Norsewood
is a small town (or road-crossing) that was established by Norwegian immigrants
in the early 1880s.
Not a lot to see, apart from a tiny museum,
but when you've done a bit of reading,
such as Ø. Molstad Andresen's best-selling
historical novel Johanna's World,
it was fascinating to be there - if only for 30 minutes (when the bus back to
Napier arrived
6 minutes early). And visit the cemetery where the persons in the novel are
buried.
A few other curiosa
items from Norsewood:
They built the Railway Hotel in Norsewood before it was decided that the railway
would pass through the Danish town Dannevirke and not Norsewood.
In 1888
bush fires reduced most of the town to ashes. Some saw the fire as the work
of God, for the previous week a popular vote had abolished local Prohibition.
- 'Yet the church was burnt down and the pub was saved,' commented the Daily
Telegraph.
(If you should
be more interested in the technical workings of the
Norsewood dairy in 1898 than in the people, the Internet covers all bizarre
desires.)
I looked for Johanna's World in most bookstores I visited around the
country, and was amused
to see it placed in a different section in each store: Fiction, New Zealand
fiction, Biographies, History, etc.
Henrik's Emigranz song
Read
more about New Zealand in Norwegian literature.
On
the Pacific shore, leaving tomorrow behind me.
