Bonnie Shand:
Learning to Be A Norwegian Housewife

by Vivian Paulsen

Copy Editor

Bong! Bong! Bong! 6:00 A.M. Thirty sleepy girls, all students at the School of Domestic Science in Lier, Norway (Lier Husmorskole), awoke to the cold Norwegian morning. Bonnie Heather Shand, the only American admitted to the school in the last ten years and probably the first Mormon to ever have the opportunity, jumped out of her feather bed and raced to find her warmest clothing. This week she was assigned to work out in the barn, and she and a few of her classmates knew they must hurry to milk the cows and clean their stalls, feed the chickens and gather eggs, and feed the pigs and clean the pigpen before coming back into the warm spise stue (dining room) for breakfast at 7:45. Their assigned chores in the barn had to be completed, and completed under the exacting eye of one of their instructors, no matter what type of weather the often hostile Norwegian winter had to offer.

In the hall of their dormitory Bonnie greeted the girl she was assigned to work with this week, and together they ran laughing, shivering, and singing out to care for the animals. “You know what we’d sing on the way to the barn in the morning?” Bonnie asks. “‘Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.’”

Though Bonnie had studied some Norwegian before going to Lier, at first she had to communicate by using a lot of pointing, pantomime, and smiles. “And the communication problem was especially hard the weeks I was assigned to learn farming,” says Bonnie, “since my barn partner knew absolutely no English at all. But everyone at Lier tried to help me learn Norwegian quickly. Of course, they liked to practice their English too. Most of the girls had studied some English in school. My best friend tried especially hard to speak to me. One morning she said to me, ‘Oh, Bonnie, it’s such a cruel breakfast.’ It wasn’t exactly correct, but it was very descriptive.”

Twenty-year-old Bonnie, from Midway, Utah, first learned of the Husmorskole from some Norwegian friends in Salt Lake City. One of them had attended a similar school as a young girl in Norway, and when Bonnie expressed interest, she sent to Lier for more information and an application. Since only thirty girls are admitted to each six-month or one-year course, Bonnie was very pleased when her application was accepted.

“I think they accepted me because I had lived in Europe before and had attended a well-known cooking school in France. They knew I could adapt to living away from home and that I was interested in housewifely skills.

“My mother was so excited to have me go,” continues Bonnie. “She was proud to think I wanted to learn to scrub, clean, cook, sew, raise a garden, and care for animals. Some girls would have felt it was beneath them, you know, but I loved it. And now I want to make my home as nearly like Lier as possible.”

Upon arrival at the school, it didn’t take long for Bonnie to fit into the routine. “For the first week of the five-week rotating schedule I studied cooking. The second week was sewing, the third cooking again, the fourth farming, and the fifth washing. I was there for the six-month course. One year there will be two six-month courses and the next year the course will go for the full year. Girls who take the course for a full year also learn to weave.”

Bonnie found the farming week to be one of the most interesting. “We would have to clean the barns every morning, really clean them. They say Norwegian barns are almost as clean as Norwegian homes, and I believe them. At Lier there were about twenty cows, and above each stall there was a chalkboard with the cow’s name, the average amount of milk it gave, and its pedigree. The cows have to be kept inside all winter and one of the funnest days in the spring is the day we let them out for the first time. You should have seen them! They ran and jumped and pushed each other as if they had been in prison for twenty years and were just getting out. They were so frisky it sort of scared me, and I ran back and hid in the barn.”

After working in the barn each morning the girls assigned to farming for the week come back in for breakfast. The breakfast is usually delicious, “the best breakfast in the world,” Bonnie claims. There are three kinds of bread, different kinds of cheese, jam, butter, fish or meat, milk, buttermilk, apples, oranges, and cod-liver oil.

Following breakfast the girls have to run and dress for chapel. A short devotional service sponsored by the Lutheran Church, which is the Norwegian state church, is broadcast each morning on the radio. After the religious service, morning classes are held. “We’d study lots of different things. Chemistry, physiology, gardening, spot removing, nursing, interior decorating, budgeting, and child care were some of the subjects we learned about.”

During the morning classes the girls have a break and are served soups, cakes, and something to drink. Then following the morning classes it’s back outside until dinner, which is served in the early afternoon. “We had a big dinner and usually filled our plates twice,” says Bonnie. “The girls who were in the cooking week would make the food we ate. It was usually really good. We’d eat until about 2:30 and then we’d go back out and work in the barn or the garden until about 5:30.

