperately boring, with plush furniture (plush furniture is a must if one wants to claim to be reasonably wealthy) and small, thin, wobbly shelves laden with knick-knacks. The greatest elegance seems to be expressed by a steel lamp with a very yellow or red silk shade. The national feeling is represented by “burnt” frames on photos, letter openers and wall weavings, which are hung behind the knick-knack shelves. This is considered particularly stylish. – I hope I can look forward to seeing your home someday, dear Lisbeth, although for the time being it seems I will be sitting up here forever. But the meaning of reality can hopefully not be that crazy. – You ask about my plans and prospects. Unfortunately, they are in a sad mismatch, as the plans are big but the prospects are very small: they don’t exist at all. However, I now gather maximum patience for the autumn, that is when the battle will begin. Then I will try to exhibit my works and at the same time apply for a scholarship. But do me the favour of not mentioning this to anyone. – I’ve read a lot of art history this winter, and at the same time have studied many reproductions which the diocesan provost, one of the city’s very few people interested in art, has kindly lent me. These my eyes have relished. By the way, it’s difficult for me to talk about my work right now since it’s so disappointing. – If I weren’t such a poor creature who had to create my own means of escape, I probably wouldn’t think of either an exhibition or a scholarship for a long, long times yet.
We’ve had a desperate winter this year. As you know, the rats have given us lots of trouble, and in addition, the dark months have been almost without snow, so it’s been unusually dark and oppressive. – A porridge kitchen was established here, and I’ve worked there once a week throughout the winter. Lots of people have come. Many apparently have nothing else to live on. Old and young, men and women and small grey-pale children; a large and diverse group of people. Everyone gets as much hot porridge with syrup and milk as they want. – It’s extremely economical for me to work there because the sight of all that porridge makes me feel full the whole day and for several days to follow.

23.02.1902 I mostly walk around in a constant state of resentment. I do manage to hide it, I think. I hope people who live with me don’t notice much of it, but that I am resentful is a sad fact. – The worst thing is that no one seems to know what I’m struggling with. Everyone seems in a way to approach me as if I were quite a different person than I am. Of course, it’s my own fault – I’m accused, rightfully to some extent, of having a closed personality. But I can’t go and blow the trumpet for something so unsure and uncertain that I don’t even dare yet to call it ‘my art’. – Maybe the only thing I make, and will come to make, is a fiasco. If so, it’s just sad that I can’t stop making it, and I should just keep quiet.

But I feel so infinitely lonely, you see. – And I also have so little opportunity to work. My room isn’t even two meters wide, and this is where I must stay and keep my stuff. (…). I’m not allowed to go outside to sketch in the winter either. My mother starts screaming if I just mention it. Twice was I caught when I tried to sneak out. Now she keeps a close eye on me. I myself hardly care about a little cold or, in the worst case, a runny nose, but my family is ridiculously careful. – The only thing I can really do is read art history, and that just inspires me even more. Oh yes, ‘The home is both bad and good’, I completely agree with the poet on this. –

But now I’ll stop bothering you with my lamentations and instead tell you a little more about the evening’s entertainment which I mentioned earlier in the letter. For we have, three men and three women, throughout the winter, been busy rehearsing some Norwegian and Danish folk dances, spring dances from different villages, Vingåkerdans and so on, with a performance in mind. And last Friday the day arrived; – it was actually the teetotaler union that was the organiser. We only assisted. The evening was ‘national’, and the orchestra played the overture to ‘Til seters’ [To the Alpine Farm], ‘Seterjentens søndag’ [‘The Alpine Farmgirl’s Sunday’], something from the ‘Per Gynt’ suite, and other Norwegian music, a quartet sang ‘Brudeferden’ [‘The Bridal Procession’], and we danced. The event was quite stylish. The stage set looked like the interior of a Norwegian log cabin with a fireplace and benches along the walls. In one corner was the fiddler wearing a peasant costume. He sat and played his fiddle and stomped the beat. With help from Tiedemand’s pictures, we tried to make our costumes as correct as possible, and afterwards received lots of applause. We were praised in the newspaper for the dancing, the costumes and everything. After the performance all the contributors danced and had a little coffee …. in the café. It’s been really fun, mostly because of the dancing. I’m absolutely passionate about dance, you know, and folk dancing is so fun, especially in a national costume and with really good fiddle tunes. For once it’s really been quite fun, because otherwise you might think the ‘small town fun’ is gruesome or at least uninteresting to me. – Everyone here is so vain. One should never say such things; but – it’s probably enough just to focus on taking care of oneself, that’s for sure.

