Tuesday, February 12, 2002
I wrote this story because it was the first time I ran all the way down to Hillsboro Camp from my parents' house on Stowe Mountain road. The total distance was about 3/4 of a mile. I was ten years old that summer and I became a committed runner. My older cousin Wendell inspired me.
In honor of the Norwegian origins of the Nissen name, I seasoned the story with references to the Viking gods and myths. My primary source for the Viking legends was "Teutonic Myths and Legends" by Donald A. McKenzie. Every word of this story is the TRUTH!
This story focuses mainly on two characters. My next couple of stories will include the entire group of cousins in the 60's.
I hope everybody reads and enjoys this story. If it jogs memories that you want to share, please send them to me.
Appended to the bottom of the story are some results of searching the web for Hartvig Nissen.
R/Fred Nissen Vogt
 |
| View of Peace Lake from west porch of Mess Hall |
Running To Hillsboro Camp
"The frail boat splits --- but on the ocean's ground
Thor again hath footing found;
Within his arms the worm is bound."
-- From a Norse Ballad called "Thor's Fishing"
Ziiiieeeep! I was awakened by the sound of the mosquito net tent door being unzipped. It was just before sunrise, August 1965. I was 10 years old. We were sleeping in a big green canvas tent hidden in the pines. The tent was the folded wings of the Norse dragon Nidhog; green, citronella scented water proofed canvas. Silvery dragon bones and ropes of dragon sinew held it up. From the door of the tent, we looked out through the trees and could barely make out the red brick chimney on the roof of my parent's house down the hill from us. We were on Stowe Mountain Road, Hillsboro, New Hampshire.
Our cousins, Wendell, Vivian and Richie Crim from Anderson, Indiana were visiting Hillsboro Camp with their parents, Aunt Helen and Uncle Dwight. They would stay for several weeks in August. My sister Jane and cousin Vivian were full time campers that summer.
My younger brothers, Harry, Jim, and I were sleeping in the green canvas tent with Wendell and Richie. Richie was about a year or so younger than me. He was always smiling and has straight blonde hair that was almost white from his year-around competitive swimming. Richie was urgently tiptoeing out the door with his hand held tight between his legs. He was wearing his gray sweatshirt inside out, blue jeans, and white gym socks. His sneakers were unlaced. My younger brother, Jim, scrambled up and was out the door right after Richie. In a moment, they were having a pissing contest to see who could hit the birch tree on the other side of the juniper bush.
I sat up in my bag and looked across the tent. Wendell was blinking and putting on his gold wire rimmed glasses. His sleeping bag bounced and rolled as he pulled on his shorts inside the warmth of the bag. My youngest brother Harry was sound asleep. Wendell was maybe three or four years older than me. He was a competitive swimmer and runner. His hair was light brown, cut short, with thick curls.
Wendell said, "Hey Freddy, I'm going down to Camp for breakfast!"
Camp, Hillsboro Camp, was down the quiet, dirt road from my parents' home. It was a girl's summer camp around a small, peaceful, lake. Our great-grandfather, Harvig Nissen founded Hillsboro Camp in 1914. Hartvig Nissen had emigrated from Christiania, Norway in 1883. In Norway, he was the champion gymnast during the 1870's. Hartvig's father was the school principal in Christiania and later became the Chief of Schools in the Kingdom of Norway. Hartvig studied and taught gymnastics in Norway. In the United States, he had been a teacher of physical education at Harvard Summer School for 24 years, the director of the Massage Department of Boston City Hospital and the president of the Posse-Nissen school of Gymnastics in Boston. While he was with the Posse-Nissen school, he founded Hillsboro Camp. It was an extension of his school in Boston. Camp was a place for tennis, horseback riding, hiking, swimming, canoeing, fun times, and a variety of sports and crafts. His son, Harry, and Harry's wife Jane Churchill Nissen, our grandparents, had taken it over. Now in 1965 his granddaughter, our Aunt Harriet Nissen, (nicknamed Toxie) was running it with the help of Aunt Puffy and Uncle Bob Donahey.
