Childhood​

"I was born at Nærstrand in Ryfylke in 1930. I was also baptised there. We travelled around by boat, lived in boathouses and were bullied for being who we were. We travelled from May to September if possible, or we waited until school ended in June. My mother and father always tried to get us into a house before we were due to start school in the autumn.

We were seven boys and two girls, and we all went to the same school. At school, we weren't treated like the other children. We never got any help and were always placed at the back of the classroom. I was small and didn't quite understand what was happening. Why did the teacher always have to walk past me? It wasn't easy being in school. There were so many words of abuse that I constantly ran away from school. So I missed a lot of the schooling.

In the summer we travelled around here in western Norway, mostly in Sogn. The furthest I remember travelling was to Askevoll in Sunnfjord. I don't remember very much of it, but I can remember that we were several families travelling together. It was often very cosy. There were bonfires in the evening and we never lacked food. My mother and father did the best they could. My mother was clever with her hands and made a lot of great things that you wouldn't think you'd be able to create in a cramped boat. Although there wasn't much space, we were used to respecting each other, so it worked out somehow!

My mother sewed and cooked. She taught us cleanliness, like washing our hands after we had been to the bathroom and brushing our teeth. I remember well when I got my first toothbrush! We had good parents, even if they were sometimes strict and we definitely couldn't do whatever we wanted. We were like most kids and needed correcting now and then. They wanted us be well-behaved. At school we always got conduct marks (if nothing else). We also behaved well at school because we were afraid of being sent away. Many children of the Romani people were sent away. In the end, so were we.

I remember once when I found a rope in a boathouse. The rope was just the right length to use for a jump rope. When Dad saw the rope, he asked me where I'd found it. ‘In the boathouse, of course’, I replied. ‘It's not your rope, you're not allowed to take it. Put it back’, he commanded. I did. They taught us things like that. Sometimes, my brothers would find nails and a hammer in the boathouse. They had to put them back right away also. Honesty was something my parents emphasised.

My father was a first-rate tinsmith and very good at making gutters, milk tubs, buckets, pails and any utility article you could think of. That was our primary livelihood. In addition, mother had goods in a basket she carried around sometimes. She was good at crocheting and embroidering and sold many homemade things. When there was little money and my father didn't have much work, she was happy to sell  those things to get money for food. That's why there aren't many things left from my mother. My parents were good at taking care of all of us.

When my mother was out and ‘took the basket to the farms’ (doing the daily trading trip to the farms), she always said before she left, ‘You older girls have to take care of the little ones while I'm away.’ Father was there, but he had his work, so looking after the little ones was our task.

Growing up, Romani language, mixed with Norwegian, was what we spoke daily. We used it mostly when there were ‘buros’ [non-Romani] nearby who we didn’t want to understand us! I still understand Romani, but much has been forgotten over the years. When I'm with my brother Siggen, I recall a lot of the old words.

The places we went to were quite different. In Folkestad we were always welcomed. I remember playing with the kids there. I recall another place that was not as nice. It was May 17^th [Norway’s Constitution Day] and my sister and I were probably five or six years old. My mother had dressed us up as best as she could. She had even sewn new dresses for my sister and me, and we were very proud. When we came ashore, a bunch of kids came and shouted at us, ‘Splinter scum, splinter scum, get lost!’ (Splinter was a bad word the locals used to call Boat Travellers like us). Then they spat at us. This stuck in our minds forever. We were ‘splinters’ to them. The adults stood there and laughed at their children. They thought it was fun to finally have someone they could mock .  

In another place, a man came towards us and shouted ‘Splinter scum, get out of here, we don’t want your kind here. If you don't get out of here, I'll knock your heads off!’ Then he came after us with a freshly sharpened axe on his shoulders. We ran as fast as we could and hid behind the boathouses. I can't remember what that place was called.

But I remember another place, Brekke in Sogn. People were very kind to us there. I still  visualise that place, the boathouses and the nice summer. It was so idyllic! Elsewhere, people could be very kind, too. They would say that we should not sleep in the boathouses, but should ‘just come up to the houses’. Sometimes we even got to sleep in their finest living room.

