I'd always wanted to go to the countries of my ancestry, which is how the idea started to formulate many a year ago.
I'm of Norwegian, Irish, Polish and Czechoslovakian descent. I'd made it to Ireland for my 30th birthday, but it had been 14 long years since any international travel and it had started to dawn on me, I wasn't gonna see the other 3 countries . . .
Until I stumbled upon a town named Norway, a mere 26 miles from my home in Aurora, which I discovered accidentally on my way to Starved Rock State Park.
So it started off as a joke. I'd make it to the countries of my ancestry, albeit, in Illinois.
I grabbed an Atlas and perused . . . while there was no Poland, or Czechoslovakia, there were several other towns with either foreign country names (Scotland, Peru) or international city names (Paris, Vienna, Havana, Marseilles). And so there it was, my way to travel the world.
I kicked the idea around with friends, thought of making t-shirts with an Illinois map on the front and a list of cities on the back. I thought about doing the trip, writing about it and maybe pitching it to Midwest Living magazine as a freelance article. A journalist friend suggested I contact the State of Illinois tourism board as a possible slogan.
I tried to find a contact online for the tourism board, no luck.
The idea sat in the back of my mind, collecting dust, like a lot of others. For years.
So I'm not sure what the catalyst was for me to finally act on the idea, but I did.
First stop: Norway.
The drive is idyllic, pastoral, peaceful and what a difference a change in direction can make. Twenty-six miles east of me, I'm in major suburbia, just merging onto the Eisenhower, stressed in traffic. Twenty-six miles southwest of me, I'm on a 2-lane highway buttressed by cornfields.
At first I put my iPod on shuffle, but somehow the cacophony of Bloc Party just didn't meld with the quiet scenery, so I flipped it to my classical playlist, but even Vivaldi seemed too loud for the landscape.
So I turned it off. And . . . silence, blissful silence. I had no idea how pleasant it could be. I imagined it would be anxiety-inducing, stressful, like all my failed attempts at meditation. But it wasn't. Allowing one sense (vision) to take full command, without competition from another (hearing), was really relaxing. Who woulda thought? Maybe Thoreau was onto something.
Anyway, my destination was the Norsk Museum. Open 1-5 on Saturday and Sundays June-September.
The website says it's on Highway 71, but turns out it's on a small offshoot road from Rte 71, a little sign with an arrow leading the way.
If it looks like a church, that's because it once was. A former Lutheran church built in 1846 after the original structure had burnt down. It's quaint, don't ya think? In a New England-esque sort of way.
Apparently it was built by the Norwegian settler/minister Elling Eielsen who had moved here from the shores of Lake Ontario in New York, or at least that's what museum volunteer Roald Berg told me.
One of my first questions to Roald, a 100% Norwegian American hailing from Aurora, Illinois, is why here, in this remote place, with no fjords or significant bodies of water to remind them of the motherland?
And that's when Roald explained that the Norwegian Quaker settlers had given the shores of Lake Ontario a try, but after a couple of winters, found the weather to be too brutal and the land unforgiving.
So let me get this straight. People from Norway, the Scandinavian country just a stone's throw from the North Pole, can't hack New York winters? Umm, I'm not buying that part of the tale. Although the part about them wanting better farmland I can. Illinois has lovely soil.
The museum itself is musty, in an attic sort of way. Filled with long-forgotten, unused things, just like an attic.
A lot of wood trunks, quilts and china. Some cool wooden shields from the sailing ship The Restoration which was the sloop the settlers took over from Norway. Some cool Viking ship replicas.
Roald is busy talking to a couple from Kansas City about rosemaling, a decorative form of painting Norwegians are known for. He's explaining how a new roof was put on the museum this past year and there was a rosemaling artist doing demonstrations and she painted a few shingles from the old roof which are now on sale in the museum, $20 a shingle.
A wonderful scent drifted into the musty room and Roald explained there were waffles being made in the back room. En route we walked through an old kitchen stuffed with Norwegian utensils. Apparently they use a rolling pin that has tiny squares on it. It's used to make bread-like dough called lafsta, or is it lufsta? He also pulled a stick off the wall and said it was the top branch/tip of a pine tree and they used it as a stirrer/whisk.
No, those Norwegians didn't need any metal. They're a wood-loving people.
We then drifted into the room where the waffle-making was occurring. It was Roald's wife Frances at the helm of the heart-shaped waffle maker. She told Roald that he makes better waffles than she does. He returned that she cooks them better than he does, since he always burns his. He offered me a choice between lingonberry or strawberry preserves and I chose lingonberry. When in Rome. Although I thought lingonberry was a Swedish deal, but I wasn't gonna say anything. Didn't want to tick anybody off.
I asked Frances if she was Norwegian too and she said no, just Roald was.
Roald replied that Frances acted more Norwegian than he did.
"How does a Norwegian act?" I asked Frances.
"Yeah, that's what I'm wondering. How do I act?" she asked Roald.
"Just that you do more volunteer work for Norwegian causes than I do," chuckled Roald.
Roald was wearing a Norway baseball hat and a Norway t-shirt that sported the Norwegian flag. I admired it.
He said there were some shirts for sale on the rack behind me. I glanced through a few, but none were the same as Roald's. He pulled a box from underneath the rack and let me dig through to see if I could find one I liked. I found one somewhat similar. On the front is a Norwegian flag with the words "Norsk Museum" on the side and a factoid about Cleng Peerson coming over in 1834. Then on the back a timetable starting with the year 739 of various Norwegian history-making dates. (981: Erik the Red discovers Greenland! and some not-so-great dates . . . 1028: Danish Canute conquers Norway . . . but it ends in triumph . . . 1975: King Olav V visits Norway, Illinois!).
Roald said he and Frances were going on a trip to Norway (the real Norway) this year. They had done a similar trip in 1998 and back then it had cost $2,200 per person. Now, for the exact same trip, it's $6,000 per person.
He said it was going to be his 6th trip over there and although he didn't utter it, I knew he was thinking it, it will be his last. He and Frances are looking fairly weathered.
He encouraged me to take a walk across the street to the Norway Store which had been in the same family for 6 generations since 1848.
I did take a stroll over there and it was a full mini grocery store, with several Scandinavian brands and a restaurant that serves cod and Swedish meatballs. Sadly the restaurant had just finished with lunch, so nothing could be ordered. But the menu walked through the 6 generations of ownership and how each ancestor had put their own unique mark on the place. I'll have to go back for the food. In the meantime, I bought a mug that had the Norwegian flag around the border. I was also tempted by a 2014 Norwegian calendar featuring beautiful scenes of fjords and mountain lakes and families cross-country skiing. But it will have to wait, another time, when I can order some meatballs and visit some cemeteries in the area.
I told Roald about my idea for the blog, for an Around the World in Illinois trip and right away he offered up "There's a Paris, Illinois, pretty far south."
Yes, my man, I know, and I'm planning to go.
For now, farvel (that's Norwegian for goodbye).
