Built with Love Excerpt, Q&A with Dana Conroy

(peaceful rhythmic music) - [Narrator] On this episode of Postcards.

(slow rhythmic music) - I'm here to learn how to build boats in the traditional way of this area.

- Here we have the boat builder, Einar, and the Norwegian king and queen, a lot younger Einar.

- It's not enough to put the old boats in the museum.

Somebody must build new boats like the old, and use them.

(upbeat rhythmic music) (upbeat rhythmic music) - Postcards is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the Citizens of Minnesota.

Additional support provided by Margaret A Cargill Philanthropies, Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen on behalf of Shalom Hill Farms, a retreat and conference center in a prairie setting near Wyndham, Minnesota.

On the web at shalomhillfarm.org.

Alexandria Minnesota, a year round destination with hundreds of lakes, trails, and attractions for memorable vacations and events.

More information at explorealex.com.

The Lake Region Arts Council's Arts Calendar, an arts and cultural heritage funded digital calendar showcasing upcoming art events and opportunities for artists in West Central Minnesota.

On the web at lrac4calendar.org.

Playing today's new music plus your favorite hits, 96.7kram, online at 967kram.com.

(hammer knocking) (birds chirping) - Can you imagine giving up the life you know to be with a person you love?

- Yeah, I've given up something for love.

- That's a difficult question.

(speaking Norwegian) - I have, yes, but that's a secret.

(Dana and Per Christian laughing) - Don't worry.

This is a film about Norwegian boat building, but like almost everything in this world, it begins with a love story.

(lively music) My great-great-grandmother Lydia was born in Hemnes, Norway.

She came from a poor family, so they sent her away to be a servant girl.

Meanwhile, my great-great-grandfather, John B. Johnson, was from Nesna, Norway here on the coast.

He came from a successful fishing family, building boats in the Norwegian tradition.

(lively music) (hatchet tapping) John fell in love with Lydia, but their family didn't approve of it.

- If you flirted with somebody outside the class, no, that wasn't good at all.

- But John didn't let that get in the way.

He immigrated to Minnesota in 1884, and he started farming near Lake Koronis.

In 1888, he sent for Lydia, and he married her.

That's why I'm here today.

I was curious, what kind of life did John of the boat building Johnsons leave behind when he immigrated to Minnesota?

Most Norwegian immigrants left for a better life.

John already had a good life.

He left for love.

- Say, here we are in the Ford Transit.

We're journeying right now.

We're waiting in line for the ferry.

We can't wait, we're so excited.

We've got me, Kris behind the lens, Olav driving, Dana riding.

- [Dana] That's me, tired after a 12 hour flight from Minnesota and 90 minutes more by car and ferry.

We're on our way to meet some Norwegians who are building boats in the same way my great-great-grandfather did.

(seabirds cawing) - I'm Vebjorn Reitan.

I am a boat builder apprentice at the Coastal Heritage Museum.

I'm here to learn how to build boats in the traditional way of this area.

Here's our fine wood shop.

We have some classes sometime, and also have some of our tools.

This is a finished one ready for delivery.

(Vebjorn conversing in Norwegian) 200 hours, two guys.

So at the museum we have a exhibit, and storage of old boats and fishing gear and boat builder tools, and this boat builder has always been a part of the museum.

So Norway has a huge variation of boats all throughout the country, and even inside one region, you can have several kinds of boats, and every boat is unique.

(boat scraping) We build afjords boats, a kind of boat that's for rowing and sailing, and is used for fishing and transportation of goods, transportation of people, and has a very wide range of sizes.

We build them for private individuals that are ordering them.

- This boat building tradition almost died out in 1980s.

There was only one man who was using this kind of tradition to build this specific types of boat.

Our boat builder, Einar Borgfjord, was his apprentice.

- When I started to build an afjords boat, I learned this kind of boat building from Yuhan Horsha, and he was 72 years when we built first boat, and we built four boats together before he died.

- So it was, that bad that it was one man who used this real old tradition.

- [Dana] So it came really close to being gone?

- Yeah, it was very, very close, sure.

- Here we have the boat builder, Einar, and the Norwegian king and queen, a lot younger Einar.

Here you can see him slightly older but still young, and the queen and king of Norway, so they have been here two times.

We are very proud of that.

Luckily yeah, we had the Einar, and we can see the results of his work.

He has had many apprentices.

- We have 23 apprentices.

- [Vebjorn] It's not like going to a school.

You can't read a book to build these boats.

It's all hands on pretty much.

You have to feel it and see it.

(warped film music) - [Narrator] We start by laying the keel, put on the extensions from the keel, and onto that, we've got the stems.

Then we make ready the garboards for the boats.

- We plane down the upper side so that it has the lines that we want.

We use sticks to push the boards out, and clamps to bring them back in.

We put the frames in, which are naturally grown branches of spruce and pine.

We bring them together either with iron nails and ropes or wooden pegs and wedges.

Put in the seats, make the oars, the rig, masts, the yard, paint it, or send it off.

