My first fieldworkday

I had my first fieldworkday on Tuesday! I'm really proud, and it was a lot of fun. I met with Doug Warne, the president of the Leif Erikson Lodge in Ballard, he took me to the Kaffestue. A place quite similar to "Kaffistova" back home. This is the place where all the old Norwegian Americans meet to drink coffe and eat sandwich with brunost, eggs or Norwegian waffles with brunost or jam, and listen to old, but live, Nordic musik. There we met with Gordon Strand who is responsible for Nordic American Voices: An oral History Initiative, where they "record the life histories of Nordic immigrants and their descendants in the Pacific Northwest".  It is all done by volunteers, and off course I offered him my help. I think it will be a great experience for me, and I'll get to practice interviewing people for my project. 

It was still early when Doug had to go to a meeting so I went down to the library which is located in the basement of the lodge. I was lucky because it is only open on Tuesdays. There I met Margaret and Gunnar. Margaret was born in Seattle and didn't speak any Norwegian, but Gunnar was originally from Trondheim and spoke Norwegian really well. He was even more updated on the latest news about Trondheim than I was. The library was a small room with a lot of books and a large table in the middle of the room where ther lay a bunch of Norwegian magazines, like "Allers" and "Hjemmet" and the Bunad Leksikon bind I - III. Here people could come to loan books, DVDs and VHS. Most of the books where Norwegian, and a lot of books from World War II which was the most popular books, they had books by Lars Saabye Christensen, Erlen Loe and Anne Karin Elstad, but also classics like Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Snorre and Hamsund. 

Gunnar offered to buy me coffee, so we went back up to the Kaffestue. This time there were a lot of people there, and all really interested in talking to me about Norway. Most of the was born in Norway, so most of them spoke really good Norwegian. I met this lady who was from the same place as my grandmother. She said that if I just mentioned her name to my grandmother she would know who she was. I passed the name on to my mother, and I hope she remember to ask my grandmother. 

I also met this relatively young lady (maybe in the early fifty), who invited me to the Swedish Cultural Center to morrow for "Swedes Got Talent night", which is basically karaoke night. She also took it upon herself to get me a bike, so she is coming to pick me up later to day to go to one lady we met at the Kaffestue who thought she had a bike I could borrow. 

Unfortunately I forgot my camera, so I didn't take any pictures of the Kaffestue, the library or the people there, but it is not the last time I'm going there next time I'll take many pictures.