"Me too! I think they're having pancakes this morning." I replied to Wendell and I started pulling my blue jeans on inside the warmth of my sleeping bag.
As Richie and Jim were crawling back into their sleeping bags for another hour of sleep, Wendell and I trotted down through the blueberry bushes and hemlock trees along the old cow path that led past the tent to my parent's yard. The house, Homestead School, was built a across the path that connected the pastures on the east side of Stowe Mountain Road. A moment later, we came out of the trees at the edge of my parent's yard.
Wendell was jogging in place on the lawn under the white pines by the sidewalk going up to the front door of my parent's house when I caught up to him. Wendell had the physique of the Purdue Boiler Maker. His muscles were enormous. His calves bulged as they pumped his legs up and down. Wendell could run or swim for miles without resting. On the front of his sweatshirt was the muscular, hammer wielding, Purdue Boiler Maker logo. Purdue was the college where his parents and my mother had all known each other.
The Purdue Boiler Maker, a master metal smith, a descendant of the Norse elves, Ivalde and Sindre, whose race fashioned the tools and weapons of the Viking gods: Odin's ring Draupner and his spear Gunger; Frey's golden boar on which to ride over the heavens or the sea; Thor's mystic hammer Mjolner that would return to him each time it was thrown.
The sun-chariot, drawn by the steed Arvak - Early Dawn, was just entering the eastern heavens at Hela-gate, through which the souls of the dead pass to the world beneath. It wasn't visible above the trees yet.
Across the gravel road to the east lay the cow pasture where our neighbor, Mr. Dimp Crane, grazed his cows. The pasture was studded with lichen covered granite rocks, the broken bones of the ancient giant Ymir. Ymir had been ground up in the World Mill, deep under the ocean, to create the mountains and oceans of the Earth at the direction of the Viking gods. Across the pasture, the distant trees shone in golden dawn light. Stowe Mountain in the distance to the north had its eastern face of trees and pastures lit by the golden light. The sky was turning blue; a few wisps of high altitude clouds were glowing white already. The cool morning air was crisp with the scent of dry pine needles.
Wendell was wearing khaki shorts and dusty white basketball sneakers. I was wearing end-of-summer, cracked, black basketball sneakers, blue jeans, and a royal blue sweater over my short-sleeved shirt. I wouldn't be caught in public in shorts because "Cowboys don't wear shorts!"
"Ready Freddy?" Wendell said with his big friendly grin.
"Ready" I answered.
Wendell started and I followed along his right side a little behind him. We trotted down the country road like pair of Odin's wolf dogs, Gere and Freke, on a tour of hills of Midgard. Wendell picked a pebble off the ground and bounced it like a shot off a tree trunk next to the stonewall as he ran. I picked up a pebble and threw it at the tree trunk. I missed.
The road cut a straight path through the fields and forests. After a couple of miles, it would fade to an ancient logging trail and then to nothing in the east shoulder of Stowe Mountain. Camp lay in the shallow valley ahead and to the east. Half a mile north of us was the center of the valley. It was marked by the meandering Shed's brook. To cut through the woods directly east to Camp would mean bushwhacking up and down several granite ridges between my parent's home and Hillsboro Camp.
We passed the Green's sugarhouse on the right, just about 50 yards down the road. In the summer, it was boarded up waiting, a dry, quiet, unpainted, and dusty sarcophagus. Each spring wood fires and buckets of sap collected from maple trees would bring it to life with the sweet maple exhalation of the boilers.
On the left was a rail gate in the stonewall. The evening before we had all played soldiers in the field on the other side of the gate. Wendell had used his hunting knife to carve a tree branch to be his rifle. The rest of us used sticks we found in the woods. As the sun went down, we stalked each other around the rocks, clumps of juniper, and through the trees that grew along the small stream flowing parallel to the road.