(birds chirping) - [Dana] Would you give up boat making for love?

(translator speaking Norwegian) (Einar chuckles) - For my passion?

Oh, to give up my passion for love?

No, I don't think so.

Maybe.

- I don't know, it's hard to say.

I guess you have to be in the situation.

- [Dana] Would you give up boat making for love?

- I think yeah.

I think that would be the right thing to do.

(compelling music) (Einar speaking Norwegian) (Einar and Dana chuckling) - [Dana] Yeah, that's a good answer.

(seabirds cawing) (compelling music) (music continues) We traveled another four hours north to meet one of Norway's last traditional sail makers.

- Sail cloth from wool, all this is handmade, so all this was made the same 1,000 years ago.

- Wow, that's amazing.

Does it naturally repel water too?

- Yeah, it's, they take fat from the sheep and into the wool.

My name is Frode Bjoru.

I live in isle of Joa in middle of Norway, and here we make sail of traditional boats in Norway.

This ship is, so it's the biggest Viking ship in modern.

This is a book about the building.

There were as many as 10 boat builder.

They make the ship, and we make a sail from silk.

Here's the silk.

It's a very strong silk, it's very strong.

- [Dana] Wow.

- This comes from India.

Very much work.

- A lot of details with the holes.

My name is Margreet Sloot.

It's a Dutch name.

I'm the wife of Frode Bjoru.

He's a sail maker, and I'm married with him.

When I came here I couldn't do that work, but I learn a lot, and I'm doing with all kind of sail making.

I was like we say in Norwegian, like a potato.

You can use it for everything.

(chuckles) So I helped with all kind of things.

This is cotton.

The idea is the same.

So here is the mast from the boat.

It fastens here and here up top, and the rope around, it should be too short, because if you want to sail, you have the bow in the sail.

You can't sail with a flat sail.

You have to have the bow.

- So when I'm saving, I take some little bit more fabric than the rope, little bit.

- It's how you see the sail is bowed, and bowed that also, but this is just wood, and then when the wind is coming, it's a longer way to go here.

- So I blow on here.

It's coming up.

And this is the same for a sail too.

- That's why the sail has to have this form.

(indistinct speech) (birds chirping) I went to Norway when I was 20 years, and then I moved to Joa Island in '83, and then we start with this company, because our farm we live on, it was too small, so we had to do something else, so we start with the sail making.

My husband is, I think the only sail maker in Norway who really understands about the square sails for the traditional Viking boats.

- My life, working life is with sail making, so we try to make it like the same method from Viking age.

- To work with all our problems in the world, the challenge is you have to know what your roots, what you come from before you can start with the future, and the handicrafts is a very important part of it.

- [Dana] Do you sail then?

- Sail, yeah, yeah.

(boat motor humming) - It's not enough to put the old boats in the museum.

Somebody must build new boats like the old, and use them.

(ropes cranking) (compelling music) I think the inspiration behind this documentary has to do with water, because Minnesota has a strong connection to Norwa But what connects us the most, I think, is our love for the wat Here in Minnesota.

We have a lot of love for lakes and rivers.

In Norway, they spend a lot of t in the ocean and in the fjords.

So I think to connect us through fishing and boat buildin it really makes sense to me.

It's like kind of what the Norwegians brought to Minnes is that love for the outdoors and that love for being on the water.

So originally I wasn't going to be on screen.

I'm a producer, so I try to stay invisible as much as possible.

The editor of this documentary, Mike Scholtz he decided that it was a really interesting tie that my family had been boat and fishermen from Norway and that we really would- it would be doing an injustice to the boat-building documentary if we didn't at least mention that I had this strong tie to boat-building in Norway.

So he helped write a script for to talk about my family's histor and we included that story to sort of tie together our journey in Norway, The ending of the documentary, where the music sort of drops and you get these shots of everybody along the water and you can really just kind of feel that passion for the ocean and making boats and just the Norwegian culture at the end.

So I'd say like the dramatic tur point at the end is my favorite part of the documentary.

I also really like the husband and wife sailmakers and their excitement for showing how everything works with the sail making was another favorite part of the documentary for me.

What was interesting about this trip in this documentary, is we went during the Midnight Sun and the Midnight Sun is when it never really gets fully dark or maybe just for a few minutes.

So it was light around the clock So when we stayed in hotels, we had to pull down the shades and darken the rooms.

We had a full week of shooting and we never really saw darkness that entire time.

So my favorite part of Norway that I saw on this trip was Lofoten Islands, which has a beautiful mountain scape with the mountains dropping right into the ocean.

And when we arrived it was midni and there was the sun was just setting at midn So we had this golden hour and there's this beautiful golde that was falling on the fish rac the landscape.

So that was a memory that sticks out to me.

We spent an afternoon in Nesna, I know that my great great grand and great great grandmother are And they went to church there and to see the church where they were baptized and con was a really powerful experience I would like to go back and spend some more time there, I did feel a little bit of a con to the land in the area and it was just surprisingly bea I couldn't believe they would le or like how hard it would have been for them to leave a landscape that's like on the ocean and go to some place in the middle of the prairie that's completely landlocked and just like what a huge change that would have been for them.