25 June 1901

You can believe I’ve many times wished I didn’t have this small talent, which, when it comes down to it, probably isn’t a talent but just my imagination. It costs time and money and is such a hindrance in every respect. If I didn’t have this, let’s say, imagination, at least until it turns out that it’s something else, then I would calmly be able to take up telegraphy, business school, become a governess – or do some ‘useful and fun’ activity, spend my evenings with the family, be pleasant and talkative. When I was in …? (which I find particularly difficult) knit socks and embroider pretty little bread-basket napkins in blue and white; in short, be a rather different and more useful, gracious and pleasant member of society. But if I tried to do any of these things I would have no peace, I would walk around and be a failure, a misunderstood genius, and so on. By the way, I don’t want to be a half-talented painter who strives and produces extremely boring ‘quite pretty things’. If, in a couple of years, I haven’t managed to accomplish any of what I have in mind and can’t present it in a way that satisfies me, I’ll put the brushes away for good. – Then I’ll no longer have the right to walk around and be talented. Then I’ll throw myself into making money and being kind and nice (although that will probably be doubly difficult) and hope the road will be short. – I’ve given myself a couple of years because I have little opportunity to work. Just the fact that every time I scribble something on a piece of paper, right out of my head, the way I think I might even come to paint, the family comes running: ‘What’s this? Where did you get it from? Who should it be? I think you should have another chair in the picture. Shouldn’t this rug have a pattern? I think it should have a pattern”, and so on. – It makes me crazy. I never show them any of my work anymore. – It’s awful of me, but I’m unfortunately not kind. – No Lisbeth – you shouldn’t aspire to be gifted, and you shouldn’t be sad not to be gifted in any particular way, and least of all think life is poor when you yourself aren’t. Think about how well many people live, just by being who they are, by being something for others, even if it is not always for their family members.

29.10.1903

I enjoy having Jens at home. He’s so amiable and has such a blessed mood and an eye for the comical, which is a virtue in a human being. –

I myself am constantly working on my paintings. It’s been sad and discouraging and I’ve been close to giving it up. But I couldn’t, as it turned out. Now I feel that things are going better and I am working with new energy and zeal. Hopefully, the time when I couldn’t complete anything and tore everything up is now behind me. I hope so at least. By the way, don’t mention my work to anyone, it is still my sore point. –

It’s very nice that Ragnhild Strøm is back home. She’s been gone the last two winters. She sits as my model, and we play four-handed piano together. She’s been gone for the sake of the music and is very accomplished – I have to work hard to keep up with her when we play, and often times lag behind. It’s normally the bass part that I play. Do you want to know our repertoire? It’s pretty respectable, I have to say. A couple of Beethoven’s symphonies, one of Bach’s preludes, ‘Stabat Mater’ by Rossini, ‘Hungarian Rhapsody’ by Liszt, ‘Spanish Dances’ by Moszkowski, ‘Hungarian Dances’ by Brahms. As I said, I need to practice a lot. – We perform as a kind of Bremer Stadt Musicians. Have to bring the sheet music when we go to parties and such.

Our city lawyer – Urbye – will be substituting for Professor Hagerup. – We’ll miss them when they leave. Ragnhild and I have lots of fun with them in their cosy and very art-focused home. They live in the same building as we do, next door. That’s the only place where I see and hear something of interest. Their walls are covered with reproductions of old and new art – ‘Studio’ and other art magazines lie in stacks around the house. Art historical works line the shelves. It’s lovely. – But after Christmas they will leave.

