Fairytale of New York - A Christmas story from Blaafarveværket
As we're in the Advent season, today we're going to take a little Christmas story from Blaafarveværket. The story involves Blaafarveværket, the penitentiary in Christiania and the dream of a better future in America. In short, this story could have been taken from The Pouge's famous Christmas song, Fairytale of New York.
Sönstebyene at Blaafarveværket - A lifetime in the service of the mill
In many ways, Ole Nilsen Sönstebye was an atypical miner at the Cobalt Mines. On average, miners at the Cobalt Mines only worked for 2.2 years before calling it a day. The work was hard, but the pay was good, which made it possible to save money and then move on to something less demanding. This was not the case for Ole. He was employed as a miner at Nordgruvene in 1824.[1] It is impressive that the same man was still working there in 1852. Ole was 59 years old in 1852.
Ole married Kari Gulliksdatter. They had their first daughter, Karen, in 1821. Thereafter, sons followed in quick succession. In 1831, the household in labourer's dwelling no. 16 at Nymoen consisted of 4 sons and Karen, as well as Kari and Ole.
It seems that Ole was a skilled labourer. Among other things, he was responsible for "skydning", i.e. igniting the powder charges, in the second mountain month of 1831.[2] This was a dangerous job that was not given to just anyone.
When Ole began to "get on in years", i.e. turn 40, around the middle of the 1830s, he was transferred from the Cobalt mines to the smelter. This must have been a welcome change for Ole, who usually had a commute of a mile. He was one of the few miners who lived at Nymoen, a workers' housing complex intended for employees at the smelter, not the mines. From 1832, Ole changed his place of work. He began working at the smelter, where he had many different tasks.
Two of Ole's sons, Nils and Kristopher, found work in Nordre Haugfoss crushed stone works. In 1837, they were both listed under "New labourers".[3] They were 15 and 14 years old respectively. They probably worked as washers, a job that involved separating out the lowest grades of crushed cobalt ore. The washers had the crushed ore placed in containers of water, where gravity was used to "wash away" the worthless grey stone from the heavy cobalt minerals. Later, his brother, Johan Olsen, also found work at Haugfoss crushed stone works,[4] while the youngest son, Gullik Olsen, does not appear to have worked at the plant.
As we can see, the Sønstebye family was a typical labouring family at Blaafarveværket. Father and sons worked for the mill, while the wife and daughter worked in the home, cleaning, cooking and looking after livestock and the kitchen garden.
The dream of a new start in America - Christmas card to a lost son
By the 1850s, much had changed at Blaafarveværket. The boom times up to the end of the 1840s were replaced by hard times. Falling demand and prices for cobalt pigments led to cutbacks in operations, poverty and hardship. For the first time, able-bodied men without jobs had to look beyond Modum's borders for paid work.
Ole probably felt the pressure. In 1852, he was an old man, 59 years old, which meant that he could not expect to be able to work much longer. Before 1848, no-one believed that the Blaafarveværket could be closed down, but in 1852 anything was possible. Ole may have wondered whether he and his wife would be able to rely on a pension, or in the worst case, support from the poor box, in their old age. The new English owners could decide to close down or sell, and what would happen then?
Like many of the Blaafarveværk's workers, Ole saw America as the solution. His daughter, Karen, was already living there. So did his son Nils and Johan, who probably travelled when the Blaafarve mill started to go bad. The final destination of the journey was "Racine in Weskonsin",[5] where Ole and Kari wanted to reunite with those who had travelled before.
In the latter half of the 19th century, many of the workers at Blaafarveværk emigrated. In a medical report for the year 1865, the works doctor, Hans Gabriel Sundt Dedichen, wrote that:
When, nevertheless, emigration to America in the last two years has increased considerably within the population of the work, this is largely explained by the fact that a few of the former emigrants from this place have made their fortune over there and now bring their relatives and friends over to them, partly also by their enticing and exaggerated descriptions. [6]
However, Ole did not want to leave his children who still lived in Norway, and here there was a problem. His son Christopher had also travelled from Modum, but he did not end up in the USA. Christopher ended up on the wrong side of the law in Christiania. We don't know why, but in December 1852, Christopher was preparing to celebrate Christmas in a cell in Christiania's newly built "Penitentiary". A prison that many people will recognise from the Olsen Gang films.
Ole wrote a Christmas letter to his son, in which the father expresses concern and care for his son. We don't meet a strict and authoritative father, but rather a father who loves and worries about one of his sons. In the letter, Ole asks Christopher to do what he can to get his sentence reduced so that he can travel to the USA with the rest of his family:
so you must finally talk to your good Director Norum and Priest Didriksen about them think it could be useful to make an application if the sentence could be shortened by 1 month for you that you could be finished and come over with us, for if you have to spend the time out and we pray for you then it will be late, as you cannot be ready to travel on the same day as you come out, and we cannot or will not necessarily leave you, for then you would be quite alone again here in Norway, and we would be anxious both on the journey and after we come across to you. Therefore, you must talk to them as soon as possible and hear their opinion and then immediately inform us about it. Likewise, if you could have measurements taken of you for boots and put them in the letter, so that I can have them made when I get a cobbler.[7]
The letter ended like this:
"By the way, we are all well and wish to hear the same from you. Please write to us as soon as you can. We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from your father Ole Nielsen Sönstebye."[8]
What happened to the Sönstebye family is unclear. Whether they travelled in the spring of 1853, and whether Christopher received a one-month penalty discount for joining them, is not known, but I hope it worked out for them.
The story of Ole Nilsen Sönstebye is about believing in a better future for himself and his family. Perhaps that's exactly what we all need at the end of a difficult year - faith in a better future. Aspects of the song Fairytales of New York also deal with this belief. To quote Shane MacGowan "I can see a better time, when all our dreams come true".[9]
We at Blaafarveværket wish you and yours a wonderful Advent season.
[1] RA, Modums Blaafarveværk, G/Gg/L0369: -, 1822-1848, p. 63
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[2] RA, Modums Blaafarveværk, G/Gd/Gdd/L0258: -, 1831, p. 26
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[3] RA, Modums Blaafarveværk, G/Gd/Gdd/L0263: -, 1837, p. 41
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[4] RA, Modums Blaafarveværk, G/Gd/Gdd/L0272: -, 1846-1849, p. 144
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[5] Taken from Stiftelsen Modums Blaafarveværk's transcribed archive database, RA/PA - 0157/Modums Blaafarveværk, The material has been microfilmed, transcribed and adapted by Blaafarveværkets Dokumentasjonssenter by Sverre Følstad and Ole-Petter Gulbrandsen.
[6] RA/S-1044 - Justisdepartementet, Medisinalkontoret M/Buskerud amt L0065, Medicinal report for the year 1865 from the undersigned, Dr Thaulow 1866
[7] Taken from Stiftelsen Modums Blaafarveværk's transcribed archive database, RA/PA - 0157/Modums Blaafarveværk, The material has been microfilmed, transcribed and adapted by Blaafarveværkets Dokumentasjonssenter by Sverre Følstad and Ole-Petter Gulbrandsen.
[8] Ibid
[9] Fairytale of New York lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC