by Margi Preus
Since there was no explanation or cure for the ailment, it was not unusual for distraught parents to turn to magical means for help. Various ritual remedies were often tried, and sometimes the huldrefolk were blamed. An old persistent belief was that the hidden people (or trolls) stole healthy babies and replaced them with their own monstrous children. These exchanged babies were known as changelings, and various methods meant to entice the trolls to return the stolen baby might be taken, including thrashings, burning, and threatening to leave the changeling on the trash heap. It was hoped the trolls would be so offended by this mistreatment that they would come to rescue their own child and return the human baby at the same time.
Now we understand that vitamin D is essential for normal childhood development and must be supplemented in children living in countries where so many months are spent without sunshine. In this story, Astri was probably saved by the doses of sunlight she was given, while her twin grew more and more sickly at home in the dark cottage.
TETANUS [LOCKJAW]
Tetanus is also known as lockjaw because the symptoms often begin with spasms of the jaw. Infection usually occurs with contamination of a wound by a bacterium that produces a neurotoxin that causes painful tightening of the muscles all over the body. The spasms can be so powerful that they tear muscles or cause fractures of the spine. Untreated, an infected person can die from breathing problems due to muscle spasms or from other complications. Svaalberd’s case progresses perhaps more rapidly than probable, but his symptoms are real, and before the disease was understood and vaccine and treatment were available, death from tetanus was likely.
CHOLERA
Cholera, also poorly understood, was a scourge on immigrant ships. The disease spread easily in unsanitary and crowded conditions. Those who died, sometimes in just hours from the onset of the disease, generally succumbed to severe dehydration. It was known as the Blue Death because the skin and lips of a patient turned a grayish blue due to the loss of fluids. Although there was no cholera aboard the Columbus, many immigrant ship passengers at the time suffered from it.
ABOUT THE BLACK BOOK
In an era when so many illnesses and diseases were not understood, and when the closest doctor might be sixty or more miles distant, people turned to what help they could in a crisis.
Folk healers, kloke koner or menn (wise women or men), were relied upon to help with illnesses, injuries, births, and childhood maladies. These healers had knowledge of herbs and cures, as well as experience with all kinds of ailments, and often gave useful aid. Sometimes, however, it seemed that something extra was needed. So there were occasions, especially in the case of undiagnosed childhood illnesses (including rickets), when the kloke kone would come to the patient’s house and perform rituals, perhaps involving melted lead—preferably taken from church windowsills or church bells at midnight. She might have in her possession a Black Book, containing incantations, charms, and remedies for all sorts of ailments and problems.
These Black Books were in use throughout Norway from the 1500s through the late 1800s. A few of the books made it to America, even though they were considered dangerous, especially to the improperly initiated.
Although belief in supernatural beings and magical cures was declining during this time, “an almost unbelievable number of precautions, remedies, and occult tricks” were still in use among less-educated farm folk, according to P. C. Asbjørnsen, a nineteenth-century folklorist. Also deeply religious, these simple farm folk “found no conflict between folk beliefs and the pious Christian faith that they observed with equal devotion,” Kathleen Stokker points out in Remedies and Rituals.
ABOUT THE CHARMS, SPELLS, AND CURSES
The spells, chants, incantations, and curses used in this book are found in the following sources: The Black Books of Elverum, edited and translated by Mary Rustad; Remedies and Rituals: Folk Medicine in Norway and the New Land, by Kathleen Stokker; and Scandinavian Folk Belief and Legend, edited by Reimund Kvideland and Henning K. Sehmsdorf. (Full references are in bibliography.) The descriptions that the goatman and Astri give of the Black Book’s contents are adapted from an 1816 history as translated by Kathleen Stokker. According to the quote, the Black Book was the “horrifying, nefarious tome known by everyone in the countryside as Cyprianus, whereby one can conjure up and put down the devil and get him to do just as one commands, and whose pages teach how to recover lost goods, cure all kinds of disease, remove curses, find buried treasure, turn back the attacks of snakes and dogs, and more.”
ABOUT THE FOLKTALES
This story relies heavily on the Norwegian folk and fairy tales my father used to tell in Norwegian (translating into English for us kids as he went along). As is common with such stories, some of these are known in other countries by other names.