My mother told me about being nineteen and pregnant with her first child, which was me. They were at Nærstrand in Ryfylke and my mother was sick  because the labour had started. She  was hiding behind one of the hay-drying racks. She had gone there so that no one would discover that her baby was due.  Luckily, Konstanse (with the same name as me), a Romani lady who was with us, discovered her so she got help. She also arranged for my mother to give birth in a living room there at Nærstrand. Konstanse’s name was given to me and she became my godmother.

Konstanse and her family were nice people to travel with, and she and my mother were very good friends. I am thinking that, one day, my common-law spouse and I will go to Nærstrand and see where I was born. I'm looking forward to that.

My father's relatives were the ones most often travelling with us. Sometimes, my mother’s relatives were also with us. Some of them played the guitar or the accordion. There was a lot of yelling and bickering but as soon as we turned around, it was forgotten and we were happy. We never bore a grudge against anyone, not even the farmers who could often be nasty to us. I can't remember anyone reaching for the knife. That was probably more common when my mother was young. Anyone  could carry a knife then. We did not experience any drama. There wasn’t much alcohol either.   

Three of my siblings were born in Stavanger. A brother died when he was 2-3 years old, but we never found out what he died of. He suddenly fell ill and my parents took him to Rogaland Hospital, but they didn't want to tell them what the cause of death was.   

When we stayed in a house, my mother  was very resourceful. She baked bread and cakes, and cleaned the house. I remember when we got our own house at Sotra. The house was washed down twice a year. Ceilings and walls had to be washed! We have inherited these habits from our mother and have taught our own children cleanliness. Most Romani people at this time were very clean. Maybe it didn't seem like it to the ‘buros’ when they saw how cramped we lived. My whole family consists of clean and well-behaved people.

We often visited my grandfather in Sunnfjord in Askevoll municipality. He had a small house there. Three of my siblings were born in Sunnfjord, when we lived in an old rental house there."

Meeting with the mission and life at residential school

"There came a time when my parents’ relationship became difficult. My mother was tired of my father and things were not so good at home. They split and asked the director of the Norwegian Mission for the Homeless (Bjørnstad or Lyngstad) for help to care for the children. Two of my brothers, Leif and Kåre, went to a foster home in Valdres at the ages of nine and 12. The foster parents had a fox farm and the boys didn't have a good time there. They were given the same food as the foxes.

My eldest brother went to sea. And there he stayed. He wanted to go, but my mother  didn’t want him to. So I  did something illegal: I faked her signature. He was sixteen years old and needed a statement where both my mother and my father allowed him to leave. Dad wanted him to go. ‘Do what you have to’, Dad said, ‘Let him go. It will be good for him!’  When my mother found out, she scolded me. ‘I could have had charges brought against you and have you arrested for making a false statement!’, she said. I knew it was wrong, but my brother wanted to go to sea. He went out as a deck boy, was out for many years, working for the big shipping companies. He was a sailor until he retired.

My sister got a part-time job at Sotra. She did well. I was sent to the Fredly rehabilitation centre at Klosteret [‘the Monastery’]. The manager’s name was Ragnhild Koppervik. They were nice to me there. I was allowed to run errands during the day and was complimented for it. I was also confirmed there in 1946 – in the cathedral.

My biggest wish was to study for a childcare or nursing occupation. Lyngstad at the Mission had promised me schooling. When he died and Bjørnstad took over, he promised me the same thing, but he did not keep his promise. To this day, I can't even fill out forms properly and if I'm going to apply for something, I need help. I recently received NOK 60 000 as compensation for lost schooling. I don't think that is much and expected a little more.

The Mission promised me an education, but the only thing we did at Klosteret was work, work and work. We washed clothes and learned to iron. I like to work. It has always given me great comfort. At the same time, I had my dream of getting an education. That's why I started running away. I ran away because they lied to me and told me I could start a course in childcare or nursing. I just had to be old enough, Lyngstad said (I had to be 18 years old). What he should have said was that I needed to retake all of elementary school or at least the last two years , because I didn’t have much schooling.   

