Boarding the Ship

"Friday, May 1, was a church holiday (Bededag), so the streets were crowded with people who were enjoying their one-day vacation. All the way to the harbor, the streets were filled with pleasure-seeking people. About three or four o'clock in the afternoon we were on our way through this throng with our children and suitcases. Here again our traveling companions proved to be real friends. They hired a coach, the most elegant one I had ever seen, and escorted us to port. That was quite an adventure for "mountain folks." They carried our baggage and the smaller children on ship for us, where they left us in a chaos of people, children, boxes, and knapsacks. We were all put into one room. 

Oh! What noise and excitement. I got the children near me, and we sat on one place watching in bewilderment until we were finally shown to our berths. There were berths along the whole length of the ship, but we had to furnish our own bedclothes. When we got our assigned places, it was safest to put our belongings in them and sit there. If we ventured away, someone else would perhaps claim it all before we got back. At last we were all aboard the ship that was to carry us across the uncertain waters of the North Sea. This time, however, the voyage was not as rough as it could have been. I saw very little of the fjord when we left Oslo because I was on deck very little the first evening. The next morning we stopped at Christiansand for more passengers."

Excerpt from Sigrid's account of her journey to America, written in 1919.