Land of the Midnight Son

A Look Back at my Norwegian Ancestry

From left to right: me, my grandmother, my brother Greg, my grandfather.

My elderly grandparents lived with us while I was growing up, which was a good thing for my brother and me in some ways, but a complicated one for us in others. That’s because while it gave us a certain empathy for the elderly, especially in light of my grandmother’s progressive Alzheimer’s, there was also my grandfather’s occasional fondness for spirits, and by that I mean the liquid kind.

He'd sometimes take solitary walks late in the day and make detours to a tavern in nearby Forest Park (alcohol wasn’t yet legal to serve in our town of Oak Park). A curious thing happened on some of those nights, though. The family dog, Stormy, somehow seemed to know which evenings grandpa would be coming home tipsy. That’s because fifteen minutes before he walked through the door, Stormy would hide beneath the cabinet in the dining room. It never failed. Grandpa was never violent or mean, but the dog was definitely unsettled by his change of mood. How did the dog know? Like I say, it’s a curious thing.

My grandfather was a first-generation immigrant, and would sometimes talk to friends or neighbors about life in the old country, and the opulent, aristocratic lifestyle his family enjoyed there back there. Most who heard these stories didn’t really believe them; after all, if they were true, why was he so poor here in America? He’d spent most of his life working menial jobs—as a janitor, gardener, or custodian. It was only because my compassionate Piscean mother insisted on taking him and my Swedish grandmother into our home that they were able to live a reasonably comfortable life during their retirement years.

As I learned over the years, his background was a more complicated one than I could have known, but a considerably more interesting one, too. I had my first realization about that during a trip I took with my brother and parents to his hometown when I was a child, after our family was invited to visit there by his surviving relatives in Oslo. It’s a journey that had a lasting impact on my imagination, in ways I didn’t fully appreciate at the time, so that’s where I will pick up this story.

The Long Voyage

The year was 1957. As a five-year old I had no idea what it meant when my parents said we were going to a faraway land called “Norway” for several months. I’d never been outside of Chicago and at that age the concept of “several months” might as well have meant several years. The trip had been a long time in the planning, and it wasn’t an inexpensive undertaking in any event. It would be decades before I appreciated how all the money my parents never spent on new cars or home renovations went into saving up for trips like this.

My grandfather and grandmother stayed home to watch the house and the family dog, while the rest of us embarked by train from Chicago to New York, where we boarded an ocean liner called the Oslofjord. Since surviving a near-miss involving a plane crash when she was young, my mother grappled with a paralyzing fear of flying, so the sea route seemed the only real option open to us.

New York City was a jaw-dropping experience, but there wasn’t much time to linger there. Finally arriving at the docks, the ocean liner looked 100 stories tall to me, and was graced with a Norwegian flag atop its towering smokestack. I was hypnotized by the snowstorm of streamers and multi-colored confettis that fluttered through the air as the bands played and the ship backed out of the harbor and headed to sea.

On the deck of the ocean liner, from left to right: my brother Greg, my mother, me, my father.

With the New York skyline and Statue of Liberty receding behind us, it felt to me like we were entering an alien world. Over the next seven days the journey opened me up to a range of fantastic new impressions, from flying fish and spiraling dolphins to nighttime thunderstorms over the sea. The smell of saltwater was new to me, and created a kind of natural incense that colored the entire voyage for me in subtle ways, to such a degree, in fact, that the smell of saltwater to this day evokes memories of that first trip for me.

Whereas my mother had her fear of flying, I harbored a fear of deep waters at that age. In fact, I was scared of most everything as a child, but there was something about the ocean that struck a particularly deep chord for me; the unfathomable depths below those waves stirred my imagination in ways both terrifying and awe-inspiring. At one point during this voyage, our ship ran into a storm so severe that it sank a cargo ship that was also crossing the Atlantic at the time. At the height of the storm, my brother and I somehow made our way out onto one of the ship’s side-decks, each of us daring the other to walk out further towards the railing. Though I was frightened to death of the raging sea, I couldn’t quite bring myself to refuse my brother’s dare. As the boat heaved violently to and fro, waves splashing in over the rails, one of the ship's employees appeared out of nowhere and rushed us to safety inside, chastising us in his heavy Norwegian accent for venturing out like that. Well, kids will be kids.