“After working this hard all day,” she continues, “we were beat when we came in at 5:30, so we’d just sit around the eleve stue (students room) and talk and read our mail. And almost everyone would knit and embroider. We learned to do some fantastic embroidery and knitting. Scandinavians do beautiful handwork and we were expected to learn to do it too.”

A light supper was served in the evening and after that the girls were each assigned certain chores. One week Bonnie was asked to answer the phone and act as receptionist. Another week she was assigned to clean the bathrooms. (“Cleaning the bathrooms means scrubbing between each individual tile,” explains Bonnie. “It really works too. The bathrooms at Lier looked like they were brand-new, and you know they’ve been there for years and years.”) Students were allowed male visitors in the evenings, but all chores had to be taken care of and no late hours were allowed.

During their cooking week the girls have to wake up at 6:00 and start cooking at 6:30. Most of the day is spent in the kitchen, either preparing meals or cleaning up afterwards. “After dinner,” Bonnie informs us, “you had to really clean up the kitchen. This included mopping the floors and counting all the silverware to make sure that everything was there and nothing was lost. It was hard. We’d have to do the dishes twice, you know. First comes the forvask where you rinse the dishes. Then you have to wash them in really hot water with lots of soap. We were constantly busy doing something.”

The sewing week seemed almost like a vacation to the girls, at least as far as physical effort was concerned. But they learned to do handwork, to mend and darn, and to design and sew clothes without the aid of patterns.

The washing week was, to say the least, the most dreaded week, according to Bonnie. “We had to do the linen perfectly. This meant measuring it so that it could be pressed correctly. Our linen closet was the most beautiful thing you could ever hope to see. We learned to make our own starch from potatoes, and we would press things on these big rollers. But we had to stay down in the basement and wash all day long. We would get so bored that the only thing we could think of was when we were going to have our next meal.”

In the town of Drammen, a few miles from Lier, there is a beautiful new branch chapel, and in spite of the busy schedule at school, Bonnie was able to attend Church meetings and participate in branch activities. “When Mr. Gurholt from the school drove me from Oslo to Lier, I thought to myself, ‘Oh, there aren’t any Mormons way out here.’ But there were! And I found that I knew the mission president too. The missionaries lent me their Norwegian books from the Language Training Mission and the sisters invited me to go tracting. I really enjoyed that. Several of my friends at school even agreed to have the missionary lessons, and one family was baptized shortly after I left Norway.”

At Lier the girls put on an evening program about every two weeks. “It is sort of like a home evening program,” says Bonnie. “We were all kind of like a big family at school. The different groups would take turns giving the program—one time it would be the girls doing the cooking, and the next time those doing the washing. The time my group gave it, they told me to come up with an original idea. I called the mission president and he sent up a projector and the film Man’s Search for Happiness in Norwegian.

When asked if she would share some recipes and cleaning tips with New Era readers, Bonnie gladly complied.

1. “There were very few carpets or rugs at Lier, and most of the floors were made out of beautiful hardwood. Because they looked so perfect all the time, visitors thought we spent hours on them. I guess we did, but we never spent too long at one time. They were washed each day with a rag attached to the end of a long-handled, rubber squeegee and hot soapy water. We rarely had to get down on our hands and knees with a brush and a bucket because the floors never had a chance to accumulate any real dirt. Periodically (about once per week) the floors were waxed with paste wax and then rubbed with dry, clean rags until they shone.”

2. “When making bread and kneading it, you usually leave flour and dough all over the drainboard or table. If you want to clean this off easily without having your washcloth get all doughy and sticky, just sprinkle some ordinary table salt on the surface before wiping it off. The dough will rub off easily and your washcloth will quickly rinse out.”

3. “The difference between how absolutely clean everything was at Lier and how semi-straightened things are in most American homes is not the result of using any special product or particular brand of soap. The difference is made by the amount of elbow grease you cheerfully apply to each task. Extra pains taken give instant results.”

4. “We used a weak vinegar and water solution when cleaning windows, and it worked just as well as any expensive window spray I’ve ever tried.”

5. “Organization is very important in running a home. At school certain things had to be done at certain times. Big cleaning projects were alternated with minor ones during the week to give some variety. But what I really liked was never having to do a major spring cleaning. Since we’d do several major projects per week, we thoroughly cleaned the school a couple of times a year. The only time we had to do the whole thing at once was when the term ended and we had to leave the school to the next group of girls.

