An American in Norway (part 1)

I grew up as an innocent little girl in the suburbs of Westport, Connecticut, where I had a typical 1970’s upbringing of poptarts, cocoapuffs, television, and all the rest of the vainglorious consumerism of that era.  But for some inexplicable reason– perhaps divine intervention — I was also a very eccentric artist-child who rebelled zealously against all the junk food and Saturday morning cartoons, and acquired an interest in the Amish, the non-electric life, and organic bean sprouts when I was ten years old.  I became fascinated with the Middle Ages and other prior time periods and began to wear Shakespearian costumes and other flamboyant garb to school, despite the sneering and jeering from the “normies: (whom I referred to as the “normals”, back in the day).  At age sixteen I turned my back upon the television (or “boob-tube”, as my mother called it) permanently and never looked back.

I was voted non-conformist of my class and was known as “the Witch of Westport”.  In my early twenties, while studying at a private studio with a sculptor in Kentucky, I began to have extraordinary ineffable mystical (religious) experiences, and thereafter became enthralled with the idea of living a monastic life.  My quest for solitude and contemplation led me to a remote fishing village on the northwest coast of Scotland, I then returned to the States to an island off the coast of Maine, where I pursued “the simple life” in earnest with no electricity, telephone, running water, or other modern contraptions.  (To this day I have never owned a car, nor electric toenail clippers.) Eventually the wilderness of Norway began to beckon me.  By the age of 26 I had left my homeland behind for the desolate north.

I then found a Norwegian husband (or 2 – but that’s another story).  It was in Norway that my crazed obsession with self-sufficiency began to sprout and grow.  Why did the hinterlands of Norway appeal to me?  I found the sparsely populated countryside very enticing.   In addition to the un-tamed beauty of the crazy, mountainous landscape, the folk culture was also mesmerizing, including Norwegian folk music, which I became utterly smitten with.  And the ancient farms and farmland were dirt cheap, if one could find a farm for sale…unlike a lot of Americans, Norwegians chose to keep their properties in the family for many years – I knew one family that had their property in family for 650 years!  I lived on three primitive farms during my 23 years in Norway;  the first farm was roadless, and accessible only by boat, upon a wild and lonely fjord; the second farm we purchased was on an island in the North Sea, which consisted of circa 150 acres of ocean-front rocks and boulders with a few blades of grass and moss and heather growing in between; the last farm was in the mountains of Telemark, without electricity, running water, or a road.  On this farm we had almost every imaginable animal – chickens, sheep, draft horses, goats, jersey cows, geese, turkeys, rabbits, honeybees, pigs, wild boars, border collies, and of courses, kitties.

Next week Jenny tells us why it is so important to become self sufficient!