i. The run-up
In the summer of 1987 I took my first steps towards independence. I was almost two years old, my stuffed monkey around my neck. I was in Norway with my parents, on a camping holiday with the three of us in the mountains.
Most days I sat comfortably in the back of the carrier, but there was one afternoon when I refused. As thunderclouds gathered in the distance, I stepped sullenly between the boulders. Not in the footsteps of my parents, but 180 degrees the other way.
My mother has told the story so many times I can dream it: how hours later, exhausted and completely soaked, we arrived at a small mountain hut. ‘Stavskar’ was written on a sign above the entrance. A wooden bunk bed, a stove and – outside the hut – a poo box, that’s all. “But it was perfect for us at the time.” Not long after that vacation, my mother ended up in the hospital for several months, returning to that place regularly in her mind. The three of us snuggled by the stove as the rain pattered against the windows. If she got better, she promised herself, we would walk to Stavskar again one day.
She got better, and we went back to Norway – summer vacation after summer vacation. With the car on the boat, with the tent in the backpack and then above the tree line. But there were always new places to explore, other adventures to have. We never returned to Stavskar.
At the beginning of this year, when I was visiting my parents, there was a cut-out newspaper advertisement on the table. “Gemma?” my mother had written on it with a ballpoint pen. It turned out to be an announcement of a new boat connection that started in April 2022: Holland Norway Lines, with three sailings a week between Eemshaven and Kristiansand. In 18 hours from the Northern Netherlands to Southern Norway, on board the MS Romantika, without hours of car journeys.
Memories of earlier boat trips to Scandinavia surfaced. The car ride through Germany, to the port of Kiel. Once on board the outside cabin where I stared at the horizon for hours. The hot sausage sandwich, pølse med brød, that I was allowed to order in Norwegian myself. The countless jars of yahtzee. The bunk bed, me on top, rocked to sleep by the waves. The slot machines, where we gambled our last Norwegian kroner on the return journey. Boat nostalgia, coupled with the longing for Scandinavia: climbing mountains, camping in the wild, baking sandwiches over a campfire. Would we go one more time?
At the same time, I thought with some trepidation about our last Norway trip together. I was in my early thirties, my relationship at the time had just ended. While my friends booked their honeymoon or gave birth to children, I went back to Scandinavia with my parents. We made the same jokes we’d been making for decades and ate from the faded green lapland mugs we’d been eating from for decades. That familiarity was wrong: since my early steps towards independence, in 1987, I felt I had come to a standstill.
And now with that ad in front of me, I was caught between nostalgic feelings and dreams of the future. By now I had a friend again, I was no longer thrown back on my parents. On the other hand: my mother had just turned 75, my father 71. Maybe this really would be the last chance. Doubtful, I bent over the map of Southern Norway. And then my eye fell on that one cabin, a two-hour drive and a half-day walk north of Kristiansand. Stavskar.
II. the crossing
One hour left until the boat leaves. Windmills, lawns, the navigation that repeats imperatively: turn around please. My mother sighs ‘if only we had gone by train’, my father swearing at the wheel under his breath. As in the old days.
Just in time we reach Eemshaven. ‘Romantika’ is written in large letters on the bow of the large white cruise ship. A Finnish-made boat, launched in Helsinki twenty years ago, and has since been used on various routes. Between the trucks in the hold we board on foot – the car deck is already fully booked for the whole summer.
Stairwells full of mirrored walls, endless corridors with inside and outside cabins. In principle, the MS Romantika can accommodate 2,500 passengers, but now, in the start-up phase, the limit is 1,500. “A bit dated,” says my father during a tour of the ship. My mother: “We are ourselves.”
On deck 9 (“the sundeck”) the DJ is drowned out by the safety instructions blaring across the deck in four languages, and at the kiosk I ask in vain for pølse med brød. But as soon as I smell the sea air, the holiday feeling comes. The atmosphere on deck is boisterous: everywhere cheerful people are standing in the sun with half liters of beer. For some of them, the boat trip is the holiday. A mini cruise. Tomorrow, after a morning in Kristiansand, they will sail directly back to Eemshaven.
