Norway: Chasing Fortun

During a year's stay in Norway, my wife, Katy, and I marveled at the beauty of the country: the crystal waters ringed by dense green foliage and the mountains that rise up nearly vertically from fjords and finally give way to rock cliffs topped with whipped cream-like snowcaps. My great-grandfather Ellef Drægni came from a town 127 miles up a branch of one of those picturesque fjords, the Sognefjord, which itself stretches like a crooked finger inland north of Bergen. Why, we wondered, would anyone leave?

To answer that question -- and to see just what was left behind -- Katy and I and our new Norwegian-born son boarded a boat at Bergen and began the journey along the coast and up the Sognefjord to Fortun, my great-grandfather's town. Fortun, ironically, means "fortune" in English. During the 19th century (when there was little good fortune), the fjord, like much of Norway, was cut off from the rest of Europe's industry and opulence, and people along it struggled to survive on preserved fish and porridge.

Our boat -- and, later, the car we drove on the last leg of the trip -- passed red and yellow wooden houses wedged on a tiny ribbon of shoreline. Occasionally, large houses stuck out halfway up the mountain with only steep paths leading to the front doors. Local legend tells of people who live high up on the fjelds who tie their kids to a leash so they don't fall off the cliff at the edge of their yard. The townspeople of one village boast that some of the houses can be reached only by ladder. When the taxman comes, people lift the ladders to avoid tax increases.

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When we were just about at Fortun, I recognized a modern mountain lodge, which I'd seen in an article, run by a Drægni. We stopped in and asked the 40-year-old blond guy at the reception if he knew the Drægni who owns the lodge.

"That's me; I'm Ole Berger Drægni," he responded.

I had found a long-lost relative! I pulled him outside so we could get our photo taken together and commented how much we looked alike with our blue eyes and blond hair -- ignoring the fact that he stood a head taller than me.

"Didn't you know that the Spanish Armada was stranded off of Bergen?" Ole Berger asked. "They say it was either after a battle with the British and they came to hide in the Sognefjord, or that they just got lost. Many of the sailors liked Norway so much that they stayed."

I was pleased that our long-lost relatives were not only Vikings, but Conquistadors who laid down their warring ways and fell for some stunning Norwegian lasses and lutefisk.

Over wild blueberry pie and aggressive black coffee, Ole Berger Drægni unrolled an old map of the Drægni farm in Fortun and showed us where everyone had lived. "This was the main farmhouse where my relatives lived and still do. Your great-great grandfather must have been a husmann [tenant farmer] and lived in the house of the people who went to America. It flooded and was ruined." In other words, Ellef's family worked for his, and Ellef's father took the name of the farm: Drægni. Ole Berger looked me in the eye: "I definitely think we're not related."

He told us the blueberry pie was on the house as we shirked out the door.

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We checked into our hotel. In the lobby, a self-assured older woman with blond-gray hair and a hand-knit sweater unexpectedly announced, "God dag, I'm Ingeborg. Your father's cousin, Magne Drægni from Bodø, called and asked me to meet you here." She would show us around town.

I told her about our uncomfortable meeting with Ole Berger Drægni, but she assured us, "You are probably family one way or another. Everyone here is related somehow." She explained that last names were like addresses in the Sognefjord. I looked up "Drægni" in a Norwegian dictionary and found it means the not-quite-exotic "tree dragger" or "muscle spasm."

She told us about the famous Drægni marmalade and fruit juice ad campaign that reads "Alle spyr etter Drægni saft." In the dialect of the Sognefjord, that translates as "Everyone asks for Drægni juice." But in regular bokmål Norwegian it means, "Everyone vomits after Drægni juice."

While Ingeborg drove us to her house, she explained that Ellef probably had left because he couldn't get any land and would have been a tenant farmer, living and working on the land of the rich Drægni family and paying them most of his earnings. (Not until 1928 did Norway abolish the tenant farmer system, and the farmers could claim the land on which they lived.)

I asked Ingeborg what her family grew on her farm. "Grass. We grow grass." In typical Norwegian fashion, she downplayed their beautiful berries and healthy farm animals. Making a living off this little bit of land was nearly impossible in my great-grandfather's time because of the relatively large population, which has dwindled from 2,000 to 200. "You can't eat beauty," Ingeborg said.

I told Ingeborg that I had heard that my great-grandfather's house had flooded. "That was just one of them," she said, and Katy and I were excited that perhaps another of his houses was still intact somewhere. Ingeborg continued, "Another house he lived in had a big rock fall on it from the mountain and crush it."

I looked up at the cliffs and realized that beauty comes at a price. As we sat on her porch, Ingeborg pointed to a massive boulder in a field. "That rock came down last summer into our raspberry patch." The boulder was more than 12 feet high. "There is no way to move it, so we just farm around it," Ingeborg said.

My great-grandfather probably was wise to escape Norway while he could, before he was crushed or washed away by the river in his sleep. Ingeborg wasn't concerned. "Any place you live has its dangers," she said.

Ingeborg brought out photo albums and a postcard Ellef sent to his mother, whom he never saw again once he left Norway. Finally I could dig deeper into Ellef's mind and learn about his great adventure, leaving the Sognefjord alone at 18. The postcard just said the weather in Minnesota was a bit chilly, but he was doing fine.

Oh, well, we basked in the gentle sunshine beaming over the cliffs. Although Ingeborg said you couldn't eat the beauty of the place, you could taste the fresh raspberries as big as golf balls, covered in heavy cream. "These are the small ones," Ingeborg said with typical Norwegian understatement. We sat on her patio and paged through the purple-velvet-covered photo books as we listened to the water streaming off the top of the mountain to the creek hundreds of feet below. And hoped no rocks were falling.