Brock and I traveled for nine months, mostly in Europe, from July 1979 to March 1980. It was partly our stay in Norway, during September 1979, that made us decide to move to Norway, arriving in August 1980. We’ve lived in Norway ever since and I feel that we made a good choice.
Memories often get started because of a chance comment or something that happens. The memories in this blog have been triggered by my son starting a two-week car trip with his first stop being Kristiansand, in the south of Norway. This triggered my first memory of Kristiansand which was arriving by boat from Denmark at 5:30 am on Monday, the 3rd of September, 1979. It was a sunny morning, but very early.
Memories are not very accurate, and Brock and I often disagree on what actually happened, who made which decisions, etc. But during our long trip in 1979 to 1980 we regularly wrote letters to our family in Canada, which have been kept and can be reread to fill in the gaps of our memory 45 years later. Much of the rest of this blog is based on a letter written by either Brock or I, as there are two different handwritings in this letter.
“Today [1979.09.03] began early. The Christian IV docked at Kristiansand at 5:30. We took our time leaving the ship. At that time of the morning nothing was open, so we walked around the city. The city was designed by Christian IV in 1691. Of particular interest is the fact that the streets are laid out in a rectangular grid uniformly spaced with wide streets. The buildings are primarily wooden.”
“At about 7:00 we started phoning Oslo trying to find where the Baha’is lived in Kristiansand. We were given two addresses, but had to wait til 9:00 until the tourist office opened to find the location of the addresses. We also picked up some general travel information about Norway. We decided to walk to the hospital where the Sextons lived. It took about half an hour to walk to the hospital, though we made a wrong turning and stopped at the nursing school first. From there we got directions and found Eg Sykehus [Eg hospital] fine. At the reception we asked for Mrs. Sexton who came over to greet us She was glad to see us though not expecting us. She took us to her house where we sat and chatted.”
That was how 45 years in Norway started, early in the morning on a sunny day and being met by an American woman who put us up for several days on short notice.
“Kristiansand was a very nice town of about 60 000 people. The town is nestled on the hills. There is a river running through it. It is much like West Vancouver with a few roads and then small roads branching up each side of the hills on the outskirts. Only the oldest part of the city is on flat land. It felt very comfortable and very much like British Columbia.”
Eg hospital is now called something else (Sørlandet sykehus Kristiansand), but all the roads around the hospitals area are called “Egveien” so I presume there was a connection.
Hal Sexton worked at the hospital for the mentally ill and Anne worked part-time as a nurse. They had four children between the ages of seven to fourteen in 1979. They had previously lived in Oregon and Alaska but were now living in Norway as Baha’i pioneers, in other words, supporting the Baha’i community in Norway. Through Hal’s job, they were given accommodation on the hospital grounds. We didn’t meet Hal at this time as he was away on a course. The fun fact is that we met this family several years later and became good friends with them, when they lived in Levanger and we had moved to Inderøy. I remember having Christmas dinner with them one year when Shelagh was still a baby, so 1989.
We stayed in Kristiansand from Monday to Thursday, leaving in the middle of the day on Thursday. We visited several other people during our days there and started learning about how people lived in Norway.
By 1979, I realized that the property ladder had been pulled upwards beyond my reach, in Greater Vancouver. There was still some possibility on Vancouver Island, perhaps in the north such as Prince Rupert. Living in Nova Scotia had not encouraged a move to eastern Canada. Thus, it was a pleasant surprise to find Norway, geographically similar to British Columbia, although lacking in a few varieties of important trees. I am a mountain person, even if I don’t climb them. I am driven to live near the sea, but prefer sheltered waters to the open ocean.