Romberggata School – “A Rare Being”

We are standing outside Romberggata School. The building was completed in 1886 and still stands as a proud feature of the town. The school was a primary school with seven grades until the end of the 1960’s. After that, it became a secondary school with nine grades. In addition to Thor Heyerdahl, two other well known figures went to school here – Arne Nordheim and Ingvar Ambjørnsen. Ambjørnsen called the school Kaigata School in his popular novel from Larvik, “Hvite niggere” (1986). “Romberggata School is rather like a rare being”, remembers Thor Heyerdahl in a nostalgic greeting after hearing that the building would no longer be a school in 1983. It was, “behind the solid façade holding so much knowledge”, as he wrote, that his school career began in the autumn of 1921. Thor’s mother enabled him to skip first grade and go straight into the second when the battery-operated school bell called him in to his first lesson in one of the school’s 18 classrooms. The class had 25 pupils, all boys. One of them was Samuel Sachnowitz, who was two years older than Thor. His life ended in Auschwitz during the war in the winter of 1943. The only member of the family to survive was his youngest brother Herman (1922-78), whose story was written by Arnold Jacoby in the book “Det angår også deg.” The seven year-old from Steingata skipped into the solid building heavy with authority. As well as being the youngest, the smallest and lacking in physical courage, he had problems with his eyesight. He was short sighted due to weak muscles and should really have worn glasses, but refused to do so in fear of being called, “specky four eyes”. He compensated for his lack of vision by pressing a finger lightly against the corner of his eye. It didn’t increase the youngster’s confidence when a few years later, in autumn 1926, he had to go into hospital to have his appendix removed and overheard a hurtful remark from a matriarchal nurse while he was under anaesthetic: “He is very handsome, but talks like a child”. This remark left an impression on him for a long time. The appendix was kept and is now part of the collection at the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo. Thor was quiet during lessons and he withdrew to a corner during playtimes and watched his classmates playing. Playtime was strongly segregated according to gender. The boys were at the south side of the playground, also called the sunny side, while the girls ended up on the shady side to the north, on the hill behind the school. The areas were separated by a huge wooden fence with a gate, which fascinated many young boys from Langestrand, Lia and the centre of town which formed the school’s catchment area. The school building itself was divided into girl’s and boy’s areas, while the teachers kept to their own staff rooms – the male teachers in the cellar and female teachers on the first floor. Separation according to gender was underlined by the handrails between the floors. There were uncomfortable bumps on the boy’s side, but these were absent on the girl’s side. Presumably educated young ladies did not slide down the bannisters and the bumps discouraged the boys from trying. The physical barrier in the playground remained in place until 1947, while mixed classes were not brought in until closer to 1960 at Romberggata School. The fact that the class’s youngest blond pupil’s mother had very clear ideas about what a teacher should be and about appropriate knowledge probably didn’t endear Heyerdahl to the teachers. She had strict requirements for the teachers and didn’t shy away from complaining to the inspector about teachers she thought to be “total idiots” and the teaching staff soon marked her out as a dangerous woman. There were 16 teachers when Heyerdahl left the school, seven women and nine men. From Romberggata, we continue our tour down to Storgata again and over the railway, past the town’s former customs house and the cultural centre Bølgen and over to Threschow Fritzøe’s industrial complex on Stavernsveien.