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Local Norse Folklore
(Washington)
FORM A
STATE: Washington
NAME OF WORKER: Roy Hanna
ADDRESS: Seattle, Washington.
DATE: December 22, 1938
SUBJECT: Local Norse Folklore
1. Informant's Name and Address: A. Hal Lokken, Fishing Vessel Owner's
Association, Pier 8. Seattle, Wash. B. Capt. Cris Svenson, same address.
2. Date and time of interview. Morning of Dec. 22, 1938
3. Place: Association office, mezzenine of Pier 8.
4. Own information.
5. Alone
6. Plain but comfortable office. Maps, study of fish growth by stages,
other items on walls. Overlooks Pier 8 slip.
FORM B
STATE: Washington
NAME OF WORKER: Ray Hanna
ADDRESS: Seattle, Washington
DATE: December 22, 1938
SUBJECT: Local Norse Folklore
Name and Address of Informant: Chris Svenson, Fishing Vessel Owners'
Association, Pier 8, Seattle, Wash. Hal Lokken, Secy. of same, same
address.
1. Ancestry: Norwegian
2. Norway. Did not care to tell place. About 1897 or 1898.
(Norse people do not care to answer questions relating to themselves. They
are by trait; shy and retiring. Questions along this line are not prudent
as they are the quickest method of drying your informant into sullen
silence. Smartest thing is to wait and get this, if at all, when it is
told voluntarily.
So I said to Hal, "Migord, you gotta
save me. I am sent to chase down some legends. You know. Of the fishermen
and loggers and such and all the week long I have been toeing your
clam-mouthed brothern around for some original stuff and what do I get?"
"All they say is 'Vat vas I want' and 'I dunno I dunno!' and tap another
cud out of their snoose cans. You gotta save me, Hal?"
Hal Lokken is the permanent secretary of the Fishing Vessel Owners'
Association, the Sunday name of Seattle's halibut fleet. He is a smooth
collegian with just enough muscle to be reasonably impressive round and
about and is one of a handful on the waterfront who can get those Norse
fishermen to unbutton and talk. If Hal says "Okay," they can unwind some
wild sagas that will give you a psychological message. If he says "No,"
they can't even speak English. You see, Hal is an important guy to me
right now.
Well, Hal is just touching up a rather livid story in which a dory
capsized. The dorymates grasp the hull but after hours of swimming one of
them is taken to the Heaven of all good fisherman. Because he dreaded a
watery grave his partner tied his body fast to the stern and went drifting
on crying for help.
The rescue boat not only found a corpse but a virtual lunatic crouched on
the overturned hull. With each roll of the tide the body, which was
floating free, seemed to reach up with ghastly arms and clutch for him.
We are sitting in the dock office and this is just jelling and I am
watching the misty sound shore and catching the ka-plot-ka-plot, ka-plot
of a trawler mosing around the dock.
About this time we are joined by one of the skippers. He is a slight, wiry
chap with the usual weatherbeaten face. Not particularly outstanding but
just to build my man up, I will record that he has great terrifying hands,
the kind that can tear the shank right off a bullock and the quick intense
eyes of a kingfisher.
Hal gives me the nod that here is my chance. He says to my man, "Chris,
this gent is looking for some yarns, wild ones. Open up. You know 'em
all."
I find my man is Chris Svenson, skipper of the F. C. Hergert. He fires a
cigar and studies a wandering gull which lights in the slip. "So. kid, he
says softly--surprising soft, "You vas vant a little of everything. O.K.,
that's just what you get-- a little of everything.
"CONFIRMATION"
"I guess I can tell you, too, Ha!. I been aroundt the voild four--five
times. Across the Horn seven time. You go to church. You know what
confirmation means. Do you know what it means in Norvey? No. Vell-- just
this. It means the boy leave home, go out alone when he is fourteen,
fifteen to make his vey in the voildt. He generally run away to sea. At
thirteen I vas confirmed-- and I been sailing every since. I am fifty now.
Do you see: In the summer time in my village only the girls and very old
men are left. All the rest are away. Ha! I met my kid friends later in
every port--Hamburg, Rotterdam, Havre-- I met four in Brussels, two ort
three in The Hague.
JERVIS INLET MALESTROM
"You know, the longest inlet on the Pacific is just north of Vancouver--
Jervis Inlet, 110 miles. Believe me, that is a fjord. You got to lay on
your back to see the sky, so narrow are the cliffs in some places. Let's
see, in 1929 I believe that vas, I vas skipper for one of the Studebakers.