Ekebergveien 162

Our leviathan of a ship lumbered into Oslo harbor to much fanfare, where we were greeted by my grand-aunt Halla Gulbrandsen and her sister, Anna. Born in the 1870s, they were both dressed in the frilly outfits and oversized hats of a\ bygone era. It was a long drive by taxi up to the family home nestled in the hills outside of Oslo, in a neighborhood called Bekkelashogda, along a wide avenue called Ekebergveien.

Upon arriving at the foot of the property, we drove slowly up the steep gravel pathway to the house, set amidst tall Norwegian pines and overlooking the vast expanse of Oslo Fjord in the distance. At that young age, the house looked huge to me, and I was captivated by the sloping terraces in the front yard where scores of fruit trees extended all the way down to the main road.

The Gulbrandsen home on the outskirts of Oslo (photo taken in 1977).

Entering Halla’s home was like stepping into the past. Hers was one of the last aristocratic families still remaining in Norway, and Halla’s soul still lingered in the twilight world of a previous century. Unlike other, relatively modern homes in the area, the interior of that house was virtually frozen in time, replete with elaborate cut-glass wine decanters, full-length mirrors bordered with ornate gold leaf, and a crystal chandelier hanging from the living room ceiling. Atop a mahogany desk in the anteroom lie an invitation from the Czar of Russia for a royal function in Moscow back at the turn of the century, which Halla never attended for one reason or another. My mother showed it to me but at that young age I had no idea what it meant. These were all fading embers of a vanished world, and I’d be reminded of it decades later while watching films about forgotten eras, like Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander, which resembled Halla’s past world quite closely.

Ground floor of the Gulbrandsen home (photo taken in 1977).

We remained there for the summer months. My fleeting memories of that time are rich in vivid details and strange impressions. I remember how the city of Oslo itself and its environs felt dramatically different to me from the American Midwest. Even the smells of the hot dogs and mustard weren’t the same! The vaguely erotic statues in Vigeland Park outside of Oslo were mystifying to my virginal mind, yet the imagination behind their surrealistically entwined forms enthralled me even at that young age. Looking back, I’m sure my parents entertained doubts whether they should have taken us there in the first place, although I’m glad they did.

Vigeland Park

As it so happened, our trip coincided with the death of Norway’s monarch, King Haakon VII, who had reigned for 51 years. As might be expected, that made it a time of nationwide mourning, with businesses temporarily closed and a mood of solemnity hanging over the country. To a young child like myself, I had no idea what all that meant, but I could sense the mood of seriousness around everything even at that age.

I’d travel to Norway again four more times altogether – in 1966, 1968, 1972, and the last time in 1977. I never quite got the hang of the language, and as anyone who spends time in a foreign country knows, that’s something which can make social situations uncomfortable, if not painful. Fortunately, some of the local residents spoke just enough English for this naïve young American to make most interactions manageable, and I enjoyed the majority of those since there were quite a few interesting personalities amongst them.

For instance, there were the Waalers, an older husband and wife couple my parents spoke about very respectfully. During a dinner party Halla held for them one evening in 1966, I found myself seated next to the husband, whose name was Reider. He was an American born in Norway, and suffered from advanced Parkinson’s. His shaking hands caused the wine to splash from his glass all over the table whenever he went to drink, and I felt embarrassed for him. After he left that evening, my mother said to me, “That’s the finest man you’ll ever meet.” He won the Congressional Medal of Honor back in World War I for rescuing British soldiers from a burning tank, she explained. I’d never met anyone that distinguished before, nor one as incapacitated by the shaking disease.

Then there were the two piano-playing geniuses, brothers Robert and Reimer Reifling, who dropped by the house occasionally. In 1972, Reimer invited me to see a young protégé’ of his deliver his first public recital in Oslo’s main concert hall. I took the tram into the city, and upon arriving saw that the only seat available in the hall was near the front row—never my first choice in any public gathering. Several minutes after sitting down, a hush fell over the audience as everyone in the hall stood up. I turned around to see Norway’s reigning monarch, King Olav (son of the aforementioned Haakon), walking gallantly down the central aisle with his retinue in tow. Surprisingly, he took a seat directly behind me, slightly to my left. A few minutes into the performance, my curiosity got the better of me and I turned around to sneak a peek at his Highness, only to see him staring intently at the pony tail I was sporting at the time—a fashion statement virtually unknown amongst men in Norway during the early ‘70s, surprisingly enough. The look on his face struck me as one of puzzlement, and when he noticed me noticing him, he turned his gaze forward, and I quickly did the same.

