Text: Ingvald Roy Johansen
My first encounter with the school system in Hadsel was in 1931, when I strolled into the living room of his grandfather where there was school. We lived with my grandfather, so I got a taste of what it was like to go to school without a daily school route.
At the age of 9, I was taken to the school boarding school in Hanøyvika, and then I got to experience boarding school life for real. The children from the other roadless villages in Hanøy school district were accommodated at the school from the age of 7. At Myrland, the parents refused to send the 7-year-olds to the boarding school, and instead paid a private tutor for them at Myrland.
The school scheme
The school scheme was a hiking school with 36 hours of teaching per year.
week, and Saturday was a full school day.
The “small class” had a few weeks less schooling than the “big class”.
This meant that the older students had to go on some 3-week trips.
Otherwise, a school trip was 2 weeks.
Packing for the school stay
Before each school trip, it had to be packed.
The bed linen bag was a large sack of straw.
Here we stuffed down a “bonster” of sackcloth filled with hay (mattress), something for undersheets, a wool blanket, a quilt with a cover for a duvet and a pillow with a cover.
If there was room, we also stuffed spare clothes inside.
The “boom” (food chest) also had to be filled. Here, “stomp” (bread) and margarine were perhaps the most important, but the syrup can was also included. Otherwise, it was closed down by what the house managed, and it could be very different from home to home. Some could bring cakes, meat rolls, cheese, butter, pork, flatbread, gomme, eggs and jam of various kinds, while others were without “extra sweets”.
Otherwise, we had to bring flour, grains, sugar, cocoa, milk, potatoes, salted meat, salted fish, salted herring, knife, fork, spoon, deep and flat plate, cup, sewing thread, buttons, darning yarn, needles, school books, pen handle, pen, inkwell, pencil, eraser and other things we needed. We had a lock for the “barrier” and the key in our pocket. It was attached to a string in the brace.
The only thing we got for “the body’s nourishment” at school was water. It was in a well at the top of the playground. The big boys often carried the water up in buckets and beat it in the “sock” (large barrel) that stood in the hallway on the 2. floor. On the edge of the “stocking” hung a scoop. Everyone drank it off, but I don’t think anyone got sick for that reason
No public school transport
There was no public school transport.
Apart from the children who were required to attend school who lived close to the school, the pupils had to be transported by rowing boat.
From Myrland to Hanøyvika it was about 10 kilometers to row.
It is the same length as from Hadsel church site and to Myrland.
Most of the transport route for the children from Myrland went over the open Hadselffjord, but the journey through northern Raftsundet could also be quite tough. The children from Brottøy, Sommerset, Ingelsfjord, Storø, Hattvika and Steinbakken can probably confirm this.
The parents from Myrland often joined forces when the children were to be led. In good weather, the older children were set to row in toft or hammer (row the same way as the face is facing) towards the adults. This is to keep warm. In bad weather, they were packed into the bulkhead (fore or aft of the boat) along with their bedding while the adults rowed. Then, as now, school was held even though there was frost, polar night and bad weather.
Sometimes there was a ride on Sunday evening, but usually the children were taken on Monday morning. Then it could take both one and two or three school hours before the students got to school on the first day.
Once in “skolestøa” or in “Arne Jensa si stø”, it was to carry up to the boarding school a bed bag, boom, milk pail and other things we had brought. Once up, the students took their school things and went down to school, while the parents handed over the food to the housewife and saved the bunk. Relatives were often added together. Sometimes mercury was beaten along the headboard to keep the lice away. There were a lot of lice. Not just at the boarding school. I went to Gulstad school for a year. There I got a lot of lice in the classroom.
When his parents had finished boarding school, they usually rowed to Hanøya to shop and pick up mail. People didn’t go to the store very often at that time, so they took advantage of the opportunity when they were on a trip home after taking the kids away.
Living at school
Before the rebuilding of Hanøy school boarding school approx.
In 1937, the teacher had an apartment on the 1.
floor, so there was only one classroom.
The teacher also had a room upstairs.
Boys and girls each had their own combined living and dining rooms and each had their own bedrooms (the «gute- and girls’ loft»).
In the living rooms there was a long table with benches on each side.
There we ate and did the math and did homework.
On the floor along the walls were the barriers.
They were also used to sit on.
In the “girls’ loft” was the housewife’s bed in the living room, and in the “guteloft” there was a bunk bed in the living room. Otherwise, there were heating stoves with pipes for the plumb chimney as well as the stove in the kitchen.
