Across the North Sea to Bergen

Not long after he turned eighty, John Nickoli sold the Lakewood farm in Washington State and moved with my grandmother across the road into the house I grew up in. Six years later, while I was serving in Viet Nam, Anna passed away, fulfilling the prediction she made the day I left that we would never see each other again.

By the time I arrived in England in November of 1966, my grandfather was living with my parents in Mount Vernon, Washington. He slept in their house but ate his meals and spent most of each day exchanging stories with patients in our family’s nursing home next door.

John’s flight from Seattle was nine hours non-stop. He touched down at London’s Heathrow airport in early June. We let him recuperate for a few days at our at in South Ruislip before heading north in our new Rambler station wagon. Our government encouraged us to buy American, so they shipped the car, at no expense to us, all the way from the states to Southampton. Like all U.S. vehicles, the steering wheel was on the left side, which meant that while driving in England, the passenger in the front seat looked directly into the oncoming traffic. Karen found it highly unnerving.

From London, it was a six-hour drive to Newcastle on the M1 Motorway. We arrived late in the afternoon and drove directly onto the ferry that would carry us across the North Sea to Bergen. After dinner, we retired to our quarters for a good night’s sleep.

The morning sun was hidden by low clouds when we neared the Norwegian coastline. Before reaching port, I watched from the cabin window as we passed through an archipelago of small, rocky islands dotted with brightly colored shermen’s cabins and vacation homes.

My father, Erling, was the oldest of two sons. Because he had grown up speaking Norwegian in the home, he had no problem conversing with John Nickoli years later when the old man would revert to speaking in his native tongue. Still, it had been a long time since Grandpa had talked with a real Norwegian. The first one he met was a custom official whom he eagerly engaged in conversation as we prepared to leave the ferry. After listening patiently while my grandfather recounted his life’s story, the of cer turned to me and said, in perfect English, that he knew exactly what part of Norway my grandfather was from by his Nordland dialect. We drove off the boat and found ourselves comfortably back on the American side of the road. Interestingly, it was just three months later that Sweden undertook the monumental task of making the switch from driving on the left-hand side of the road to traveling on the right, like the Norwegians.

From Bergen, we caught a ferry at Vangsnes for a picturesque ride up the Sognefjorden to the town of Sogndal. The night was spent in a hotel on the water’s edge near a small marina. After breakfast, we rented a dory with two sets of oars. While Karen huddled in the stern, grandfather and grandson rowed together out to the open waters of the fjord. Leaning into the waves, I was reminded of Terje Vigen, an epic poem by Henrik Ibsen that John Nickoli had committed to memory as a young school boy.

The Ibsen story took place during the time of the Napoleonic wars and told the saga of a seaman who was captured while trying to row through the English blockade of Norway in a vain attempt to smuggle sacks of our from Denmark back to his starving wife and daughter. Embittered, after learning they had died during his imprisonment, he became a reclusive harbor pilot. Later he heroically rescued a ship-wrecked English Lord along with his wife and little daughter, who reminded Terje of his own child. By chance, the Englishman had been the commander of the ship that had captured him. In a position to exact revenge, Terje courageously saved the family and in doing so freed himself from years of anger and resentment. Ibsen’s poem inspired me to pursue rowing as a sport. My brother and I had often competed in boat races on Washington rivers. Later, after moving to Wenatchee to start my anesthesia practice, I bought a fiberberglass scull and rowed for pleasure on the mighty Columbia.

From Sogndal, it was a full day’s drive over the mountains to the thousand-year-old coastal city of Trondheim.