The next stretch of road was flat. A ten-foot tall wall of lilac bushes lined the right; the Green's lawn and then their house passed us on the left. No one was up yet that we could see. The white wooden flagpole was bare. Mr. Green had not put up his flag for the day yet. Perhaps the ghost that haunted the 200-year-old farmhouse was watching us from the attic window. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled.
A small brown rabbit ran out of the lilacs, across the road in front of us. Wendell immediately sprinted after it; his strides were suddenly 10 feet long. He almost caught the rabbit before it found cover under lowest branches of the 30-foot tall blue spruce by the Green's front door.
Another fifty yards and we were deep into the Crane's farmyard. A sugarhouse on the left was painted a dark brown with white trim. It was sealed up waiting for the next spring like the Green's sugarhouse. Each spring, my brothers, sister, and I would visit Mr. Dimp Crane, a gnome in the sweet maple scented vapors of his sugarhouse. He would ladle hot syrup on the snow bank for us where it would harden into sheets of translucent maple candy. His syrup's maple flavor was spiced with a hint of the pleasant aroma of wood smoke. I've never tasted maple syrup like that since I've moved to the city.
The Crane's rooster was crowing. I'm sure the rooster was descended from the Nordic Goldcomb, the rooster that lived in the branches of Ygdrasil, the World-Tree. Goldcomb's was the voice that woke the gods of Asgard each morning.
A tractor parked by the left side of the road. Two weeping willow trees, one sapling on the left guarded the chickens yard. A big willow on the right was weeping over Dimp Crane's truck. The sound of the electric milking machine, a muffled thump, thump, thump, came from the huge three-story barn with a shiny aluminum roof on our left. One lone cow was out in the barnyard. We could hear her deep throated bell clunking as she raised her head from eating the grass and looked thoughtfully at us as we ran by. Bosse's jaw never stopped chewing.
Wisps of smoke rose from the Crane's chimney in their farmhouse to the right. My parents had bought the land for their home from Dimp Crane five years before. The land had been an old cow pasture grown up with white pines, birch trees, and an under growth of pricker bushes. As we passed the barn a very faded sign above the tractor sized double doors read "Stowe View Farm." Stowe Mountain was in front of us across the shallow valley. In the golden morning sunlight, its pastures and dark forests gleamed like the lower reaches of Bif-rost, the Rainbow Bridge that connects Midgard, Earth, to Asgard, home of the Norse gods. The barn marked the start of the run down Crane's hill.
Crane's hill was very steep. It would take me four more years of growing before I had the strength to ride my single speed, balloon tired, second-hand, Schwinn bicycle to the top of Crane's hill coming home. In the winter, it was a very fast hill to go coasting with sleds, toboggans, or aluminum flying saucers.
At about the quarter mile point, we turned right, away from Stowe Mountain road. We went to the east, down the road directly to Hillsboro Camp. This corner marked the border between the fields and the forests. We entered a deep forest of pines, beech, and birch trees. On the left, there was still a lot of undergrowth forming a wall of green leaves next to the road. On the right, the forest was more mature and we could see dozens of feet into the woods. My mother had said that when she was a girl at Camp they could ride horses through these woods because there was so little brush under the ancient trees. Then the hurricane of 1938 came through and flattened everything. It would take decades, maybe 100 years, to restore this forest to what my mother had experienced.
The road was still lined with stonewalls on both sides. New Hampshire was criss-crossed with stonewalls, even in the deepest woods. There used to be a map in the Hillsboro post office that showed the difference between 1760 and 1960 in terms of pasture and forest. In the 1700's, the settlers from Europe had turned almost 70% of New Hampshire into pastureland for sheep. The town of Hillsboro had featured enormous woolen mills that were mostly idle and falling down now. Shepherding declined and by 1960 New Hampshire was about 80% forests. Another hundred yards and the stonewalls were gone. The road flattened out. The roadbed retained the moisture of the last rain. The shade would be deep and cool here all day long.
