A Time of Restrictions – Behind the Walls

We continue our journey into the house and see young Thor growing up and realise that the emotional atmosphere in the home is cold, with two overprotective parents. “I had old parents. They lived in fear that something would happen to the only child the couple had together, so I got the impression that everything was dangerous. Other children were allowed to walk along the quays on their own and play outside after dark, but not me.” This is how Thor Heyerdahl summed up his “time of restrictions” at Steinbakken. The only child received the unintentional task of being the glue in the emotionally cold marriage. The atmosphere was not improved when his mother, Alison, caught her husband kissing the servant girl in the kitchen. She never regained respect for her husband after the event. Thor’s mother took control of her son’s upbringing. She filled his bed with soft toys she had selected herself; monkeys and teddy bears that related to his education. It was based on liberal and progressive thinking, atheism and Darwin’s theory of evolution and involved solidly reprimanding her husband when she caught him scuttling up the stairs to pray the Lord’s Prayer with their son. “What are you teaching the boy!” she demanded. Any objections to a Christian baptism did not win through though. Thor was baptised in Larvik Church. The youngest child did not experience a lot of intimacy and warmth and his mother had clear ideas about who and what he should be allowed to play with and what he should eat and spend his time doing. His toys reflected her own interests and consisted of figures representing giant lizards, apes, giraffes, elephants and crocodiles, dolls based on African and Native American figures, books about animals and picture books from the South Sea Islands. Later, when the boy was able to read himself, books about other cultures and on geography and history were chosen for him. The house was also filled with classical music from the gramophone and the walls were decorated with art. The boy was only allowed limited contact with children his own age. His nanny Laura was his playmate. She provided the hugs which he never received from his mother, she read for him and presented him to Pinocchio and played football with him in the yard in front of the outhouse. His mother, Alison, contributed with regimented care. She slept behind a screen in her son’s room on the second floor and it was a regular morning rite for Thor to show his potty to his mother to prove that his bowels were in full working order. Then it was breakfast consisting of goat’s milk and healthy fare and rough play in the garden – in all weathers. “I had to go out in the fresh air and play even when it was raining. I couldn’t go downstairs in the morning without having proved that my digestion was in working and order it was so embarrassing that I once put a scarf and woolly hat in the potty, emptied it into the toilet and pulled the chain”, says the seafarer in a laconic memory from his childhood. Alison was a truly unique woman, who had irrefutable ideas about what was healthy or true. Even before women got the vote in 1913, she had experienced two broken marriages, had seven children and a “clandestine” abortion. Young Thor was overprotected and spoilt, you could almost say he was a victim of his mother’s overbearing care. His education didn’t end in the home. When Thor went to study in Oslo, his mother joined him.