Folktales referenced herein, among snippets of others (in no particular order):
—“East of the Sun and West of the Moon”
—“White Bear King Valemon”
—“Soria Moria Castle”
—“The Golden Castle That Hung in the Air”
—“The Three Princesses in the Mountain-in-Blue”
—“The Companion”
—“The Hare Who Was Married”
—“The Boy with the Beer Keg”
—“The Twelve Wild Ducks”
—“Peik”
—“The Three Billy Goats Gruff Who Went Up into the Hills to Get Fat”
—“Dapplegrim”
—“Twigmuntus, Cowbelliantus, Perchnosius” (Swedish)
FROM THE DIARY
Some portions of the story that take place on board the Columbus are directly lifted from my great-great-grandmother Linka’s diary, including the sandwich-snatching rooster, the description of the Sunday shipboard congregants, and the passage about being “happy with the happy.” Linka also describes a Halling dance, storms, seasickness, and a steamer that passes by in heavy fog.
The sentiments about immigrating to America expressed by the pastor in the chapter “We Come to a Church” may have been picked up from a pastoral letter dated 1837 by Bishop Jacob Neumman titled “A Word of Admonition to the Peasants in the Diocese of Bergen Who Desire to Emigrate,” according to the book The Promise of America, by Odd Lovoll. Another widely spread rumor was that Norwegians were taken to Turkey and sold as slaves.
GLOSSARY AND APPROXIMATE PRONUNCIATIONS
ASTRI (AH-stree): girl’s name
BJØRN (BYORN): boy’s name; also means “bear”
DALE-GUDBRAND (DOLL-eh good-BRAHND): an eleventh-century pagan chieftain of central Norway who was converted to Christianity by King Olaf
FJORD (FYORD): a waterway, often narrow, that leads to the sea
GOD DAG (GOO DAG): good day
GRETA (GREH-ta): girl’s name
HALLINGDAL (HALLING-dahl): a specific valley in Norway
HUTETU (HOO-tee-too): troll’s nonsense word
I JESU NAVN (EE YAY-ZU NAVN): in Jesus’s name
JA (ya): yes
KLOKE KONE (KLOH-keh KOH-neh): wisewoman; healer
KNÄKKEBRØD (KNEK-eh-breh): cracker-like bread
KRONER (KRO-ner): monetary unit
MOR KLOSTER (MOOR KLOS-ter): Mother Kloster
MUS (MOOSE): mouse
ODIN (o-dinn): a major god in Norse mythology; father of gods and men
SETER (SAY-ter): mountain cheese farm
SKILLING (SHIL-ling): small coin
SVAALBERD (SVAAHL-baird): a name
SVEKK (SVEK): weakness
TAKK FOR SIST (tuck for sisst): thanks for the last time
TELEMARK (TEL-eh-mark): an area (now a county) in Norway
Select Bibliography
BOOKS
Altar Book of the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church: A translation. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House. 1915.
Asbjørnsen, P. Chr., og Jørgen Moe. Folke Og Huldre Eventyr. Bind I og II. Oslo, Norway: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag. 1932 (first published in 1845).
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Asbjørnsen, Peter Christen, and Jørgen Moe. East o’ the Sun and West o’ the Moon: 59 Norwegian Folk Tales from the Collection of Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe. Translated by George Webbe Dasent. New York: Dover Publications. 1970 (translation of Asbjørnsen and Moe’s Popular Tales from the Norse, as published by David Douglas in 1888).
Asbjørnsen, Peter Christen, and Jørgen Moe. Norwegian Folktales. Translated by Pat Shaw and Carl Norman. New York: Pantheon Books. 1982.
Bergland, Betty, and Lori Ann Lahlum, editors. Norwegian American Women: Migration, Communities, and Identities St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press. 2011.
Booss, Claire, editor. Scandinavian Folk and Fairy Tales. New York: Avenal Books. 1984.
Briggs, Katharine. The Vanishing People: Fairy Lore and Legends. New York: Pantheon Books. 1978.
