New Land, New Lives. Janet Elaine Guthrie
had come back and they taught people how. There was a tremendous influence by people that had come back for a visit. It was tremendous, really. They almost committed suicide, the Swedes. Everybody left.
About 1907, there was hard times in Sweden. The brick plant was shut down and my dad could not get anything to do. An aunt, my mother’s sister, was over for a visit in Sweden from this country. She had a boarding house down on “I” Street in Tacoma. “Well,” she said to my mother, “I can take Alfred”—that’s my dad—“he can come over to Tacoma and stay with me for a while.” It only cost thirty dollars for a ticket. So it was decided that 1908, he come to the United States. Dad was in the militia and they wouldn’t let him go; he had to write to get a special permit from the high court in Stockholm. So he was delayed a couple months.
Dad was working here in Tacoma in one of these fuel yards selling wood and coal. He was a teamster, them days. Then 1912, my mother’s brother Magnus and my sister’s husband John came back from America and they were going to stay [in Sweden]. But John had been back two months and he says, “No, I’m not staying. I’m going back to United States.” Then my mother wrote my dad, “I’m not going to stay all by myself.”
In 1914, we all came over. My mother sold everything. You put an ad in the paper that you intend to sell your home and there would be an auction. You auction off all your chairs and furnitures and all your belongings at a certain date. Then we sold the house and the contract that we had with the farmer to somebody else. The money we used for a ticket. At that time there were a lot of competition between the different steamship companies, because they wanted the immigrant trade. We got leaflets from Scandinavian-American Line, from the Cunard Line, from the White Star Line, heaven knows what we didn’t get from. And agents even come and visited us.
I had a good time in Sweden. When I was in my teens, I would have gone back any chance I had. At that time, there was an awful lot of jokes and fun made of the immigrants. I could never open my mouth and talk without somebody making fun of me. It happened fifteen, twenty times every day. “You goddamm Swede, go back where you come from.” At work, you heard that all the time. “You dumb Swede,” and so on. I come out with the rough and tough workers and all other nationalities and they just cussed you down something awful sometimes, they really bore down on you. I just hated it! I hated to go to work; I hated to be here; I hated everything here.
Even in our Swedish church I was very unhappy. Most of the young people that went there were born in this country and they kind of looked down on you, as what they call a greenhorn. I was surprised at the attitude they took, that you were very ignorant and didn’t know nothing. Even in church.
The only thing I went to was the Scandinavian church, for the simple reason that we were raised like regular puritans. It was wrong for us to play cards, it was wrong for us to dance, and these lodges and so on were not where we belonged. I can remember they were dancing at home [in Sweden]. But the people that were dancing, they nearly always got drunk and there were fights, bloody fights. We were supposed to be separate; we were brought up this way. Now I realize that some of that was wrong, because you lived in a cage.
*The crown has been the monetary unit of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden since the Scandinavian monetary union was formed in the 1870s. There are one hundred öre/øre in each crown. The exact worth of the crown varies slightly among the countries; the present exchange rate is approximately six crowns to one U.S. dollar.
*Province at the southern tip of Sweden.
*The Swedish Mission Covenant Church was founded in 1878. Paul Peter Waldenström (1838–1917) was an engaging preacher who played a major role in the establishment of the independent local congregations that comprised this free church.
†The penalties for holding private religious meetings were abolished in 1858, although some restrictions on free preaching remained in force until 1868.
‡Literally, lye fish; see also the interviews with Gretchen Yost and Torvald Opsal.
Torvald Opsal
“Home you had plenty to eat, but there was no cash.”
After spending the summer of 1929 in the Midwest, Torvald Opsal came west to Washington. There the nineteen-year-old Norwegian began a long association with the fishing industry. Ten years later, he married. While Torvald fished seasonally in Alaska and California, his wife worked as a bookkeeper in Tacoma.
My mother’s maiden name was Kjersti Fatland and my dad was Torkel Opsal. They were born and raised in Vikedal, Norway. Vikedal is just a hamlet. Stavanger is the main town; it’s two hours by ferry. The Gulf Stream came by there, so it was mild. It would snow for a week and then it would rain for two weeks. Walking to school, you could feel the cold slush on the open heel of your wooden shoes. I feel it still!
My granddad on my dad’s side and his two brothers had a shipyard. They built good-sized sailing ships for a living. When they sold the shipyard, they bought a farm apiece. His name was Amundson, but he bought the Opsal farm, and that’s how the Opsal name came in. You see, my granddad became Ole Amundson Opsal after he bought that farm.*
I never knew my granddad on my mother’s side, because he died early, but my grandmother, Ingeborg Fatland, got to be ninety-eight or ninety-nine. She lived on a farm halfway up in the valley, had nine kids. She was just a quiet, hard-working woman—light, small, active, could outrun any sheep until the day she died. Those old-timers made practically everything; did the spinning, all the weaving. It was a hard life, but still she had all she needed.
Torvald Opsal (left) and his brother Ole, ca. 1912
My dad went over to Minnesota and North Dakota and stayed for six years. He came back in 1906 and took over my granddad’s place, started raising a family. We were four kids, three boys and a girl. It was a small farm, seven, eight cows and a horse. They had boats, did a little fishing on the side. And they had woods, cut timber and sell. They pretty much lived the same way the whole area—a little farming, a little two-bit logging, and some fishing. To meet the bills, they would sell things on the farm, like pigs and sheep. We raised quite a few sheep.
They had good grade schools. Even as old as my grandmother was, she had gone to grade school like the rest of us. When I started school, I was six years old and I had the same teacher my dad had gone to. They were kind of foxy, those old teachers; they wouldn’t do anything to embarrass somebody that was a little slower. We had so many classes in one room. That was good, because we could be two, three years behind and we could listen to what the teacher was teaching the higher-ups. We caught on to something before we got there ourselves.
Everybody had to go to church. The minister had three churches; he alternated, every third Sunday, but he lived in Vikedal. The church was state-owned; they were state-paid. We had Sunday School every Sunday, except that Sunday we had church, in what you called bedehuset [the meeting house]. That was community-owned and operated. There was three, four that would teach Sunday School. We all had to go.
Then you had religion half an hour a day in school, every day. Bible history was a book in itself and it was practically all dates. You had to learn it at home and tell the teacher the next day. You didn’t know when you’d be called on, so you couldn’t get away from it.
What we got out of Christmas wasn’t presents like now; it was food, good food. That’s what we looked forward to. I don’t remember ever having a present or giving one until the last year or two before I left. Nobody did. Christmas Eve, the guy went up to church and started ringing the bell. Everybody had the holidays off. There was no police or anything like that, so there was nothing to have open. It was quiet, peaceful.
Christmas Eve at our place was mostly meat, a roast, and risengrøt [rice porridge]. That was a must. I remember when we were real young, we had a big bowl, a tureen, that sat on a stand. It was cooked so fine and so nice you wouldn’t know it was rice. It was floating