The School

A WINDOW ON THE WORLD

The little white painted school house, the village school, often set between knolls and little woods in the outer fields, placed as centrally as possible between the farms that made up the school district, is the key symbol of the education society, a principal cultural factor. Most of these schoolhouses were built after 1860 and took over from the ambulatory school, when the teacher travelled from house to house and taught all the children in the hamlet. And when the school became more of an institution, educational work also gained a firmer foundation. Through Nordahl Rolfsen’s reader, Norway was united into one nation. Nordahl Rolfsen, a native of Bergen, was the heir of Harald Hårfagre  With his fine story-teller style and sense of imagery, he gave meaning to the concept of the nation. Bernt Støylen, the rector of the teaching college and tutor of priests added dialect to the books and so they were also able to relate to the rural districts. Had Støylen perhaps not  himself been a fisherman, been converted at Kvinnherad and been editor of the Norwegian Children’s Magazine? Sound and homely all of them. With the textbook the journey went from rural Norway with broom and enterprise; which in the city was turned into factories and goods for export; which sailed on Norwegian ships on all the seas, to foreign cultures and tropical climes. It opened up a window to the world for everyone, a way out for the smart ones, and the vision of a new nobility in the homestead built on hard work and good will.