From left to right: My grandfather, Reimer Riefling, and Halla, 1966.

A Magical Landscape

The Buddhist author Paul Reps once remarked that the two countries he loved most were Japan and Norway, largely because of their landscapes, and I certainly felt like I knew where he was coming from on that latter count. For one, there were the elemental textures of the Norwegian countryside around our home: the mingled scents of local vegetation after a rainfall, and the earthy smells of manure and mud on the nearby farm we hiked to for milk and butter on some mornings; or the spotted red and white toadstools I saw along the paths, unlike anything I’d seen in Illinois and which had a certain fairy-tale quality about them. Together, these all made for quilted layers of sensory impressions that felt truly magical to a five-year old coming from the comparatively antiseptic suburbs of Chicago.

The view of Oslofjord from the family home at sunset.

For me, though, much of this country’s allure has always been its distinctive geography, especially the cavernous fjords that weave in and out of its enormous coastline. (Fun fact: the distance from Oslo to the top of Norway is farther than from Oslo to Rome.) If a country’s inhabitants are shaped by its landscape, then Norway’s secretive inlets with those dark unseen depths offer a telling mirror to the Norwegian psyche itself. When dealing with Norwegians, I often had the sense there were hidden secrets far below the “water line” with them, these being an extremely reserved people in some ways. If I had to sum it up in one zodiacal sign, I’d be tempted to call it a nation of Scorpios!

My first close encounter with the actual Scandinavian waters took place during that first trip in 1957, when my father took me down to Oslfjord’s edge and I watched as a man lifted a jellyfish out of the water using just a stick. It killed the jellyfish in the process, but the sight of that beautifully ethereal creature drawn up from the depths was a near-mystic revelation that haunted my imagination for years.

During a later trip in 1972, when I was 20, I traveled by train and bus to a remote region further north in Norway called Gjendesheim, where I paid a small fee for a bed in an isolated dormitory-style inn. This is an area famed for having two different fjords directly adjacent to one another, at different elevations, separated by a high, thin ridge.

Stock photo of the double fjord in Gjendesheim, and the hiking path that bridges the two bodies of water. (Photographer unknown.)

Early one morning, I boarded a ferry to the far end of the larger fjord so that I could hike back across that ridge, all the while marveling at the astonishing colors on both sides: deep blue water down to the one side, vibrant aquamarine over to the other, all of it set against the backdrop of the Jotenheimen mountain range stretching far into the distance. I’ve heard this area served as inspiration for Edvard Grieg’s symphonic poem “Peer Gynt” a century earlier.

Then there is that unique light which bathes this region in its peculiar glow for much of the year. Due to Norway’s far northern latitudes, the soft twilight period that separates day and night lingers longer than in more southerly climes—a time of day long regarded by mystics and poets as the magical “crack between worlds.” Its presence in those latitudes creates an ethereal ambience that can color one’s imagination in subtle ways, availing residents to secrets only known during those magical hours.

The Gulbrandsen family posing in front of the family home, circa 1900. My grandfather is the young man, standing, third from the lower right, while Halla is the young girl to the left of him, seated on the staircase bannister.

Close-up of Halla and my grandfather.

A Cultural Legacy

Coupled with that general ambience, the Gulbrandsen home held an ethereal “twilight” quality all its own for me, since its history was entwined with that of Oslo itself in surprising ways. I’ll explain.

Due to an ancestral twist of fate, I was exposed to Norway’s cultural legacy from an early age. During the mid-to-late 1800s, the Gulbrandsens were an extremely religious family known primarily for its Bible publishing company, at the time located in Oslo at Storgata 7. As it turned out, certain family members - in particular, Louise Gulbrandsen, an actress – married into theatrical circles, giving rise to a branch of the family that was not particularly known for religiosity of any kind.

Me (crouching) and my brother, before a statue of Johannes Brun, in Oslo, 1957.

