By Robbie LaFleur

Norwegian-born Lisa Hammer passed away in South Dakota in 1998 at the age of 96. Later her family donated a piece she wove to Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum–a straightforward, lovely, long utilitarian rug with simple stripes. But this rug was woven with an unusual material. It is emblematic of an industrious, accomplished, strong-willed woman who faced family displacement, scarcity, and war. 

Early years in Norway

Lisa Hammer grew up in a small fishing village on the Klungseth farm northwest of Namsos, Norway, in Nord-Trøndelag. As a young child, her parents became ill and she was sent to the farm of a childless aunt and uncle. She missed her mother terribly, but was never able to return home. Farm work was hard, including hauling firewood from the mountains on her back, and scraping through snow to find greens for the farm animals. At 18 she traveled to Oslo for teacher training, another lonely and difficult time. 

It was difficult to get a teaching job in 1925, but Lisa found a position in three remote villages in Finnmark in the north of Norway. There was a great deal of poverty in the area, which deepened during World War II. She was teaching in Skjøtningberg during the Nazi occupation. Lisa wrote, “There was very little food around. We fed the kids oatmeal soup and cod liver oil in the school and when the weather was bad, the fishermen stole the fish they had sold the day before. The kids were not fed the way they should be and many times it was a lot better to give them a bath and teach them history.”

Many towns in Finnmark were destroyed by the Germans at the end of the war. As the Nazis retreated, they threw grenades in each of the homes in Skjøtningberg, demolishing them in a day.

The townspeople were told to take a boat south. Lisa wrote, “It was very bad weather that night so we couldn’t enter the boat…We roasted some sheep, fried them on the fire and we drank some beer. We milked some cows, packed silver in the shoes and boots so we could take as much as possible and next morning we went to the boat. It was a fishing boat—we were laying in the bottom of the boat. One man got crazy but we had a basket that was ready to go to the hospital if somebody should be sick…So we tied him up in that basket, it was the only thing to do. And every place we went by that day there was burning and burning and burning.” 

After this harrowing escape to the home of her parents in Nord-Trøndelag (northwest of Namsos), Lisa began teaching nearby. But the school director in Finnmark sent her a telegram, “Welcome to Finnmark. Here is your passport!” After a year of teaching in the small village of Vestre Jakobselv, she was asked to come to Kjøllefjord.  Prudently she asked whether there was a schoolhouse with desks, teaching equipment and books. “No,” the superintendent said, “but there are children.” 

Lisa wrote, “So I went to Kjøllefjord. 125 children met me on the way, and they asked, ‘When will school begin?’ They repeated that often.” She convinced the mayor to furnish eight carpenters, and a classroom was quickly built. Obtaining school materials was a problem right after the war, but they received a large box of school supplies from Canada and regular packages from a woman in New Jersey. Lisa lived in nearby building, and she described the units as pretty and clean. “There was no other entertainment besides what we made ourselves…In later times it has been said that we never had so much fun as in that time when we were living in the housing units and everyone was the same.” School supplies weren’t the only scarce items, as Lisa wrote, “It was my birthday in April, and I can remember that I got a darning needle as a gift from Jennie Olsen. That was a very useful gift at that time.”

In a few short years, Lisa was settled and accomplished. She had a house built, became the church organist, was promoted to school principal, and was elected as the first woman representative on the community governing board. But then there was a letter from America…

The South Dakota connection

Around 1951, Lisa began to correspond with a childhood friend, Adolph Hammer, who emigrated to Huron, South Dakota. He was a widower with 12 children. He asked whether she had ever considered coming to America. She had, and in the summer of 1952 she traveled almost 4000 miles to visit her friend. When she returned to finish her teaching contract in Kjøllefjord, she was married. 

A number of rugs that Lisa Hammer wove accompanied her when she returned for her new life chapter in the middle of America. The rug donated to Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum was the one with the most unusual weft material–not fabric strips, as in most rag rugs, but herring nets from her fisherman brother, Ebbe Klungseth, who fished along a fjord in Trøndelag.  Small fish floated through the nets that were later twisted and woven into the rug! Moss alongside a Norwegian fjord was collected and cooked to dye the colored wool stripes. Lisa’s herring-net rug was thrifty and creative.

Once in her new South Dakota home, Lisa must have missed weaving. She ordered a loom from Norway, but it remained unassembled in a box until she sold it in the 1980s. She was likely too busy with her new husband and twelve children. Only a couple of the children were still at home, but Lisa also grew large flower and vegetable gardens, worked full time as the head housekeeper at a local inn, and made and sold a LOT of lefse.

Once she learned English, she had many speaking engagements around the region. At venues like the Sons of Norway and a local international group, Lisa was an ambassador of Norwegian culture and food. The local newspaper published her Norwegian recipes and articles about her textile work. 

While she was not a weaver in America, her hands were never idle. She made many wall hangings in Norwegian klostersøm technique and mastered Hardangersøm embroidery.

She embroidered a large tablecloth in the Farmers Rose pattern to match her dinnerware, crocheted dozens of afghans, and crocheted lace doilies. Textiles were an important part of her lectures about Norwegian culture. Here she demonstrates spinning on a wheel. 

Lisa Hammer stood up to many challenges during her long, rich life. She loved her adopted country and told her granddaughter, “the last letters in American are ‘I can.'” After she died, the family found her woven rugs from Norway in a closet, meaningful mementos that she saved for half her life. Lisa’s herring-net rug is an object that holds history. It also typifies a trait common to so many Norwegian-Americans whose belongings enrich Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum–while loving their adopted country, the immigrants remember and celebrate the country and culture of their youth. 

Authors note: Thank you to Karen Seeman (Lisa’s step-granddaughter) and Dee Gunderson (Lisa’s stepdaughter) for information on Lisa Hammer’s textile activities.