Gesme, Ann Urness. Between Rocks and Hard Places: Traditions, Customs, and Conditions in Norway During the 1800s, Emigration from Norway, the Immigrant Community in America. Hastings, MN: Caragana Press. 1993.
Hamsun, Knut. Growth of the Soil. Translated by W. W. Worster. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1921.
Koren, Elisabeth. The Diary of Elisabeth Koren, 1853–1855. Translated and edited by David T. Nelson. Northfield, MN: Norwegian-American Historical Association. 1955.
Kvideland, Reimund, and Henning K. Sehmsdorf, editors. Scandinavian Folk Belief and Legend. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. 1988.
Lees, J. A., and W. J. Clutterbuck. Three in Norway by Two of Them. Oslo, Norway: Aschehoug. 1995 (first published in 1882).
Lovoll, Odd. The Promise of America: A History of the Norwegian-American People. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. 1984.
The Lutheran Hymnal. Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America. St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House. 1941.
Milford, John. Norway and Her Laplanders in 1841. London: John Murray. 1842.
Preus, Linka. Linka’s Diary: A Norwegian Immigrant Story in Word and Sketches. Edited by Marvin G. Slind and Gracia Grindal. Minneapolis, MN: Lutheran University Press. 2008.
Preus, Linka. Linka’s Diary on Land and Sea, 1845–1864. Translated and edited by Johan Carl Keyser Preus and Diderikke Margrethe Preus. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House. 1952.
Rustad, Mary, editor and translator. The Black Books of Elverum. Lakeville, MN: Galde Press. 2010.
Simpson, Jackson, editor and translator. Scandinavian Folktales. London: Penguin. 1988.
Stokker, Kathleen. Remedies and Rituals: Folk Medicine in Norway and the New Land. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press. 2007.
INTERVIEWS
Lovoll, Odd. Personal interview. St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN: November 29, 2012.
Acknowledgments
I owe both gratitude and apology to P. C. Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, whose collected Norwegian folk stories I freely pillaged. The same goes to my great-great-grandmother Linka Preus, from whose diary I borrowed without her permission or approval.
Thank you to all those who helped with information and expertise, including Kathleen Stokker for her wonderful books about Norway, especially Remedies and Rituals: Folk Medicine in Norway and the New Land. A shout-out to immigration expert Odd Lovoll, a hearty handshake to Dr. Scott Wolff, and tusen takk to infectious disease and Norwegian ephemera expert Dr. Johan Bakken.
Thanks to Rachel Vagts at the Luther College Library for help with and permission to use images from Linka’s sketchbooks. Thanks also to Lutheran University Press for permission to use snippets of Linka’s Diary. And thanks to the fabulous Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum just for existing.
To all those who read and commented on the story as it progressed, including my writing group, especially Ann Treacy, thank you. May you each possess a pair of scissors that snips and plays in the air, and everywhere it goes, it edits. To readers Jean Walsh, Kathy Bogen, Catherine Preus, enthusiastic husband Arno, and especially to astute young readers Emma Kathleen Connell and Laurel McBeath Clark, I wish you bookshelves that never run out of books. To my magic-working agent, Stephen Fraser, may you possess a mailbox to which you only have to say, “Mailbox, stuff thyself,” and it will be full of fabulous manuscripts.
I am over the moon to have the privilege of working with the wonderful folks at Abrams/Amulet. Thanks to Sara Corbett and Chad Beckerman for spinning magic with book design, and to Lilli Carré for working more magic with cover art. For weaving it all together, thanks to Jason Wells, Laura Mihalick, Jen Graham, and especially to Howard Reeves, whose like cannot be found east of the sun or west of the moon.
MARGI PREUS
is the author of the Newbery Honor winner Heart of a Samurai and Shadow on the Mountain, which School Library Journal gave a starred review and called a “gripping tale that keeps readers riveted to the end.” She has traveled the globe to research her novels and, along the way, has made friends in Japan, Norway, and many other places. She lives in Duluth, Minnesota. Visit her online at margipreus.com.
This book was designed by Sara Corbett and art directed by Chad W. Beckerman.
The cover illustration was created by Lilli Carré.
Its production was overseen by Kathy Lovisolo.