In the boys’ bedroom there were two double bunks and a single bunk bed (10 beds in total), and I guess it was with the girls as well. There was to be only one child in each bunk. I remember well that District Medical Officer Bjørnson, who was chairman of the health council, came for an inspection at eleven o’clock in the evening. It was dark in the autumn and no electric lights. Bjørnson lit up a double upper bunk with a match.
“Here are two people in one bunk,” he growled. Then he lit up in the lower bunk. “HERE there are also two people in one bunk!” Then he lit up in the lower bunk where I lay. “Here are three people in one bunk!” Then two of us were one way and the third in the opposite direction to get a seat. As is well known, even children are narrower around the ankles than over the shoulders. It was after this that the school and boarding school were rebuilt.
The school day
We got up at half past eight.
At that time, the housewife had fired up the stoves in the living rooms.
The Morra sink went away in tin barrels and chilled (lukewarm) water from the stocking.
It was well mixed with hot water from the kitchen stove.
We ate breakfast with the long table. The kids brought their own stomp and “sovvel” (cold cuts), cup and knife from the barrier and cut up and buttered the food. The housewife probably helped the little ones. In addition, we had reed cocoa or oatmeal stock. I remember a mother the housewife had overslept. It hadn’t gotten hot in the kitchen and living rooms. In “vaskarvatnet” there was ice. When I ate, I stuck my ice-cold fingers in the hot cocoa to raise the temperature. Better lifeless than helpless.
Then it was time to hurry up the school stuff and get to school. We had great respect for the teacher. It was common in those days. With four cohorts in the class, the teaching was set up accordingly. We always got up and stood at the desk when we told the homework. At recess we played “Last couple out”, “Hit the ring”, “Joke cool” (hide and seek) or hit a ball. The ball was often made of moss wrapped tightly with string. When it got wet, it pouted and became rock hard, and the person who was “stung” often felt it all too well. During the big break we were up and ate. It took place in the same way as for breakfast.
Dinner was probably the biggest challenge for the housewife. There were no refrigerators, deep freezers or running water, and the food had to be cooked on a stove that was heated with peat, wood or charcoal. When the “raw material”, potatoes, salted herring, salted fish and salted meat were so heterogeneous – and the kids wanted what they had “heimanna” (from home) – it had to be problematic. When some kids brought bacon that was fried and served with their salted fish, the others got “berre lokta of it”, and when some brought fish cakes that were heated on the pan and served to the lucky ones, the others got cured herring or coca herring or salted fish. But then the children’s appetite often differed.
One day in the week was “meat soup day”. All the meat was cooked in a pot. Several of us sewed a woollen thread to their piece of meat to find it again when it was cooked. For dessert on the other days, we usually had the “sea creature soup” with syrup. On Saturday, those who went home did not eat dinner.
Fresh dinner at the boarding school was almost impossible. Still, we kids went for an afternoon of cooking to everyone. We stood on the rock below the youth house with a simple “bamboo tree” (fishing rod) and a “skeise” (tin fish for fishing gear) and the “wasp” ashore. The small coalfish had driven the herring up into the seaweed there.
In the afternoon there was arithmetic and homework. “Bible History” and “Katjesma” (Catechism) and hymn verses were to be memorized. We could sit 10 boys around the long table with our elbows on the table and our fingers in our ears and read aloud. When the first one knew homework, the others often quit as well.
Not everyone understood the bill as well. When someone had done the rain, the others often wrote off after their notebook. If there was a “knot in the thread”, the calculators locked their notebook into the barrier. Then there were often “negotiations”, because no one wanted to come to school without having calculated.
Finished with homework, we were happy to go outside and play until it got dark if the weather was right. Otherwise, “gutan” could go to visit the girls’ loft until evening. There we could be twenty girls and boys alone and play “Bridge, bridge, glasses”, “Selle jam” or “Shout number” quite peacefully. The risk behind the mirror was of course that if there was too much noise, we would be chased back into ourselves.
For supper we had porridge. Melka was a chapter in itself. We had it in 3-4 liter tin buckets. Preferably ones that had been whole coffee or drops i.Vi had them out in the hallway with the “watering stocking” and brought them in when we needed milk.
The first few days the milk was good, but then it tasted like a bucket. Later, it turned sour. If we didn’t get new milk at the weekend, it could become “clogged” in the second week. Then we stuck our fingers into the bucket and pulled up long strands of milk.
At bedtime, we went into the bedroom to undress and go to bed. The underwear was mostly wool. On the outside of the undershirt we had a kind of “vest” that was buttoned in the back. We called it life. From buttons in the sides of the “waist”, there was buttonhole knitting to buttons in the long wool stockings that reached to the middle of the thigh. The elastic bands were good for “shooting” at the others, but if the shooter did not get them back, it became stocking the next day.