“Working hard to make a home clean and pleasant and to prepare regular, wholesome meals for the people you care most about brings a great deal of enjoyment and fulfillment. When I arrived at my home in Midway, I greeted my mother with ‘Hello, I’m your new housemaid. I hope we work well together.’ Even so, working at home has seemed like a vacation after the tight schedule at Lier.”

6. “We were taught that to keep your home at its best certain things needed to be done daily. They were washing the clothes, cleaning the bathrooms, dusting and polishing the furniture, washing the floors, cooking meals, and caring for the animals. There were other things we had to do, of course, but not every day.”

7. “When we did the laundry we would soak it overnight and remove all spots before putting it in the washing machine.”

8. “We worked hard at keeping the kitchen looking neat even when we were cooking. We would take out a tray or a plate, and the utensils, knives, etc., that we used while cooking would be placed on the tray when not in use. Afterwards the tray needed to be washed, but the drainboards were much easier to wipe off.”

9. “Lier was originally a cooking school, and how to prepare, serve, and store food is still one of the most important things learned there. We learned to cook for small groups and large groups. When visitors came, we really put on a show. I remember once having to help prepare a banquet for more than two hundred. Cleaning up afterwards was the worst part. We were washing dishes until after midnight.

“I brought home with me many delicious recipes. Norwegian food is beautifully prepared and very healthful. It is quite plain in nature when compared to the elaborate French or the spicy Chinese cuisine. Norwegians eat quite a bit of fish, potatoes, and bread. They seldom eat meat or chicken since they are very expensive. Here is one of the best fish recipes I learned to prepare at school. Although it is difficult to find the same variety of fish as in Norway, we can substitute.”

Fiskegryte (one-pot fish dinner)

3 leeks

3 carrots

1 small celery root

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 pounds fish filet (red snapper or other white fish)

4 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons tomato puree

Chopped fresh parsley

Chop up the leeks, carrots, and celery root and place with salt in a pan. Add enough water to cover the vegetables and cook until partially done. Roll the fish in flour with salt and pepper added and place on top of the partially cooked vegetables. Put the butter and tomato puree on top of the fish, cover the pan tightly, and let cook until the fish is done. Chop fresh parsley to garnish the finished dish.

“Here are two more recipes I really like. One is for a sort of rice porridge, and the other is a dessert made from leftover rice.”

Risengrynsgrøt (rice porridge)

3 cups water

2 cups long-grain white rice

2 quarts cooked milk

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

Sugar

Cinnamon

Pats of butter or margarine

Bring the water to a boil. Add rice, cover, and let cook for about 20 minutes. Add cooked milk and salt and let cook until rice is done and the mixture has thickened like porridge. Stir often. Serve hot with sugar, cinnamon, and margarine on top.

Riskrem (rice and cream dessert)

2 quarts leftover rice

6 tablespoons sugar

10 drops vanilla or other preferred flavoring

Slivered almonds

1 pint whipping cream

Heat the rice and sweeten to taste. Cook it until all the liquid is absorbed. Add the flavoring and the slivered almonds. Cool. Whip the cream and fold into rice. Serve at room temperature with fruit sauce.

Rød saus (red fruit sauce)

1 quart fruit juice concentrate (strawberry, raspberry, or boysenberry)

Sugar

3 tablespoons cornstarch

Put the juice, sweetened to taste, in a sauce pan. Add the cornstarch and cook until the juice thickens. Add a little water if necessary to make the sauce consistency right. Serve in a small pitcher beside the riskrem so each guest can pour the desired amount on his serving of dessert.

Reminiscing about Lier and her experiences there almost makes Bonnie homesick for the scrub brushes and her many friends. “I learned some really great things at Lier—I certainly learned endurance—but the most wonderful thing about it was the people. They really care about you. At Easter I was allowed to fly home to the United States to visit my family. All of the girls and the teachers were up at 6:00 to see me off. And they had made me piles of delicious sandwiches because they were afraid I’d get hungry on the long trip home.”

Attending the Husmorskole was a great opportunity for Bonnie Shand, and she feels more girls ought to be taught to take pride in their housewifely skills. She was asked to speak on the graduation program at the end of her six-month course and was given a beautiful Norwegian doll by her classmates “so you’ll never forget us.” It’s not likely that she ever will.

Bonnie in one of the many beautiful, traditional Norwegian costumes

Milking machines were used on the school’s twenty cows

Another of the traditional Norwegian dresses

Uniformed students eating in the school dining room

Receptions and beautiful tables were prepared for visiting groups

The pigs had to be fed before the girls were served breakfast