In Annailo's mind…
Sigrid wanted to travel. She dreamt about buses and trains, sitting by the window and watching the world go by. She dreamt about the world, countries and cities far, far away from the farm she had lived all her life. Oceans and boats. Mountains and vulcanos. And people. Something different, something new. Adventures. She had dreams, Sigrid, about buses and trains.
She did get on buses and trains, but they were not moving. They were parked, side by side on a train station on Otta. She walked through them – from carridge to carridge, from bus to bus – cleaning. With a water bucket in one hand and sheets in the other, she cleaned the floors on buses and trains standing still. She heard foreign languages from soldiers around her, and she listened and she learned. A word here and a word there, a sentence perhaps now and then. New people in her life, spitting on her while she was cleaning the floors on their buses and trains.
Sigrid wanted to travel, and she got her dream fulfilled a spring day in 1941. In ashtreys she found cigarettes left behind by foreign soldiers. She collected them in her pockets, and tossed them out the window to the workers who could no longer afford cigarettes because of the war. But foreign soldiers saw this. They came to her and said she had to follow them to another train.
Sigrid went on a journey, by train and by bus. Through the country, to new places, till the journey ended on Grini, a concentration camp.
But Sigrid had dreams, dreams hidden in the lining of her coat. A sheet stolen from Otta Station and needle and reel, hidden to come along. She wanted to sew maps of the places she one day would go.
In a cell on the camp a new dream was fulfilled. A map was sewed with gentle hands in the darkness of the night, hidden from the daylight and hidden from the soldiers. And in between lines and paths of the journey from Otta to Grini, she sewed names of people around her. Daughters and sons taken away from their mothers and fathers. Mothers and fathers taken away from their children. Husbands and wifes. Splitted families. Woman and men, side by side, on a dirty, cold concrete floor in a small cell.
By sunrise she walked in line to the factory. By sunset she walked in line back to her cell. In the darkness she kept sewing in her blind, names as new people came to the camp. And dates. Dates by the names of those who did not return to the cells at night.
Sigrid had a dream about travelling with buses and trains, returning to a train station on Otta and to a farm she had lived all her life. If only once to see the sunrise in freedom, rising above the hills in the morning.
Sigrid’s dream was once again fulfilled, a spring day in 1945. By buses and trains she follwed the map she had sewed with her own hands. She stepped off on a train station that no longer had soldiers speaking foreign languages, to return to a daughter who no longer recognized her. Empty handed wearing only a coat with hidden rooms in the lining, she made a promise to herself, to no longer dream about busss and trains.
I can only hope that Sigrid’s second and last journey was closer to her dream than the first. In a bed between white, steril walls she was still holding a sheet, containing a map, names and dates. She left her sanity back on a concrete floor on Grini, along with 17.000 woman and men who ended their journey in unmarked graves. But because of one woman and her hidden dreams, at least a few of their names returned by busss and trains.
Grini was originally build as a prison for woman in 1937-39, and was completed when Norway was invaded on April 9th, 1940. The building was first intended to hide and evacuate Norwegians during the first April days. As the Germans took hold of the country, the building was used for Norwegian war prisoners, till 1941 when it officially became Grini Concentration Camp.
The main building was supplemented with 30 barracks. The prisoners were put everywhere. Each cell had three sets of bunk beds, containing six prisoners in each. The barracks were just as overloaded.
50.000 Norwegians were taken hostage during World War II. 9000 thousand of them were sent to Concentration Camps in Germany. Some for being jewish, some for fighting for the freedom of their country and some were falsely accused for either of these.
20.000 people were prisoned at Grini. Along with those who were placed there permanently, were prisoners on hold before being sent to Germany. The Camp also housed foreign prisoners being brought to Norway for slavery. 17.000 of them are confirmed dead.
The name Grini has turned symbolic. Its meaning is: “Has been crying”.
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