ABOUT ME

My Father Worked at the Factory

Who was my father? Who am I? — Glimpses of life in a small industrial town in Western Norway in the 20th century.

Photo © Øivind H. Solheim

Family

My father had two sisters, one older and the other a little younger than him. He also had three brothers. He was the youngest of them, and was thus the second youngest child in the group of six, with all that it entailed having four big siblings. I imagine that growing up, my father was a pretty lively, happy, and cheerful boy.

Father, Magnus Solheim, was born in 1915. His family had a farm in the countryside north of Bergen, where he grew up with his mother and father, brothers and sisters. As a child, I got to know his mother, my grandmother, when she came and visited us in my hometown, Odda. She had become a widow early on and was a very calm, kind, and strong woman, it seems, according to my mother.

I do not really know much about my father, but I have a story that I have heard told.

When he was a boy, he was on a bicycle and he cycled down a hill towards the quay where the boats were. He gained great speed down the road and lost control. The bike and the boy ended up in the sea and he was close to drowning. One point with the story when it was…