On the right was one of the biggest birch trees that I knew of. The afternoon before, Richie and Jim had shown me a garter snake on the road by the base of that tree. The snake seemed to be uninjured, but it didn't move, no matter how much we prodded it with a stick. Richie swore that when he and Jim had first come across it, its tongue was flicking in and out. We had gently and gingerly, with sticks, placed the snake on the moss bank at the edge of the road. The roots of this big birch tree would protect it. Then we thought it needed protection from wild animals, so we peeled up a section of the thick green moss and laid the snake underneath. We felt that if the snake got better it would crawl out, and if it didn't it would be protected until we came back the next day to check on it during our walk down to Camp. I thought about this as Wendell and I ran past. There was no stopping to check on the snake now. I thought that Jim and Richie would look at it when they came by. I would ask them what they found.
We passed the entrance to the path that leads to the Hillsboro Camp 'Lean-to.' This was a small campsite on the west side of the lake that campers would take hikes and canoe trips to for overnight camping trips. A huge hemlock tree, whose roots had been encroaching on the road, marked the path. Winter snowplows and the spring time grading to restore the road from the spring floods and mud had pushed the roots and soil back to form a root supported earthen bank on the left side of the road. My sides ached. I wanted only to collapse on the springy pine needle covered ground under that hemlock.
Wendell was gradually pulling ahead of me. I was feeling very proud of myself; I had run further than I had ever run before. I was very tired and out of breathe. I wanted to walk for a while but I was determined to keep up with Wendell, at least keep him in sight.
"Wendell, can we walk for a while?" I called out.
Wendell didn't answer. He was several hundred feet ahead.
"Wendell, slow down, wait for me!" I called.
I could see the bend in the road ahead of Wendell by Echo Rock. Echo Rock was a pointed rock, about 6 feet high. It had a shelf in it about 4 feet off the ground big enough for a small child to sit on. At that spot we could shout and hear it echo back from the north shore of the lake.
As we ran down the road along the edge of the lake, Wendell was far ahead of me. The lake was glass. A frog croaked and jumped into the water. Our passage had surprised him. Wisps of mist rose up from the water on our left. The lichen covered granite rocks rising steeply on our right up ahead. These rocks formed one of the ridges that ran north south between Camp and Homestead School. The mist obscured the view of the canoe dock and swimming area across to the north east of us. As the mist thinned out higher up, the silvery aluminum roof of the Mess Hall was barely visible in the distance behind the canoe dock.
The Mess Hall was where the Camp meals were made and served. Against the north wall was a huge stone fireplace, big enough to walk into. Several chairs carved from single tree trunks were gathered around the fireplace. Painted carvings of elves and trolls made from driftwood adorned the walls and rafters. Photos tracing the history of Camp from its beginning lined the walls. Most of the photos were above the long kitchen serving counter. From the kitchen across the length of the dining area to the fireplace were three rows of tables and benches. It was the image of the Asgardian hall called Vingolf, 'the abode of friends.'
Wendell was beginning to go around the bend in the road at Echo rock. I was afraid I might lose sight of him and I pushed my self harder than I had ever pushed myself before. The morning sun was beginning to glitter thru the tops of the pines ahead of us.
It looked as though a leaf had caught onto Wendell's shoe and then tossed aside. An instant later, an entire tangle of leaves seemed to be wrapped around his ankles. I suddenly realized that those weren't leaves; they were long tendrils and tentacles of lake weed! It was lake weed gone wild! The strands of lake weed had been lying silently in wait across the road; leprous snakes of lake weed suddenly alive and leaping up as if bewitched by the Midgard serpent, Jormungand -- off spring of Odin's evil brother Loki, to ensnare Wendell!
One of the tendrils wrapped around Wendell's left ankle. He snapped it with his next stride. A dozen more replaced it and wrapped around the furiously pumping pistons of his legs. A long, fuzzy, slimy rope of lake weed seemed to arc out and fall from the sapling maples by the shore onto Wendell. The weed rope wrapped aggressively around Wendell's neck. The tendril suddenly tightened and flipped Wendell backward to the ground like a wild mustang caught in a cowboy's lasso. Wendell's glasses popped off.
My aching shortness of breath disappeared. This was an extraordinary emergency! I suddenly had the strength to double my speed. I was Heimdal, ever-vigilant guardian of Bif-rost, to the rescue! I burned forward to join the fight against the vile lake weed.
Wendell was almost cocooned by the smelly stuff when I arrive seconds later, just a dozen feet past Echo Rock. The lake weed was dragging him, struggling and thrashing like a dolphin out of water, off the edge of the road into the lake.
I grabbed my Cub Scout jack knife, Heimdal's sword, opened the longest 3" blade, and gripped the blue plastic handle of the knife between my teeth. The knife was razor sharp. I had just oiled and whetted it the night before. My hands were free for swimming.
This was the deepest part of the lake, where the original creek had flowed before the sawmill dam was built in the 1800's. There was no time to take off my clothes; I flew over the bank to the deep water in a single leap. Looking down from mid air, I glimpsed Wendell's upturned face as it disappeared deep under the water. Only a few bubbles and ripples marked the spot.
I splashed in and swam straight down. The pressure equalized in my ears and sinuses. The water turned cold and dark as I stroked downward. The blurred shape of a lake weed tendril wrapped around my arm and began yanking me down toward Wendell. I didn't struggle, this was a free ride to my destination: the rescue of Wendell!
Wendell was struggling like Thor, the Viking Thunder God! His struggles slowed his descent relative to mine. I would catch up to him in moments. I grabbed my knife with one hand, and got a bunch of Wendell's sweatshirt with the other hand. I started slicing through the lake weed. My preparation was saving our lives.
Wendell's right arm was pinned to his side. I pried my blade into the tendrils around his chest and sliced through one. With much effort, I sliced another. I was almost out of air. Things were turning dark and my hands were becoming numb. I dropped my knife!
With a Thor like surge of strength, Wendell got his wrist free. He grabbed my knife as it fluttered past his hand. He turned his hand inward slid the blade up between the tendrils and his chest. The weeds parted. An instant later, his neck was cleared. He cut the lake weed tendrils that were dragging me down. He twisted like a tiger shark and slashed through the tendrils at his legs. He was free! Wendell grabbed my chin in a life saving grip and kicked powerfully toward the shimmering mercury surface above.
We burst through to air. I choked and gasped. Wendell's chest heaved like huge fire fanning bellows from the forge of the elf Sindre, maker of the mystic Mjolner. We climbed ashore onto the road. I could barely walk; I staggered over, picked up Wendell's glasses, and handed them to him. He folded my knife and handed it back.
"That knife came in handy!" He said. "I've never seen anything like that happen before. Its the Loch Ness monster of Hillsboro Camp!"
"We must have worn it out. It doesn't seem to be after us anymore!" I said.
Wendell leaned against the granite rock on the south side of the road. He took off his sweatshirt and wrung the water from it. I was standing in a puddle of water dripping from my jeans and sweater. I took off my sweater and wrung it out, and then I did my jeans. I didn't care at that moment if any girls from Camp should see me.
"Freddy, I think it was trying to drag us into a cave! I caught a glimpse of a deep dark hole. Ice cold water was flowing out of it!"
I ventured that "Maybe the cave goes under this rock and deep into the hillside?"
Wendell thought silently. He skipped a pebble four bounces out across the smooth lake. I pulled my jeans back on. We started walking toward Camp.
"I bet the King Bull Frog lives under there," he said. "We better keep this a secret, who knows what the grown ups would do if they knew about that cave! Let's run and get warmed up!"
A few minutes later, we stopped running at steps up to the kitchen entrance of the Mess Hall. We wondered what Aunt Puffy would say when she saw us come dripping wet into her kitchen.
Aunt Harriett caught us first; she was just coming up the path around the icehouse. She was wearing a warm hunter's red and black woolen shirt over her blue dress.
"What are you rascals up to?" She asked with a tone of mock anger and a smile on her face. "You're all wet! How did that happen?"
Wendell answered, "We had a water fight by Turtle Stump. Freddy slipped and fell in. I rescued him."
Turtle stump was an ancient tree stump connected to shore by several very large roots, a remnant of Ygdrasil. It was the spot to catch turtles and frogs. Just as the Norse dragon, Nidhog, lives among the roots of Ygdrasil, all sorts of slimy things lived among the intricate system of roots just under the water's surface.
Aunt Harriet stood smiling and frowning with her left arm crossed and supporting her right elbow, her right hand on her cheek. Her left eyebrow was raised.
She waved us off. "Oh you bandits! Run down to the Manor House and find a couple of towels to dry off." The Manor House was the headquarters for Camp. She continued, "Wendell you've got fresh clothes down there in the infirmary. I'm sure you have something for Freddy to wear. Put your wet clothes on the clothesline by the woodshed. Then hurry back up and sit with me for breakfast. We're having pancakes. I'll save you a big stack."
Wendell and I had a great breakfast of pancakes with maple syrup.
The End
###################################################
Prononciation:
Ygdrasil - (Ig'dra-sel)
Heimdahl - (him'dal)
Mjolner - (see below)
Nidhog - (nee'dhoog)
Ivalde - (ee'vald-e)
Sindre - (sin'dree)
Draupner - (drowp'ner)
Gunger - (goong'ner)
Frey - (fri)
Arvak - (ar'wak)
Hela - (hel'a)
{Comments below in {} are mine. Brief web search below.}
http://www.daimi.au.dk/~beta/News/volume1996/news/10642.txt {had some interesting definitions.}
Mjolner:
is the name of the hammer of the god Thor. According to the
Mythology, this hammer is the perfect tool that cannot fail, that
grows with the task, and always returns to the hand of Thor if he
throws it at something. Finally about the pronunciation of Mjolner.
For English people the "spelling of the pronunciation" could be:
"Myolner" or "Myulner", and for French people it could be:
"Mieulnor".
Yggdrasil:
is the name of the Tree of the World, the ash tree of which the
crown covers the whole world. The tree gets it power from the gods,
from the evil giants, and from the kingdom of the dead. Everything
in the world happens under the mighty crown of Yggdrasil.
Bifrost:
is the name of the luminous bridge, the rainbow, that leads from
Midgaard to Asgaard. Midgaard is the place where the human beings
live, and Asgaard is the habitat of the Gods in the middle of the
world.
Valhalla:
is the name of Odin's hall to where all dead warriors come when
they have fallen as heroes on the battlefield.
Sif:
is the name of the wife of Thor. Sif is famous for her golden hair.
Freja:
is the name of the goddess of love. She lives in Folkvang and is
the most beautiful of all women in Asgaard. She owns the golden
piece of jewelry Brisingemen.
Odin:
is the name of the highest ranking god in Asgaard.
Thor:
is the name of the strongest of all gods. He is the god for all
peasants. He is the son of Odin and Frigg and lives together with
his wife Sif in Trudvang on the farm Bilskirner which is the
biggest house in the world, with 540 floors.
{Comments below in {} are mine. Brief web search below.}
(This site is in Norwegian? And I can't read it, but it looks interesting.)
{Wow! I had no idea! Harry Nissen's name is on this list too.}
Nissen, Hartvig.
A manual of instruction for giving Swedish movement and massage treatment.
Philadelphia: F.A. Davis, 1889.
128 p. Illustrated.
Nissen, Hartvig.
Nissen's health institute for physical exdercise and the treatment of chronic diseases by Swedish movements and massage.
Washington, DC: ____, ____.
CREDENTIALS: Masseur; Washington, DC.
CREDENTIALS: 1856-1924.
Nissen, Hartvig.
Practical massage and corrective exercises.
Philadelphia: F.A. Davis, 1916.
211 p. Illustrated.
CREDENTIALS: Masseur; Washington, DC. 1856-1924.
Nissen, Hartvig.
Practical massage and corrective exercises with applied anatomy. Fourth Revised Edition. With 68 original illustrations, including several full-page
half-tone plates.