Elisabeth has clearly requested more letters.

But Elisabeth – if life had been a little different for me since we parted, I would probably have been more in the mood to write – maybe several letters at a time. – In a way I’ve had a lovely winter – for example, I’ve several powerful impressions of nature, or at least felt them to be more interesting than ever before in my life. – Never have I felt such joy with my work, or been so sure of which way I should go, even though I feel more than ever that I can do nothing, absolutely nothing. – But just the fact that I’ve understood how much there is for me to work with, that’s wonderful. – Although my life has, in a way, become richer than ever before, it is also more difficult than ever before. – I really feel I’m in opposition to everything. I simply can no longer submit to the laws on which both my home and the whole life around me are built. – Oh, when I think back on this winter, I only see doubt and struggle and rage. I’ve mostly walked around alone because I’ve been unable to endure being with others. That’s how it’s been for me Lisbeth! So oppressive and torturous are the conditions in such a small town! One feels as if all one’s development stops. One ends up standing quite desperately, staring down at the great wall – the people around oneself. Yes Lisbeth – you can’t imagine what a stupid, incomprehensible and vicious crowd it is! I just get so angry when I think about it, it’s not worth talking about anymore.

What have I been doing all this time, on a daily basis? – Yes, in the morning I paint. I painted a self-portrait. It’s pretty horrible – that I can see, but it’s as good as I can make it. I know that with hard work, I can achieve quite different results, overcome the shortcomings I already clearly see. I think, Lisbeth, that if one does everything as well as possible – not once turning away from what one originally intended, not saying: ‘I don’t care’ to some things, and not giving up on the difficult things – then one will ultimately reach one’s goal, what one really and sincerely thinks is best. If one does not reach the goal, then one at least has the satisfaction of having done one’s best, and that must be better than consciously giving up on something because one doesn’t think it’s good. I don’t know if you understand me, I don’t think I explain what I mean very well. Just now I’m painting an interior. I’ve read some art history this winter, as much as I could manage. First all of Lüske, it’s a terribly old edition from the municipal library, with such bad reproductions of the various works that the artists would roll over in their grave if they saw them. After that I read ‘The Human Figure in the History of Art’ by Professor Julius Lange. This, I think, is the most exciting thing I’ve read. It’s so full of spirit, so graciously written, it carried me away completely. And I think one gets a pretty good overview of the art history from it. – Now I have a couple of small dissertations on Eckersberg and Thorvaldsen left to read, and after that I will have ploughed through everything I can find of art history. I haven’t read much else this winter – a couple of English books – ‘Mother Lea’ – some short stories by Herman Bang, that’s all. Then I have had some issues of ‘The Spectator’ and ‘Ord och Bild’ at home, and I’ve read the literary critics and art critics’ reviews of various art exhibitions, which I like a lot. Otherwise, my days are spent reading with the boys and doing housekeeping, which is my plague. I’m playing with Henry. He learns easily but is surprisingly lazy. I also ski now too! – Believe it or not, I’ve been on a couple of ski trips lately. We cross the strait, go up Tromsdalen and then up into the mountains, most often to ‘Storskarsfjeldet’. It’s a rather strenuous trip, a long and hard slog to get up the mountain. But when one has reached the plateau – the infinite, white plateau, with the mountain peaks in the distance forming a circle all around! Oh, it’s a wonderful and indescribable feeling. Peak after peak in the wildest, most amazing formations, so shining white against the deep blue sky – and farthest away a strip of the sea, it makes one feel rather solemn. I don’t think anything can compare with Nordland when it comes to nature. It’s so overwhelmingly powerful. Everything down south seems so picturesque and small, as I remember it – up here one needs to paint with a wider brush – mountains and sea and sky in infinite masses. – But one can’t enjoy the view from up there for very long, since the temperature is not the mildest. On each trip someone gets a frozen finger or ear. And skiing downhill, it’s fast. There’s no ski terrain like this anywhere else in Norway. The masses of snow level everything out, so one can safely set off in almost any direction without risking anything other than a good snow bath in the worst case. – One can ski down the hills for a very long time, and at a very fast pace. Yes, it’s wonderful. – I’ve also taken many lovely jaunts around the island in the snow. Mostly alone. The long and sunny afternoons we have now are so wonderful. – Of other pleasures there are very few. The Sanitetsforening organised a ‘Ski party’ the other day. Very fun as you can imagine. The advertisement said ‘possibility for dancing’, but there was absolutely no possibility for that, as only ladies and two police officers turned up. – By the way, we were offered a couple of amateur plays, where one had the opportunity to convince oneself that the art of acting has not disappeared and that the actors have not lost out by sacrificing their private life. The most fun was the singing by a young woman from Vardø, Miss Gundersen. She hadn’t had any voice lessons, but sang so boldly, with a big, fresh voice that can really become nice if she works with it. Basically, I think it’s more fun to hear people who don’t have trained voices – they’re so blessedly free of pretence, and one can enjoy the song even more than when a person stands there and shapes their mouth so terribly correctly.

20.08.1898
Dear Elisabeth!
Believe me, I think it’s regretful that these shells have not been sent earlier. You probably thought I had completely forgotten about them, and you must think I’m a great slowpoke, but I’ve had quite a lot of trouble collecting them. I hope you’re not too upset. And I’ve probably also promised you sea urchins, but I’m afraid I promised more than I can deliver. It’s terribly annoying because when the water is clear we can see them sitting in large flocks at the bottom, but I don’t know how to catch them. They don’t bite on any hook, and they float away from any scooping devise. One day I asked a fisherman to catch some for me when he rowed out. But when he returned he just said: These sea urchins, they’ll stay where they are. – But if I ever get hold of some, I will of course send them to you. – How are you all doing now? You yourself are hopefully quite well again. – Yes, this winter I will stay in Troms, so I’ll just have to live as best I can on the memories from last year. I’m already longing to return south, so I don’t know how it will turn out as winter progresses, especially since none of my friends here will be home this winter. – What a terrible summer we have! And it’s not much better down south, according to what we hear. It’s constantly raining here, so none of our planned trips have happened. The trip Erika Erichsen and I had planned to Lyngen had to be cancelled completely. Just imagine, the day before we were to go there, when we were packing our suitcases, we got a telegram saying Giæver’s house had burned to the ground that night, so of course we couldn’t go. – One day it didn’t rain here, and all the old people in town said the weather would stay nice. Right away the young people decided to go to Tromsdalstinden the next day. The next morning it was just pouring, and since then we’ve had rain every day. – By the way, the other day, despite the rain, we took a pleasure trip to the soldier’s parade grounds to watch the demobilization, but it was a very unfortunate trip. First of all, there was no demobilization due to so much rain. And secondly, the whole group was chased by a bull on the way home, so we had to run through a large peat bog and sank up to our thighs. You can imagine it was a comical sight when we returned to the ferry, sopping wet. Some were able to borrow dry clothes from the restaurant manager, but most of us had to remain in the cabins in more or less ‘airy’ costumes while our clothes were drying. – Now the military exercise out there is over, and there are plenty of soldiers in the streets here, some of them wearing uniforms that are too big, but for most of them, the uniforms are too small. – We’re now in the midst of making jam. I clean gooseberries, but have pressed Jens and Henry into service while I write this letter – Now they will soon start school again, and I’m excited to see if Jens will do better, because I’ve read with him all summer. – I dread awfully Erika’s immanent departure. She has a job as a governess in Lyngen and is on vacation until the first of September, and then I’ll be all alone. Fortunately, I now have enough things to do. I’ll probably be drawing with a Mrs. Captain Lund, who’s coming to Tromsø soon. She’s a student of Eilif Pettersen and Werenskiold, and I hear she’s very capable. I’ll also study perspective drawing at the teacher’s seminar, and I’ll be at home teaching the boys. Being a homemaker is terrible, I think, but necessary. – I’ve been sick to my stomach this summer. The doctor finally thought I had a stomach ulcer and examined me twice, but fortunately found nothing. Now I’m on a plant diet and eat almost only vegetables and berries, and I’m going to keep doing this for a month and maybe even longer. – Lerner’s expedition has now returned, and