I ended up spending eight days in the district prison because I ran away so much. The day I was going to the district prison, the policeman who was going to take me there said, ‘Konstanse, I know you haven't done anything wrong. If you want to, you can run. I'm not going to run after you.’ I thought to myself, ‘Is this something you say to make me run away again?’ ‘No’, I said, ‘I have had enough. I can't stand this life anymore now. Running into the woods and hiding. Now I want to go where they send me.’

Then my nerves got bad. Eight days in prison is enough for a 17-year-old. I said to myself, ‘Dear God, why am I here? I haven't done anything wrong.’  This has stayed with me my whole life. I would have understood if I had been a thief or lived a terrible life, but the only thing I wanted was to go to school. I wanted my life to have direction. I have since realised it was wrong to run away like that, but I was kind of desperate, I think.

Then I was sent to Bærum residential  school. There was a children's section and an adult section there. I went first to the children's section. That was nice because I could look after the other children. Then I was moved over to the other section and started to become homesick. My parents lived at Sotra and had their own house by then.

I turned 17 the year I was sent to Bærum residential school. I never got an education there either. It was all work there, too, and I was mostly weaving. They had something they called planned shifts. First, we had three months in the kitchen, then the loom for three months, etc. It was fine for a long time, even though it could be demanding, because I've always been a hard worker. We never got paid for all this work, but were a free work force.

In the end I had enough and ran away again, along with a girl from Hønefoss named Solveig. We went to Kaffistova in Storgata 28 and asked if we could get a job. We were honest, telling the manager who we were and where we came from. She gave us a job in the kitchen and gave us a small room in the back where we each had a bed. One day as Solveig was going to clear a table, one of the girls who had just been discharged from the residential school  was there. She reported us.

Then the manager of the residential  school and the police came to pick us up. The manager at Kaffistova tried to get them to stop and said, ‘Leave these girls alone. They've been so nice and haven't been out for a single night. Can't they be allowed to work like other girls? They're great workers!’ We didn’t dare go anywhere while we were there, not even to the movies, because we were so afraid of being discovered. But her protests didn't help.

We were sent back to the residential school, but it did not happen without a struggle. Solveig attacked them and put up fierce resistance. I'll never forget how they treated her. ‘Take it easy, Solveig’, I said. ‘It's no use. If you resist, the police will come even more and it just gets messy.’ They got her in the car. She was beaten. Not by the police, but by the manager of the residential school. I don't know how it happened, whether he hit her on the nose or what. Her dress looked like it was dipped in blood. Then she was put in a cell.

They put me in a room where I had to sit for three weeks. For breakfast, I got two slices of bread with a little butter and oat soup in a tin mug. I had to live in one room in an old wooden building with bars in front of the windows. My toilet was an enamel bucket. I was lying there thinking, ‘What if there's a fire? The house will burn down like a matchbox and I'm sitting here locked up and with bars in front of the windows.’ It was terrible. My nerves got even worse. Even today  I can't go into an elevator alone because it seems too confined. I wait until there are other people there before I go in.

The Mission worked against us and not for us. The clergy were the worst. They lied and said you would get schooling, while in reality you just had to work and work. I was at Bærum Residential  school until the autumn when I turned 18. Then I was allowed to leave. I had to sew the clothes I needed before I left: coat, dress, skirt and a blouse. Then I went home to my mother's house at Sotra. My parents were back together then and were doing well."

Adult life

"In 1952, I got married. We had three great children together. I met him at work. He wasn't of Romani heritage. When my sister and I were 10 to 12 years old, we agreed that when we had kids they would not travel. We knew what it was like and didn't want our kids to experience it. Not because we were in any way ashamed of travelling, but because it was a hard life.

I've always been honest where I've worked, so I've been able to come back. I've been working for many years. I was employed by NSB [the national railroad] for 15 years. It was a good workplace. My sister was there even longer –  for 20 years. After I left NSB, I started receiving disability benefits, but once the children left home I got a part- time cleaning job so I would get out a little bit.

These days, everyone's travelling. Around here, people go out in their boats. My siblings and I all live on land, but we sometimes go out in the summer. As soon as spring comes, this yearning comes. I don't know what we yearn for, but we feel a need to move around. I will probably always have that; my kids are the same way. It is in our nature. They tell me something happens in the spring: ‘There is something we want to do, Mother, but we don't know what it is.’ It must be this yearning to get out."