At the heart of that theatrical circle was an imposing figure by the name of Johannes Brun, husband of Louise. Aside from a brief Wikipedia entry and a statue in Oslo, he’s largely forgotten these days. In his time, though, he was a popular performer and stage director (he directed the first performance of Henryk Ibsen’s Enemy of the People, among others). Upon his death the Norwegian newspapers devoted oversized letters on their front pages to proclaiming the news. Like my grandfather, he also had quite a fondness for the liquid spirits, or so I was told.

Because of that theatrical connection and the publishing one, the Gulbrandsen family found itself increasingly swept up in Norwegian culture at a time that witnessed the flowering of figures like Ibsen, Edvard Munch, Edvard Grieg, Ole’ Bull, and a strange Nobel Prize-winning writer named Knut Hamsun. While still a teenager, my mother came to know the not-yet-controversial writer during a trip arranged by her Norwegian relatives—this, before he became an outcast amongst his fellow countrymen/women for some very politically incorrect opinions about WWII and a certain mustachioed leader. [1]

My 16-year old mother (lower left, smiling, with dark hair) at a family picnic in Grimstad, Norway, convened by writer Knut Hamsun. My mother’s uncle, Ole’ Gulbrandsen, is on the far right, dressed in white, while Knut stands in the back, left. Circa 1935.

In happier times, though, the home on Ekebergveien served as a watering hole for many of these figures. As a result, Halla crossed paths with many of them while young. She never married but came close once, I heard, when a member of explorer Roald Amundsen’s team proposed to her—which she declined. I knew she was extremely independent, but I often wondered whether she might have been a lesbian. At any rate, the one time I asked for her impression of the artist Munch, whom she had known decades earlier, all she would say, dismissively, was, “Ahh, he was just a drunk….” In fact, Munch’s famous work “The Scream” was painted close to the Guldbrandsen home in that Bekkalashogda neighborhood. His mentally unstable sister was housed in a mental institution not far from the house, and I’ve often wondered if that might not have been a big part of the inspiration for that painting.

Press photo of Knut Hamsun preparing for his first plane ride, followed behind by my grandfather’s brother, Ole’, circa 1935.

Frederick Gulbrandsen (Fred Dixon)

Which brings us to Halla’s last surviving brother—my grandfather. He was born on May 26, 1879, and while there is no birth certificate available, he once suggested to me it may have been close to midnight. As I mentioned at the outset, he and his wife lived with us at our home while I was growing up in Illinois, so I came to know him very well. His personality struck me as a cross between Winston Churchill and W. C. Fields—a blend of dignity and rascality. He was intelligent, having been educated at King’s College in England, but his big heart didn’t seem to have many limits. After some serious misadventures as a young man—we never found out what exactly (though one rumor was he got the family maid pregnant)—he was banished from Norway by his ultra-religious, Bible publishing father, who sent him packing to America as a lesson in responsibility, and hopefully, temperance.

It didn’t go quite as planned on either count, to no one’s surprise. Leaving behind the upper-class refinements of Oslo, he changed his name at Ellis Island from “Gulbrandsen” to the more pronounceable “Dixon,” and made his way down the coast to West Virginia and landed a succession of jobs working on farms and in coal mines—all the while with top hat tucked away in his suitcase, just in case his fortunes should change.

My grandfather (far left) as a farmhand in West Virginia, 1908. (He apparently swapped hats with the fellow to his right, because I recognize that straw his co-worker is wearing—it’s his only possession of his I still own, in fact.)

But old habits die hard, and he apparently didn’t forego any of his upon settling in the New World. Ironically enough, those same vices proved to be his salvation on at least one occasion. Like many of his fellow coal miners at the time, my grandfather saw the weekends as an opportunity to drink and unwind. After one particularly ambitious night, he overslept and missed the next morning’s shift. As it turned out, that was the same morning a deadly explosion tore through the mine, taking the lives of most of his co-workers. Several months later that job came to an abrupt end when he was forced to escape down the railroad tracks under cover of night with the mining foreman in hot pursuit, shotgun in hand. Grandpa was getting a little too frisky with the foreman’s girlfriend, supposedly. Like I say, his heart didn’t know many limits.