There are some poor, miserable characters who think it’s absolutely vital to have me as their author, so whenever I have a little peace and quiet, they’re the ones I tinker with (…)
I began in order to earn a little money, if possible, and I continued for the same exalted reason, and because when you give the devil a finger, etc.
Planning of the Alberte books? Alas, they were never planned. In 1919, when I was in Britany and unable to paint anything due to being busy with childcare, I began whiling away the evenings writing down the melange of memories and observations from the North, which in 1926 saw the light of day under the title ‘Alberte and Jakob’. After that I thought of writing something completely different, a book entitled ‘Beda and the Judge’. But the publisher wanted above all a direct sequel; I lived on a cash advance and for that reason was ‘eager to please’, like Piglet in Winnie the Pooh. Then they wanted another sequel. I wrote and wrote under the pressure of my debt, and when I read the books, I can no longer fathom that it was me who wrote them. In wonder and surprise, I come across episodes whose origin is a mystery to me. But that’s probably how it is for all authors. What one is finished with, one is so finished with that it becomes a stranger.
We experience many things that mature over time and surface in us long after we’ve experienced them.
The material comes to me in present tense. It always has. It’s the never-ending ‘stream of life’ I have wanted to give it if I possibly could. And then the publisher and translator, behind my back, recreate everything into a pond (…) with slimy green algae on it and decay underneath (…) I am not a writer of epics.

…. how characters emerge and come to life, people will probably never understand. And I for my part don’t really understand it either.
Maybe it’s a negative advertisement when I claim not to have lived through everything I wrote about. Average readers still go home and think their own thoughts.
I know of countries where people don’t sniff out the private life behind everything that’s written. … Where no parallels are drawn between the author’s own existence and that of his fictional characters.

Norwegian authors are asked absurd questions – what they would do if they won a Nobel Prize, whether they are in charge of a publishing house, what their greatest experience has been, and so on. They create their own self-portrait. They make pronouncements here and there about what they meant when they wrote something. In this way, it is said, they ‘enter into dialogue with the public’. Naturally, it’s also called – it is – advertising. Necessary advertising.
I’ve never been able to come to terms with it. I’ve answered such questions reluctantly and as minimally as possible.
It is through one’s work that an author enters into dialogue with the public.

One of the quietly voiced letters from readers out there … They’re more than a joy, they’re a miracle. A great wonder … Minds far away are set spinning.

To sit and write in a race with the demands of daily life, that I cannot manage – there’s a tempo needed that will never be mine, and I just want to throw up all the time. A damned beggar’s existence it is – in the end you’re a starved cow, having to roar to get a little food for each squirt of milk you deliver to your publisher. I’ve been stupid many times in my life, but the most stupid was when I got the idea that Erik and I could live like human beings on my production …
If it weren’t for this eternal short story production. I sit here making soup with sticks.
In recent years publishers have succeeded in turning the whole process into an industry, with authors as the underpaid spinning machines at the bottom.
A book isn’t finished by Christmas. It’s finished when it’s finished, because it grows in a natural way.
Maybe I am too slow for them, and clearly, I won’t get any faster.

I’m unspeakably tired and discouraged. Since my book doesn’t sell. I stuffed it like a sausage with whatever I thought would be tasty and make the rest easy to swallow – but no. I’d gladly accept the harshest criticism if there were only some money. You can live on that, but you don’t get far just with nice words. I clearly sense that I’m now too old for this begging life. Apply for support, apply for grants, reach out my hand and beg. Almost never an honest payment despite all the struggle – a pariah’s existence.

I once sent something to the ladies’ magazine Hjemmet, but it was returned with many excuses. It was too sad, they mostly emphasised lighter stories with happy endings, etc. Oh, the one who could dictate happy ends. The difficulty is that life itself offers only one ending, and that is death.