By God! That vas the best pay I ever got. I took them in.
"There is a rapid in there, too. Covered at high tide but in ten minutes
when she goes out there is a steep rapids with the worst damn whirlpol you
effer heard of at the bottom.
"Say! We watch-- with field glasses you know-- we watch that damn thing
suck a hundret-food tree, three-foot through at the stumpage around like a
straw. And do you know if neffer came up. We vatch andt vatch and vatch
but neffer see it again. When the tide flow we came back down and hunt for
four or five hour but I swear we neffer see it. Where didt it go? Ha! You
ask me?
"You know that outfidt they had swell rifles but dey couldn't hit a sea
lion's ass at twentdy food. They shoot at a cub bear aboudt as far as
across dis dock and he had to run a block for cover but dey all miss. And
Studabaker-- you know what he did? He took his swell rifle andt slung it
over in a hundredt fathom. Yes, he didt.
SEA LIONS
"And those damn sea lion. Say, one tribt last season they took aboudt a
thousand pound of halibut from my lines. And by God they always take the
biggest fish. We had all lines down and the catch was coming good went
dose buggers come along. We did't have a rifle aboard, dammit, and they
lay right there in aboudt fifty fathom and snap off the big ones when we
pulled them up. The Provincial government kills them off every year.
GOONIES
"Goonies. Dat's another thing dat give us hell. Day follow right after us
ven ve are setting bait and snap up the herrings. By God, one of them take
ten herring right after another. We test them on day. Ve pudt sticks in
the herrings and I swear that damn birdt swollow ten in a row. They are
big birdts, wingspread ten, twelve feet. No one know where they go to nest
but I think the Fiji Islands.
IN THE FIJIS
I made three trips to the Fijis, too. Dat vas in War time. We went after
guano a couple of times for dynamite you know. Then I made a trip for
copra. Say, we lay there, the French Islands waiting for a load of that
bird crap for six months. Dose girls. Say! Dey are old there at fifteen
there. You know the flu had swept through some of the villages and they
all took to houses in the trees. By God, kidt, you lay up with a girl in a
big tree when the wid is blowing. There is some fun.
THE LEGEND OF THE JAPANESE ADMIRAL
"Ha! Yes. A tousand stories. There was the time--that was long time ago--
the Indians on Vancouver Island used to put all a man's property on his
grave when he die. Well, one time myself and anodder fellow we searched
one of dose cemeteries for a good pair of boots and what do we find?
Someone had been buried just that day and on his grave was one of does old
phonographs with a horn. A record was on. We wound it up and it started
paying "Goin' Home."
"That Japanese Admiral. Yes, by God, dat is true. I saw him. That vas in
Ucluelet about six, seven year ago. We put in there in a storm. The
Canadian Customs dey good fellows you know. They ask us over to eat and
dat evening dey invite us to a Japanese fishermen's meeting. The Japs was
just organizing then.
"And you know, when one got up to talk all the rest rose and bowed to the
floor. He is round and short man and he vas an admiral in the Japanese
Navy during the Russo-Japanese War.
"He got into a tighdt spodt and blew the country and settled up there on
the Island. But dadt is true. He was a high Admiral at the battle of Port
Arthur.
DOTS AND DASHES
"Ha! You dondt know what suffering iss, Kidt. Say, you see that picture,
what is it-- 'Captains Courageous-- where dat guy got gaffed with a hook.
"Say dadt is nothing. See dis knuckle (2nd finger, right hand). You know
how I gott dat? Well I got hooked when a fifty-horsepower windlass was
reeling the line in.
"I got hooked in this knuckle and I vas too far away to stop the motor and
no one could hear me shout. So I pull with that hook in my finger against
fifty horse! Say.' All the damn doctors wanted to take my handt off but I
save it myself, by God!
Oh, ve find lots of things. Last season we pick up the rotor off the speed
log of a Canadian patrol boat that went down with all handts in -- lets
see-- 1912, I think. In two hundredt fathom, too. Just one tiny hole to
hook it but the line was dragging on the bottom and it snagged.
"Vell hell, kidt, I could go on-- whadt I couldn't tell you. But I got to
go aboard. By God if you put that in the paper I trow you ff the dock.
Good bye, now!"
Well, so that is that. I offer you an hour's worth of cigar smoke from
Captain Chris Svensen of the F. C. Hergert, halibut trawler out of
Seattle.
Text from: Library of
Congress, Manuscript Division, WPA Federal Writers' Project Collection
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