Boys Became Men

Saturday June 27th started with a lovely breakfast, at which both of Sissel and Terje’s boys showed up. When I visited back in 1980 they were just boys with whom I enjoyed playing (being nothing more than a big boy at that stage anyways). Now they are grown men with families of their own. Leif is a dentist (with a practice in Oslo) who lives on the farm in the house I talked about in the previous post - he and his wife Tone have three children. Tryggve is a teacher and lives with his wife Kjersti and two children in Fetsund, about a 20 minute drive from the farm. Tryggve pulled into the yard in his sports car, and I found out that up until a couple of years ago he raced motorcycles (much to the concern of his mother).

After breakfast it was time to set up for the big barbeque, tents were set up, barbeques pulled out and loaded with charcoal, and chairs and tables put out on the grass. At 1:00 PM people began arriving in droves, in the end there were around 50 people there, many of my mom’s cousins, with their children and grand-children. Many of these folks had not seen each other for years and thus there was much visiting and reminiscing. I could not keep everyone straight, especially the children and grand-children… but I think I got all the cousins sorted out. Some of these folks had been to Canada to visit in years past and it was nice to connect with them again. I particularly enjoyed meeting Sven again. He had come over to Canada in 1974 and we spent many days fooling around as only young teenage boys can. A few years later, in 1980, he showed me a little of the night life of Oslo when I visited Norway following the Camrose Lutheran College Choir Tour. Now he has teenage children of his own, one who was in a golf tournament (golf has become a big sport in Norway) that day (36 holes in temperatures over 30 degrees and high humidity!) That's Sven with me in the picture.

Guests came from all over Norway, including some who came from Geilo, at least a 4 hour drive. Many folks wanted me to greet the family back in Canada, and many wanted to know how the Canadian Nosteruds were doing. Thankfully most of these folks could speak English quite well and so we had little trouble conversing. My Grandfather Nosterud had 4 siblings, and 5 half-siblings (his father re-married after his first wife passed away). So there are lots of cousins and extended family.

The food was organized as a bit of a pot-luck, and Beth and I got to try barbequed moose (which had been marinated in a nice sauce making it moist and tender). There was certainly more variety than one would see at a typical Canadian barbeque - besides the moose there we noticed fish, sausages, pork, beef and something that looked like huge Hersey‘s Kisses.