Norway adventures

Jon Gjestvang, Jackie Jackson, Eric Gjestvang
Jon, left, and Eric Gjestvang were born in Beloit.

This past summer, my granddaughter Cressida and I spent a week in Norway. This was after the repeated urgings of Nils and Marie Lang-Ree, who live in California but return to their property in Norway every summer. My friendship with many Scandinavians is one of the rewarding fallouts from writing Round Barn, and my dad’s relationship with the American-Scandinavian Foundation (for 25 years after World War II, he hired two Scandinavians a year). Back in 1979, when on sabbatical, I began writing RB in earnest, I figured I better get in touch with our Scandinavian friends and made my first trip to Norway. I stayed with Gilbrand and Solveig Gjestvang, met the babies who had been born on our farm, now young men, and carried home, in translation, the diary Gilbert (as we called him) kept while he was at the farm. You can find it, and more besides, about the A-S Foundation and the farm in my Volume 3. Nils, Gilbert’s brother-in-law, was one who didn’t return to Norway to live, but got a Stanford degree and has done very well in the United States. I see him in California. Year after year, he has urged me to visit Norway again, and this summer, we did. (My granddaughter is half Norwegian!) Here is the Gjestvang family on the Dougan farm, and here are the same grown-up boys with their families, who gave us a lovely reception on a Gjestvang farm this summer. Olaf Byrne also came, and the son of Jurgen Gjestvang, who drove seven hours to join us. He had heard about the farm all his life from his father. I returned from Norway with, among other things, Marie’s fish soup recipe – when I make it, it gets rave reviews.

Eric (left) and Jon as little guys on the farm.
Eric (left) and Jon as little guys on the farm.

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