Nikolai's Fortune

by Solveig Torvik

Overview

As a child, Solveig Torvik heard stories of a lost, mysterious great-grandfather who left Finland for America to make his fortune - leaving Torvik’s great-grandmother and his unborn daughter behind. As a reporter, Torvik determined to discover the fate of the man who followed his dreams to Oregon. She uncovered not only the story of one man, but also the saga of an entire family. In Nikolai’s Fortune, a tale of Scandinavian women, the journalist turns fact into fiction and shares the tales of her ancestors as she imagines they would have told them.

Nikolai's Fortune is a heartbreaking, multigenerational epic, chronicling family secrets and sufferings against the backdrop of Scandinavian history and culture. Blending memoir and historical fiction, grandmother, mother, and daughter each share their own story: Kaisa, of her mother’s love for Nikolai and her own 500-mile trek at the age of twelve from impoverished Finland across the snowy mountains of Lapland; Berit, of child slavery and an obsession with seeking out her grandfather’s fortune for her mother; and Hannah, the voice of Torvik, of her childhood during the Nazi occupation of Norway and her family’s emigration to Idaho.

Through detailed historical research into census, church, and weather records, as well as academic and museum sources, Torvik recaptures a dramatic story nearly lost to memory and inherits something worth more than a fortune in riches – a sense of her family history, ethnic background, and the generations of remarkable women who came before her.

Norwegian-born Solveig Torvik was a reporter, editor, and columnist at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer for thirty years. She was also a reporter for United Press International in Salt Lake City and for the San Francisco Chronicle, and an editor at the San Jose Mercury News.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780295805542
Publisher:	University of Washington Press
Publication date:	11/27/2012
Series:	McLellan Endowed Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	332
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Solveig Torvik was a reporter, editor, and columnist at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer for thirty years. She was also a reporter for United Press International in Salt Lake City and for the San Francisco Chronicle, and an editor at the San Jose Mercury News.

Table of Contents

Prologue

Book I. The Road of the Four Winds (Kaisa)

1. Meeting Nikolai

2. Marie's Past

3. Dreams of America

4. America Widows

5. Sisu

6. The Road to Lapland

7. The Alps of the North

8. Learning Norwegian

9. Courting

10. Signaldal

11. Anton

12. Homeless

13. The Birtavarre Mines

Book II. Under Otertind (Berit)

14. Loss

15. Aalesund

16. The Chosen People

17. Hanna

Book III. Soup from a Nail (Hanna)

18. Hamstring

19. Making Peace with Peace

20. America

21. Homecoming

Notes on Methodology

Acknowledgments

What People are Saying About This

Bill Dietrich

"An intriguing cross between a heartbreaking memoir and expertly researched historical fiction, Nikolai's Fortune immerses the reader in a beautifully drawn world of poverty and female struggle—-from the hardscrabble farms of 19th—century Finland, to Norway under the German occupation, to family revelations after imigration to Idaho. It is the most classic of American stories: the long winding journey from Old World to New, and then the rediscovery of tangled roots, of mothers and daughters, in homelands never entirely left behind."

Christine Ingebritsen

"Solveig Torvik has provided readers with a rich, detailed and beautifully woven tale of a northern European family. Her writing is flawless."

Katherine Hanson

"Torvik tells a story that is at times moving, at times disturbing, and nearly always riveting."

Editorial Reviews

A brooding, often beautiful tale of life in the Far North and the immigrant experience. A former journalist, the author knows how to work a source and analyze the data, but family stories are another matter, particularly in a family of abundant secrets. Her kin were bound together, she writes, "by an unacknowledged credo: if a thing remains unspoken, it does not exist; if pain is given no voice, it lacks power to harm." Both principles are at work in Torvik's first novel-billed as fiction, it seems, only because certain liberties have been taken when the facts have not been available. The hinge of the story is great-grandpa Nikolai, who, much to the chagrin of these status-conscious Norwegians, hails from Finland. "Being a Finn was shameful, I knew, though it wasn't clear why," the author comments, and Nikolai lives up to this perception by leaving his wife and unborn daughter behind to go off to America to make a fortune that became the stuff of legend. Not everyone back home shares his certainty that great riches are to be found along the salmon-heavy Columbia River, but they're all interested, especially because so many live in grinding poverty. Suspicious of each other as much as of outsiders, the close-lipped clan keeps its secrets. "Most people don't ask," says Berit, whose story forms the middle section of the three-part narrative. "They don't want to hear the truth. They can't bear to hear it." The taciturnity serves the family well under the Nazi occupation of Norway, but nagging uncertainty over Nikolai's disappearing act, and whether he indeed became rich, provides the occasion for a parallel journey, as Torvik's parents emigrate to the United States, leaving it to her to sortout how to become an American teenager and to reckon with the unsettling discoveries she makes in a new land. Cheerless but memorable; an update of Knut Hamsun and Ole Rolvaag with more whispers than cries.

Kirkus Reviews

"Nikolai's Fortune is a remarkable intergenerational testament to 'sisu,' the Finnish quality of being able to bear the unbearable and persevere. It is a hard book to put down."

The Olympian

"The saga of countless families who survived starvation, ostracism and war to reach America."

The Seattle Times

"A brooding, often beautiful tale of life in the Far North and the immigrant experience."

Kirkus Reviews

"Solveig Torvik has produced a dramatic masterpiece of historical fiction that it hard to put down. Here, at last, is a Finnish Saami relocation and immigration story that exposes the roots of intergenerational trauma. It can easily take its place beside Louise Erdrich's The Master Butchers Singing Club and Alice Walker's The Temple of My Familiar as classics of the genre."

Baiki: The International Sami Journal

Solveig Torvik has produced a dramatic masterpiece of historical fiction that it hard to put down. Here, at last, is a Finnish Saami relocation and immigration story that exposes the roots of intergenerational trauma. It can easily take its place beside Louise Erdrich's The Master Butchers Singing Club and Alice Walker's The Temple of My Familiar as classics of the genre.

Baiki: The International Sami Journal

"A brooding, often beautiful tale of life in the Far North and the immigrant experience."—Kirkus Reviews

"The saga of countless families who survived starvation, ostracism and war to reach America."—The Seattle Times

"Nikolai's Fortune is a remarkable intergenerational testament to 'sisu,' the Finnish quality of being able to bear the unbearable and persevere. It is a hard book to put down."—The Olympian

"Solveig Torvik has produced a dramatic masterpiece of historical fiction that it hard to put down. Here, at last, is a Finnish Saami relocation and immigration story that exposes the roots of intergenerational trauma. It can easily take its place beside Louise Erdrich's The Master Butchers Singing Club and Alice Walker's The Temple of My Familiar as classics of the genre."—Baiki: The International Sami Journal

From the Publisher

Torvik tells a story that is at times moving, at times disturbing, and nearly always riveting.

Katherine Hanson