(…) but oh, how much more delightful is colour as a means of expression than pen and ink, how much more a good portrait can depict, than can a thick novel.

Sweet is love, sweet it is to be a mother, good is the work. We have a right to it all, and it is wrong of people to organise life such that we are forced to choose between the one or the other, mutilating ourselves on one or the other side.
We women probably always immerse ourselves in living beings, whether a man, a child or a dog. Everything else is secondary for us, and if we don’t have anyone to immerse ourselves in, we whither. This doesn’t hinder us from going through painful processes, repeatedly having to cut the umbilical cord on an unfinished work. But we do it bravely for the sake of these others for whom we actually live.
It’s damn hard to be an author, it’s probably damn hard to be a male author. But it’s a thousand “devils” worse to be a female one. A male author usually has a wife.
It happened too, sitting there on the fence, that I saw pass before me a whole generation of women who I actually thought had vanished – women who sit through their entire youth embroidering on small serviettes, and whose vague dream of happiness is contained in the magic formula: Marriage – a Man.
They were all here, both the one who still dreamed in emptiness and resignation, and the well-nourished wife for whom marriage has resulted in trivial mundanity –
Women who allow existence to wash over them, and to bring or not bring, and who never think for a moment about taking hold of life, forming it according to their own mind.
No, no agitation for the feminist cause. Not because I’ve got anything against the women’s cause, it is just that it is humanity’s cause I want to fight. Above all, it is the young people’s hesitant lives I’ve wanted to draw – that has been close to my heart.

When I say that my surroundings consisted mainly of pretty, elegant and very anxious women, my mother, grandmother, and many aunts, real aunts and aunts by marriage, then anyone who has been in the same situation will intuitively understand the rest. I was under the anxious women’s control. They kept their eye on me from windows and verandas. They called to me over the picket fence. If I tried to ally myself with one or another kind delivery boy, I was immediately discovered and called to order.
To this day, I struggle to be on top of the situation when they’ve caught hold of me and I’m inside the ring of aunts.
Early on, I realized it was the men one should ally oneself with here in this world.

I was ugly and impossible. That is certain. With my round face and small eyes. My appearance wasn’t ‘in fashion’. It wasn’t until I arrived in Paris, and then I was already past 25 years old, that I felt all types of women were acceptable as long as they were natural and they were being themselves. And then one becomes prettier …

I wrote Alberte because I was upset about how life could turn out for a young girl from Tromsø. How difficult it was to break through the wall of conventions that surrounded her. There were few options other than marriage. Sit in a solicitor’s office, teach, work at the Telegraph, learn languages – that was allowed under certain circumstances.

This is how life is woven, with yesterday, today and tomorrow. But some day there’s no tomorrow. I won’t know it, I’ll just lie there dead, but tomorrow is gone, and part of today or tonight too. The thread broke, the tapestry fell out of the loom.

That, too, lies there and has no magnificent pattern. It’s just so-so. The little shuttle that was me ran confusedly in and out many times, big weaving mistakes emerged, even tangly knots. The whole thing is also rather colourless, although there are sometimes rich and shiny passages, sometimes disruptive. The overall impression is and remains ordinary. An extremely ordinary and average textile.

But no one taught me the difficult art. Only after the pattern was decided a long time ago, did it begin to dawn on me how it should be.

Now reigns the ‘power of darkness’. We burn lamps the whole day. Incidentally, the dark season is wonderful and atmospheric – in good weather, yes. Whipping wind and blowing snow and storms, to the point where one can’t stand upright, can of course not be called fine. But in good weather, the sky in the direction of the sun is so superbly coloured, so infinitely beautiful and transparent, and against it the mountains stand so blue, so blue in sharp silhouette. And we have a small crescent moon and some big stars in the sky all day and night. When the weather’s good for skiing, then it’s wonderful in the interior of the island. The nature is so quiet, so hushed, the only sound is a little grouse cackle here and there. Oh, the nature up here is incomparable. I don’t think there’s anything like it anywhere else on the planet. If one has no worries and no hopeless longings, then I can’t imagine a finer landscape in which to live.