After working a series of odd jobs in various states out East, he settled down in the Chicago area with his Swedish wife, Ericka, and their daughter—my mother. He struggled to keep the family afloat but they were always on the brink of poverty, and the Depression hit them especially hard. For decades he remained estranged from his wealthy family in Oslo, communicating with them only on rare occasions, usually on news of the death of one or another family member.

My pencil portrait of my grandfather, 1975.

Upon his wife’s (my grandmother’s) death at our home in Illinois in 1964, granddad surprised us all by saying he wanted to go back to Norway to live out his remaining years. No one took him seriously at first, not even my mother, since he was in his 80s at the time. But it soon became obvious he was very serious.

Though most of his relatives back home in Norway had died by then, the few still alive were happy to see him again after so many decades. In particular, Halla was overjoyed to reunite with her last surviving sibling, the prodigal son finally having returned to the fold.

One day in 1972, while watching Frederick and Halla sit out back of the house in Oslo in their wicker chairs, I realized what a dramatic contrast their two lives represented. On the one hand, there was Halla, the aristocrat who had been hermetically sealed in her ultra-refined world for the better part of a century; on the other hand there was Frederick, the fallen angel whose wanderings led him through the coal mines, farms, and big cities of America, now returned to Norway. I recall granddad once talking proudly about the time he bought a drink for Al Capone in Chicago decades earlier (likely at the Green Mill club). It would be hard to imagine anything underscoring the contrast between his life-path with that of Halla’s more dramatically. Looking at them next to each other that day, I sensed something of myself in both those extremes, between the uber-refined and the uber-worldly.

It also occurred to me that same afternoon how if granddad’s life been any different or less convoluted than it was, and had he not been barnacled with that assortment of bad habits which led him to be banished from Norway, I would not be here now myself, not in this form anyway. To some extent, I am the product of all those misadventures and questionable choices, which collectively led to the birth of his children and grandchildren in the American Midwest. I’d like to believe I’ve done a few worthwhile things with that grab-bag of genetic odds and ends.

A Pencil drawing I did of Halla in 1972, when she was in her mid-nineties.

Fred lived to the age of 97, his litany of bad habits having served him surprisingly well. That left just Halla as the sole surviving member of the Gulbrandsen clan. My mother was concerned she’d be shuffled off to a nursing home by unscrupulous friends or neighbors—something we’d seen happen to other elderly parents in our circle of friends and relatives—so my mother packed up and moved to Oslo on 24 hours’ notice in order to caretake her (my dad following a few days later). Mother even mustered up the nerve to fly there by plane, in bad weather, although it nearly scared her to death.

Mom nursed Halla for another two years until her death in 1977, just two weeks after her 100^th birthday. (She was born May 1, 1877, no birth time available.) It was during that period I began working on an oil painting of Halla depicting her amidst the soft Norwegian twilight, which I completed the following year. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, it would be the last major painting I’d complete before finally shifting my allegiances over completely to writing.

My portrait of Halla (oil on canvas), 1977-1978.

Several months prior to her returning to Oslo in 1975, my mother awoke from a disturbing dream in which all the trees around the family home were completely barren, and the surrounding grounds cluttered with smaller, more modern homes. When she actually arrived there in person following my grandfather’s death in 1977, she was both surprised and saddened to see her vision had been accurate down to the smallest detail. It’s one dream she wished had never come true.

A more recent shot of the property, with the (former) Gulbrandsen home in back.

One in a Million
All of which leads me to the following chain of events.

Many years later, long after my parents sold that house and moved back to the States, I came upon a twist in this tale which I could never have expected. To set the stage, I need to first explain something about the Gulbrandsen home that I’ve not yet mentioned.

Part of the property that our house resided on included a two-story cottage next door, where one of Halla’s sisters, Anna, lived until her death. After Anna’s passing, it was rented out to an older couple by the name of Olafsons (not their real name, for reasons that will become clear). Over numerous visits I came to know the Olafsons extremely well, and spent much time in their home visiting with them, just as they spent time in ours.

An early photo of the main Gulbrandsen home (on the right) and the slightly smaller, darker home next door (left).