Philadelphia, PA and London, England: F.A. Davis, 1920.
225 p. Illustrated.
CREDENTIALS: Masseur; Boston, MA.
Nissen, Hartvig; Nissen, Harry. (Editor)
Practical massage and corrective exercises, with applied anatomy.
Philadelphia, FA Davis Company, 1929.
Fifth Edition. 271 pages. Illustrated.
CREDENTIALS: 1856-1924. 1890-?.
Nissen, Hartvig.
Rational home gymnastics for the "well" and the "sick" with health-points on walking and bicycling, and the use of water and massage.
Boston, MA: RG Badger and Company, 1898.
107 pages.
CREDENTIALS: 1856-1924.
Nissen, Hartvig; Posse, Baroness (Friherrina) Rose Smith.
Rational home gymnastics for the "well" and the "sick," with health-points on walking and bicycling, and the use of water and massage. With
illustrations of exercises for women contributed by Baroness Rose Posse.
Boston, MA: EH Bacon and Company, 1903.
132 pages. Illustrated.
CREDENTIALS: 1856-1924; 1859-?.
Nissen, Hartvig.
The Swedish movement and massage treatment.
Journal of the American Medical Association (Chicago, IL). 10: 423-426, , 1888.
CREDENTIALS: Masseur; Boston, MA.
Figure 2, from A Manual of Instruction for Giving Swedish Movement and Massage Treatment by Hartvig Nissen (1889), shows how an operator would use the cushion-frame for positioning the client for back kneading. Notice the length of the frame. The receiver has to prop his or her feet up onto a box. One would think that the frame would be made at least to the average height of a man at that time. However, it should be kept in mind that in giving the Swedish Movement Cure, the receiver would rarely be lying down passively for an entire hour as is common today, and the shorter frame allowed for more varied positioning.
{Wow! Again! This must be Hartvig Nissen's father, our great-great-grandfather.}
In Denmark leaders like N. F. S. Grundtvig had spoken out strongly in opposition to the old Latin School and had sought to develop folk schools that would awaken and emancipate the people by stressing the national language, literature, and traditions. His ideas influenced many in Norway, including a man by the name of Hartvig Nissen, who in the 1840s organized a school in Christiania unique in seeking to develop parallel programs that would enable it to be both a Latin School and a practical school (realskole). Georg Sverdrup and his older brother Jakob attended that school, and their father served as a teacher there for two years. Jakob Sverdrup later spent a year in Denmark studying the folk high school movement. {15}
{The dates confirm that Hartvig Nissen was named after his father Hartvig Nissen?}
Discussions of these movements can be found in such works as Otto Anderssen, Realisme eller klassicisme: Et kapitel av 1830-aarenes kultur-kamp (Kristiania, 1921), Einar Boyesen, Hartvig Nissen 1815-1874 og det norske skolevesens reform, 2 vols. (Oslo, 1947), and Ernst J. Borup and Frederik Schr¯der, eds., Haandbog i N. F. S. Grundtvigs skrifter, Vol. 1 (Copenhagen, 1929).
www.aafla.org/SportsLibrary/JSH/JSH1987/JSH1401/jsh1401h.pdf
{has the words below}
Dr. Walter B. Platt, a local physician, served as Acting Director in his
absence; C. A. Perkins, a graduate student in Romance Languages, was named
Acting Superintendent of the Gymnasium. Upon his return in October, Hartwell
resumed his duties, examining some sixty percent of the students and
faculty. The absence of "practical instruction in gymnastics," he wrote the
President, prevented his department from attaining equal footing with other
leading physical education departments. His own training, he stated, was too
limited to permit him to teach anything but free and light gymnastics; therefore, he obtained the services of Hartvig Nissen, who had opened a Swedish Health Institute in Washington, D.C., ". . . a most competent teacher of Swedish and German gymnastics . . .," as his Assistant. It was under Nissen's direction that J.H.U. students gave their first gymnastic exhibition on February 22, 1888.25