Once in bed, it was tempting for those who were lying in the bunk to swing their legs up against the “counting boards” in the island and give those who were lying there a little “ascension”. As a thank you for the trip, a cloud of hay dust descended from the bonster in the island of Øverkøya. The housewife came in with the tin bucket for the “needy” and put it in a hook, blew out the oil lamp and left.
The scary “Chapel Man”
After “darkness”, we often went to visit other bunks or lay and told stories in the dark.
Just outside the wall where we were lying was the tower of the chapel, and there was something frightening there that we called “The Chapel Man”.
One evening we lay and told stories that became scarier and scarier.
In the end, it became “mighty quiet”.
Then a thin beep was heard from a bunk where there were two pipes: “Anton, I get to lie imella!”
Those who had the shortest sea route to the boarding school were usually brought home during the “mella weekend”, but we from Myrland often had to “lie over”. There were probably many salts flowing among those who were not allowed to go home when the others were picked up.
Last Saturday we had to pack and roll the bed linen down the stairs to the hallway on the ground floor before we went to school. This was so that the housewife could clean before the new class arrived on Monday. The space was tight and we were in a hurry. One Saturday morning, there was a fight for space for the bed linen bag. One of the “combatants” became so angry that he took a “telboard” and threw at the others. They “crouched down” and the board disappeared out the window. Great commotion when we came to school. But what did it do. We were going home. Hanøy School Boarding School
The day of the return trip
During the last recess “heimfartslørdagen” we ran (ran) over to the playground and “keik” (peeked) towards Hanøybrygga.
“Was the boat Hass far arrived?” The parents often used to do the “shopping” before they picked up the kids.
There could be a whole small fleet of small boats in Hanøya during the last recess before school ended. The store was full of people and the trade took time. It was often to be traded for 14 days. When school finally ended, many of the boats had come into the rocks below the school.
And then it was time to carry down bed bags and booms and milk pails and whatever else it might be. Together with the children, this was placed in the boats so that they were properly “loaded”. (Balanced) It had to be rowed and sailed for a mile. Often there was racing. If there were a few extra drops of sweat, it didn’t matter. We were used to it. Coming home it was bathing and combing with a fine comb and washing with “sabbath dill vinegar” to get rid of the lice. Often if we didn’t have any. Afterwards, it was good to be home.
Had to borrow food
The hardest time for the big kids was when there were 3 week trips during the Lofoten fishery and the weather was bad.
The “callers” were in Lofoten and the “woman” did not make it to school with food and clean clothes.
Sometimes the kids had to go to their neighbors in Hanøyvika and borrow food.
The “Lofotkallan” from us often made a trip home every 14. day if the weather allowed it. I have experienced being taken out of the boarding bunk after I had fallen asleep on Saturday night, and in the frost and darkness being taken on board the “Heimturskøyta” to be transported home for washing and care at the weekend. Sleep. Have dinner served at eleven o’clock on Sunday morning and then come back and be put in the “snooping well” down the school together with new provisions. “Kallan” was in a hurry. I wanted to get “worse” before it got too dark. Raftsundet in the dark and snow coves have never been to joke about. We became hardy and frugal from this life, and we learned early on to take care of ourselves and what we had.
It started at Sommerset
The school boarding school for Hanøy district was first built at Sommerset in 1894, and it was used for 18 years.
Then a school with a boarding school was built in Hanøyvika in 1912.
Two years later, a chapel with a tower and spire was built.
The school boarding school was rebuilt approx.
1937.
The time I have told you about is the years 1934-37.
As there were no significant changes at the boarding school in the period from 1912 to 1937, what I have told here is probably largely adequate for boarding school life at Hanøy school during this period.
A time when parents had to provide their own transport, bed linen, provisions, school books and stationery for their children.
In Hadsel, the transition from a secondary school to a permanent school took place a little before the turn of the century. The municipality has had boarding schools for primary school children at Hadselsand, in Budal, on Holdøy, in Hanøy, on Ulvøy, in Tengelfjorden, at Sommerset, in Helgenes, at Grønning and at Solum. The period of this internment extends in any case from 1894 until approx. 1970. A whole book can probably be written about the boarding schools in Hadsel, so what I have included here is just a small glimpse from the history of a single boarding school.
Text: Ingvald Roy Johansen, Myrland in Hadsel.
Hofdasegl
Photo: Geir Rishaug and Torbjørn Bendiksen