Following my grandfather’s death, on a weekend when my parents were away for several days, the Olafsons came over with a bottle of wine to speak with Halla, who was now approaching 100 and nearly blind. After several glasses, they convinced her to sign a contract selling them that adjoining cottage and property for a relative pittance. Considering it was my grandfather’s wish that upon his and Halla’s death my brother and I should inherit that cottage and adjoining property, my mother was profoundly upset. Her concern was less for the money or property than it was over the brazen underhandedness of the act against her elderly aunt. But there was nothing she could really do, since she was a foreigner in a foreign land trying to navigate foreign laws. (A few years ago, I was told by a Norwegian friend that this next-door property my brother and I were meant to inherit would now probably sell for several million U.S. dollars.)

Fast-forward now 15 years.

In my late 30s, I found work on the staff of the Theosophical Society in Illinois, which is a spiritually-minded organization that publishes books and a magazine, the latter of which was called The Quest (later changed to simply “Quest”). I worked on the editorial staff of the organization ten years in all.

Several years into that job, a young woman by the name of Kristina (not her real name) was hired to come on board to help the two other women running the graphics department. Since the two workers were getting overloaded with assignments, Kristina was the perfect choice to help out. Together, they all worked on the layout of the magazine and other graphic odd-jobs around the organization.

One afternoon, Kristina mentioned to me that she was Norwegian by ancestry and had traveled there several times herself, and still had relatives living in the area. At first, I didn’t bother to even ask about those relatives, because after all, Norway is a big country and I didn't honestly expect there to be any points of connection between us. As a result, it was nearly a full year before I finally got around to asking her for more details about those Norwegian relatives.

When I did get around to that, it had already been a very strange and unsettling week for me, since I’d just received word about some interoffice shenanigans on the part of a co-worker who I discovered was taking credit for work I’d done for years at that point (and getting paid more than me as a result). Hearing about all this was upsetting, since I had trusted this co-worker, but it explained a great deal in terms of other problems I’d been running into with certain higher-ups in the organization. So it was right at this point that I asked Kristina the question:

"So, where exactly do your relatives in Norway reside?

“Oslo,” she replied.

"My relatives are from there, too,” I said. “What part of Oslo, exactly?"

“A neighborhood called Bekkelagshogda,” she said.

That was quite a coincidence, I thought, since it was the same neighborhood my relatives lived in. I pressed her further: “Do you happen to know what street your relatives live on, by any chance?

She thought for a moment and said, “I think it’s called Ekebergveien.”

This was getting spooky. Ekebergveien was the name of the street my relatives lived on as well. I naturally took the next step of asking what the name of her relatives were. "Olafsson,” was her reply.

My jaw literally dropped open. Her relatives were the next-door neighbors I knew in Oslo during my visits there—the same ones who purchased that cottage from Halla under questionable circumstances.

When I informed Kristina that her relatives were the neighbors I knew from Oslo, and they lived in the very house bought from my grand-aunt Halla, she was as stunned as I. After mulling things over a bit, I chose not to say anything to her about the shady circumstances of that property transfer, since she obviously held those relatives in high regard so I saw no good point in shattering her illusions about them. She went on to say she had not only visited her relatives there several times in years past, but had even set foot inside our old house during those visits there—though by that point it had been sold to new owners, unrelated to the Gulbrandsens.

As I said, Norway is not a small country, so the odds of these two families crossing paths in such a close way must be astronomical.

In light of what was happening for me at the Theosophical Society that same week, I found the timing of it all strangely synchronistic, and struck me as yet another illustration of the remarkable way our fates can intertwine with others sometimes, while reminding me of that line attributed to Mark Twain: "The difference between fact and fiction is, fiction has to be believable."

Some years later, I mentioned this story about Kristina and her relatives to a close friend, who asked me, “Honestly, how do you feel about losing that property? Just in terms of money, it certainly would have changed your life, I’m sure.”

My honest reply: “I haven’t lost a second of sleep over it.”

With my grandfather on a street in Oslo, 1966.

NOTES:

1. Several movies have been made from Knut Hamsun’s books, but one film was made about Hamsun himself. Released in 1997 and aptly titled Hamsun, it starred Max von Sydow as the writer and centered largely around the writer’s marriage as well as his problematic relationship with Hitler.

Ray Grasse is a writer, astrologer, and photographer living in the American Midwest. He graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago with a double major in painting and filmmaking, and is author of ten books, most recently So, What Am I Doing Here, Anyway? and In the Company of Gods. His websites are www.raygrasse.com and www.raygrassephotography.com.