RUBY JAEREN WEEKEND

Originated by MaryT, check hers for today
My hubby and I were guests in the realm of my Mom this week end. 60 kilometers of beach and good farming soil. The inland still is covered with stones brought here 10 000 years ago at the end of ice age. By the beach the farmers have cultivated the land by hand and later with heavy machinery. This last remaining primeval scenery is protected for the generations to come.


My mom still remembers that they had to cut turf for the fireplaces. The men cut, the women loaded the turf in stacks for drying. There are even yet hardly any woodland on Jaeren.
The farms by the sea have always been rich. This is Haa old vicarage. Now an art museum, but with sheep and cattle on pastures all around. The earth here is sandy, not far away there are great clay sources and a great , old factory. Hence the red roof stones .

My grandma came from a sea farm. My granddad from high Jaeren, just a few kilometers from this red house.
Its characteristic side shelters show the shape of a Jaerhouse. Shelters used for storage of turf and vegetables also helped protect the people from the howling wind .
The great poet of Jaeren lived his last years here and he and his wife are also buried at this land. A special honor from the government.
Arne Garborg was eldest son of a farm not far away. He denied his allodial possessions and left for our capital, "to study or to die". His father found this so hard, he committed suicide. Garborg was gifted indeed, but he chose to become an author and a poet. His whole life he wrote about the landscape and the people he had left. He gave Jaeren a voice, and a soul.The people of his homeland took him to their bosom, even when he was alive. Grieg composed music to his masterpiece about the Little Maiden of the Mountains. His plays are seldom played nowadays, but his songs are being song wherever people of Jaeren, or for that sake Norwegians, are gathered."Here and there on the hills and ridges low houses seek the shelter of each other in little clusters. In the dense air they almost hover away, swept in the peat smoke and sea mist like in a dream; secluded and still they lie on the moors like homes of trolls. Around the houses are bleak , green patches of field and pasture, like islands in the moorland; every patch and spot surrounded by stone fences in piles …."
From chapter 1 Peace By Arne Garborg'


The little maid
She is small and dark and slender
with dusky,
pure features and deep gray
eyes and a soft and dreamy manner.
It is almost as though a spell lay over her.
In her movements,
in her speech there is this muted calm.
Beneath her forehead,
lovely but low,
her eyes shine as if through a mist.
They seem to be staring
deep into another world.
Only her breast is tight and heavy,
and there is a quiver about her pale mouth.
She is tremblingly frail and delicate,
and at the same time,
charming and young.
The Little Maid of the Moutains By Arne Garborg