And just understanding more like why they built boats when they moved to Minnesota, why they fished all the time, and how that kind of got passed down to my parents and hopefully to my son as well.

Absolutely, not just connected to my ancestors, but I've now met friends over in and I get to follow them on Inst and see what kind of things that Norwegians do today.

So, like, understanding the Norwegian culture has become a lot easier for me.

Just having that personal connec to people that live there today and understanding kind of the differences between and Norwegian culture, which are I was thinking that because we live in Minnesota, wh you know, has a lot of Norwegian and we keep the culture alive he I was thinking that I would have like a natural understanding of today's Norwegians are like, but I feel like their culture is really different than ours.

Even in Minnesota.

So to get a sneak peek into what that's like, I think was really interesting.

Every time you travel, there's always going to be something right?

An obstacle that you didn't expect or, you know, that throws a wrench in it, you know.

So this time when we were flying to Norway, one of our crew members suitcas was completely lost in Amsterdam and it didn't make it to our final destination.

So we waited for like probably an hour or two after we landed, looked, seeing if it would show up and it just And so we had to spend our first night getting clothes for so that he could have something to wear on this trip.

And eventually we were able to t where the missing suitcase went and our guide and our crew membe to this remote airport where they dropped it off in some kind of like small plane.

But eventually the situation remedied itself.

But that's one thing about trave that's kind of exciting.

You don't know what's going to g but something probably will at s and it's all about how you make the best of it.

The difference between making a documentary in a foreign country like Norway or making something here in Minn is that everything needs to be p approximately a year ahead of ti So there's a lot of calling over a lot of research, a lot of studying of schedules and hotels and driving distances just to be able to plan how we c probably two months of worth of stuff in 7 to 10 days.

So I would say the pre-planning is pretty inten and really important for doing a production overseas.

You don't want to just show up and everything unravels and you spend all this money to get over there and nothing works out.

So I would say like being flexib and being able to roll with the punches is a really importan part of filming overseas, but also just making sure you've got all of your details aligned.

Like if you were to ask me to move to Norway tomorrow for l and just to drop everything like my family and my job to do what my great great grandparents did and just leave everything they've ever known behind for a land that they couldn't Google or they couldn't research online Just a total mystery.

I think that would be a kind of that I don't have.

Part of me kind of does wish they had stayed in Norway.

I personally have a very strong connection to the ocean.

I feel like that's my place.

Being landlocked the way that we is something that doesn't fit well with me.

So I do kind of feel like they h I wish they had stayed in Norway but the opportunities that being in the United States provides, I think for a filmmaker it's pretty unmatched.

So I'm glad that I'm here.

I could tell my great great grandparents something.

I would tell them that they're pretty much badass.

Theyre like kind of the coolest people I know and I don't really know them, but they're the coolest people I Like, I can imagine what they we and how strong they had to be to survive, but I would love to sit down with them for a day and hear about their journey across the ocean and what kind of incredible thin they encountered along the way.

So I think making documentaries like this one and others that we've made in the past has really helped bridg Norwegian and American culture.

For example, we've brought Olav over, our guide, who has taught classe here in the United States, and just having the person to person connection with the people that along the way I think is really And these are connections that wouldn't be made otherwise.

So I think every time we go over it has an impact and it gets peo interested and thinking about ho we are connected to Norway and Scandinavia and how how we can strengthen that connection and preserve that culture.

Making a documentary like this helps transfer the knowledge of traditional crafts making because somebody might watch thi and gain interest in boat buildi or want to pick up a hardanger f Even myself, I've considered way I could go over and take a boat making class.

And there's plenty of folk schoo here in Minnesota that teach that type of thing.

So I think it also helps support community here in Minnesota by getting people interested in making things themselves and connecting to the old ways.

The journey of this documentary has taken me on is kind of something really unexpected.

I wasn't planning to be on camer so it's one helped me be more comfortable with myself and being filmed.

But two, it's really increased my interest in Norway and Norwegian culture and my own family history in a way that I didn't expect.

I would love to learn more and spend more time there, and it's something I want to bring my own family like my own son.

I'd love to connect him to Norwa and his heritage.

So its suddenly become a big part of my life.

- [Narrator] Postcards is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the Citizens of Minnesota.

Additional support provided by Margaret A Cargill Philanthropies, Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen on behalf of Shalom Hill Farms, a retreat and conference center in a prairie setting near Wyndham, Minnesota.

On the web at shalomhillfarm.org.

Alexandria, Minnesota, a year-round destination with hundreds of lakes, trails, and attractions for memorable vacations and events.

More information at explorealex.com.

The Lake Region Arts Council's Arts calendar, an arts and cultural heritage funded digital calendar showcasing upcoming art events and opportunities for artists in West Central Minnesota.

On the web at lrac4calendar.org.

Playing today's new music plus your favorite hits, 96.7kram.

Online at 967kram.com.

(peaceful rhythmic music)