At the information desk, two passengers ask if there is entertainment on board. The receptionist enthusiastically announces that there is a bar with non-stop live music. “And tonight Elvis is performing at the Starlight Nightclub.” The sauna and disco won’t open until later in the summer, he apologizes. “But you can go to the casino.”
That evening we eat at the setting sun in the restaurant – a unique experience. We used to dine with currant dumplings in the hut, and I always looked jealously at the families who did join the queue for the dinner buffet. Now my childhood dream is finally coming true, and I am sick of the chocolate mousse.
After dinner we buy a bottle of rum at the duty-free shop. When I was little my parents always smuggled booze because alcohol was so expensive in Norway. I was terrified as we drove past customs: hidden under the backpacks was a tray with cans of beer and a bottle of liquor.
In the bar, the hired guitarist sings Toto’s ‘Africa’. Most of the tables are empty. At the entrance of the Starlight Nightclub, my mother takes out a box of coins: the Norwegian kroner left over from our last trip. But the fruit machines on board no longer accept coins; the minimum bet is a 5 euro note. The lever I loved to pull as a kid has been replaced by a button; digital oranges and lemons flash by on the screen. Whoever wins will not hear the jingle of coins but will receive a receipt with the won balance, suitable for further gambling. ‘Ticket never expires’, it says in big letters.
Farther on, cheers are heard as the Elvis impersonator climbs onto the stage and begins singing Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline.” Time to go to sleep. My parents’ cabin turns out to be right above the nightclub, and when we say goodbye we hear Elvis Frank Sinatra playing through the floor. I did it my way.
III. The climb
The path to the hut is marked with a red T, from the Norwegian ‘tur’. Weathered paint letters on the stones along the path. It was the first letter I learned to read, in these mountains, from the baby carrier on my mother’s back. Now I walk ahead of her, on wooden planks through the swampy sphagnum moss, over the rocks, uphill. There is much more snow than we thought. Parts of the trail run straight across such a snowfield, and with every step there is a risk of falling through. Once my father sinks down to his thigh.
The path crosses a meltwater river. You can cross via stepping stones; further on there is a rapid and it quickly becomes deeper. My father is already on the other side, I follow. “Come on,” he shouts, pointing to the dark clouds in the distance. My mother nervously balances from stone to stone upstream to the middle of the river: “I’m halfway there already!” “Yes, in the length certainly.”
They even have toilet paper now. Such a luxury!
The encrusted rocks are slippery and just before she reaches the other side, my mother slips. This is it, flashes through my mind for a moment. That’s how you lose a parent. But my father leaps to her and pulls her up. The damage is limited to wet trouser legs and flooded mountain boots.
The storm breaks, we take out the ponchos. Like three hobbits in red, blue and green we walk on. Over rocks, along a lake, another climb. It’s summer, but my fingers are numb from the cold. Then, at 8.15 pm, we see a dot in the distance. The hut.
“Welcome home,” my mother says as we cross the threshold. All three of us look a bit awkwardly around us. Somewhere in the past 35 years, an additional section has been added, which contains an indoor poo box and a kitchen unit with gas stove. My father: “They even have toilet paper now. Such a luxury.”
In the oldest part there are two bunk beds: a wide mattress below, a narrow mattress above. A cast iron stove, a wooden table with some stools around it. There is no electric light; a candle chandelier hangs from the ceiling. We hang our socks to dry on the makeshift clothesline above the wood stove and eat macaroni from the faded green lapland mugs. In all its normality, our pilgrimage to the past almost feels like an anticlimax. After dinner we play three games of yahtzee.
“I don’t really recognize it anymore,” my mother says as we lie in our sleeping bags that night. “I vaguely remember the bunk bed, that stove too, and how Papa made tea on it. No more.” Then, after a short silence. “At the time I thought I longed to go back to the hut. In reality, I just wanted to be with you carefree, and that memory kind of made that possible.”
Then my parents both fall asleep, and their snoring bothers me just as much as I used to. But that too is nostalgia, I tell myself.