📍 Making more of what we use and consume
Norwegian Roots: Modern Ancestral Honoring
by Amanda Thorstad
How does one live in the modern world and also honor the old ways, the old ancestral traditions?
This question emerged out of a nameless longing, fully captured my curiosity, and now guides my career path.
I am a musician, brewer, and teacher. I perform traditional music and brew historic beers, and I teach people how to do their version of that.
The roots of traditional skills disappear into the mists of time, beyond the reach of collective memory or written history. These are skills that sustain life and create strong communities, all while replenishing the complex ecological systems in which we live.
In carrying forward the nourishing elements of these traditions, we create vibrant individuals and communities, and bring humans into greater balance with the other beings who share life on Earth.
Connecting beer and music to my ancestral heritage allows the roots to pull even more nutrients into my life.
Recently, I found myself stumbling over some old foundation stones that once held up a house. Trees and birds live there now; the house and its human residents are long gone.
En gran, our host says. En bjørk, pointing to the one next to it. A spruce tree, a birch tree.
Graner and Bjørker offer me their trunks and branches as I trip over the underbrush and slip on the drizzly rocks.
I’m in Norway, on a hill in Sogndal. These particular foundation stones once held up the home where my great-great-grandfather, Jens Torstad, grew up.
Meaningful hardly begins to describe the experience.
Jens left. And why wouldn’t he? He was the son of a tenant farmer, living on a hill where the sun spends five months behind the mountains every winter.
Jens didn’t just leave; he went to AMERICA.
The land of opportunity! Where you can own (flat) land! You can make something of yourself there.
What a relief, after growing up on a rented patch of rocky hillside better suited to trees and goats, looking ahead to… more of that?
Jens died in 1948, but he lives on in my family’s memory. We trade stories and speculate about his personality. I’ve toured the house he built, still standing next to my dad’s childhood home. I know where Jens kept his library and the bedroom in which died. Others have met his son’s ghost, still lingering in the basement.
I’m deeply grateful this is part of my experience. It’s more than many Americans can hope for, when it comes to ancestral connection.
But I have since received something even more rich:
Jens_beer_11_18_25_-12.53-PM.mp3
This interview of Jens from 1936 landed in my inbox several years ago, thanks to a surprising discovery my cousin made.
I like to listen to it sometimes, even though I only understand bits and pieces. The scratchy audio quality and old dialect render it difficult to decipher what he says.
But one day, “heimabryggaøl” rang out to my ears, clear as a bell.
Heimabryggaøl?! Jens is talking about BEER?! I though he was a prohibitionist!
Well, he was, and he also knew beer.
You see, beer is so ingrained in Norwegian culture that even the staunchest of prohibitionists were still engaged with it decades into a vigorous temperance movement.
What you heard is this exchange:
Interviewer: Did you ever make beer?
Jens: No.
Int.: Could you make it?
Jens: Yes…
Int.: Can you explain to me how to brew beer?
Jens: Yes. To make your own malt, set it [barley] in the spring…
Jens goes on for two glorious minutes to explain exactly how one would make beer in the traditional way.
WHAT A GIFT.
I mourn that I have been severed from familial and cultural practices that developed organically over eons.
Beer, for example, is something everybody made.
Brewing knowledge was transferred from one generation to next, like all skills were: young people learned side-by-side from parents and neighbors, developing expertise over the course of years. Knowledge was held in collective, oral memory. Innovation occurred cautiously in response to new technology and information.
And thus skills were passed along, forming a connection between people and place that is both practical (“do this to stay alive”) and emotional (“build relationships while doing so”).
Emigration cut off much of this knowledge, and broad forces like industrialization, urbanization, and globalization did a number on the rest.
I get it, I guess. Even a brief analysis of the mid- to late- 1800s offers a slew of good, logical reasons to explain why so many rushed into modern life.
That tempers my grief at the widespread loss of cultural heritage, but doesn’t assuage my yearning to live in a world where the old skills are still vibrant.
But… is it possible that my ancestors are trying to orchestrate just that?!
The sequence of specific discoveries and coincidences that led me to hear “heimabryggaøl” from the old audio recording was beyond unlikely.
Is it just luck, or is there more going on?
I believe the latter is true:
The roots that connect me to ancestors and traditional ways endure. These are energetic in nature, pulling up nutrients for my soul from the depths of time and place. I am undoubtedly healthier for it.
When we engage with traditional skills, we become closer to the land where we live and deepen relationship with others - past and present - who share these interests. Making more of what we use and consume reduces exploitation and ecocide.
This creates a nourishing, sustainable way forward, somewhere in between two problematic extremes:
One tries to force a return of some non-existent perfect past. The other dismisses the wisdom of past humans in favor of modern knowledge systems.
What happens if we all invite the most nourishing wisdom from the past into our current lives?
Practice
Think of how tree roots expand: down, down, down, deep into the soil. Sideways too, as wide as the crown. Tendrils wend every which way, dissipating into the mycelial network, entangled with other beings in mysterious ways we barely understand.
Ancestral roots work the same way: linking generations biologically, culturally, according to interests and skills. They expand and entwine, across and sideways of time and place.
They transfer essential, life-giving nutrients, connecting past to present to future. Our bodies and souls require their nourishment in order to thrive.
With this at the center of your awareness, find a quiet spot to lie down. Close your eyes and breathe for a minute or two.
Scan your body to feel where it touches the surface you’re laying on.
Send little shoots down into the ground from each touchpoint, picturing them reaching deep into Earth. Watch as tendrils shout out in every direction of space and time.
Invite your imagination to lead the way.
Where do your tendrils find connection? Is it…
- with an ancestor you know, or perhaps a vague ancestral presence from long ago?
- among the currently living human community?
- with a plant or animal being?
- a favorite topic to learn about?
- a traditional skill or craft you currently practice, or wish you did?
Notice where the nutrients flow, or try to, while you ponder this.
What in your life is asking for this nourishment, to energize your connection to cultural or ancestral heritage?
What might it look like to tend that? What activities come to mind? Feel into the version of you who engages with these suggestions.
Lie there as long as desired, and move around again when that feels right.
Learn more about Amanda's work and life HERE!
That's it for this month's episode, hope you enjoyed reading it and please let me know at billy@julylifecoach.com for reviews and feedback. Please consider supporting the magazine so it can reach more people who need the work! And stay tuned for a special surprise in December! 😎
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The Moim
The Moim is a July Life Coach web-zine that features topical writings from Billy and contributors. Each edition features... Read more |
