Osvald Rydjord
Sandefjord, Vestfold, Norway
His most taunting challenge in school was coping with the big difference in the pupils’ abilities to learn. In the 10th class, the pupils came to improve their report card. Some of them tried as diligently as they could, but when he marked their tests and examinations, he still had to give low marks. It was heart-rending to see their faces and to know how hard they had worked in trying to improve their marks.
Osvald was born in the small parish of Sør-Aukra and grew up in Veøy, not far from Molde, in Romsdal, on the west coast of Norway.
He graduated from the secondary school in Åndalsnes, not far from his family’s farm. The schoolroom was an old baroque, which had been built by the German soldiers during the Second World War. All the buildings in Åndalsnes had been destroyed by the bombing at the beginning of the war.
When he had completed secondary school at the age of 17 years, he entered the teacher training school in Elverum after writing an entrance examination. Four years later, in 1960, he accepted a teaching position in Sandefjord, a small town in Vestfold not far from the Oslo fjord. In 1965, he studied art and handicraft for one year at the university in Notodden. Then, in 1972, he studied school management in Oslo for one year. This was followed by nature and culture as half-year summer courses at Oslo and computing as a half-year winter course at Tønsberg.
After 7 years of teaching, his career was interrupted by military service in northern Norway near the Finnish and Russian borders. It was at the time of the Cuban crisis. He enlisted for 6 months as a member of the UN Forces in the Gaza Strip on the border between Israel and Egypt. All this travelling was a very interesting time and he learned much about how people in other countries lived.
In 1967, Osvald and his wife Sissel, also a teacher, worked in a secondary school in Alta, in the northern Norway for 3 years. This part of Norway experiences 2-3 months with no sun and 2-3 months with midnight sun. In 1970, they returned to Sandefjord as teachers in a secondary school. However, in 1976, they wanted a break and applied for teacher posts in a Norwegian school in Benidorm, Spain. Despite a competition with more than 130 other teachers, they were hired. It turned out to be a very interesting year in Spain.
On their return to Sandefjord, Osvald was a classroom teacher again for one year before he applied for the position of headmaster’s deputy assistant, a job which he maintained for almost 25 years. However, for most of the years, it was combined with teaching. He has worked in the same school from 1970 to 2002, interrupted only by studies and work in Alta and Spain.
In Norway, there are up to 30 pupils in a class because the politicians want to have as big classes as possible because it is less costly. However, for teachers in art and handicraft lessons where classes work with wood and metal, it is customary to divide the classes into two.
Osvald’s first school in Sandefjord was one of the largest, with about 400-450 pupils from 1st to 7th class. He was responsible for one 7th class and taught mathematics, Norwegian, geography, history, physical exercise, and art. He also had lessons for other classes in art and handicraft. When he began as a teacher in 1960, there were 30 lessons per week; but later on, there were only 21-27 lessons per week, depending on the subjects.
His best memory from his career took place in the 10th class in the secondary school. Normally, the pupils spend 9 years in public school. However, between about 1970-1980, some pupils wanted to go one more year in the public school to try to improve their grades from 9th class with the intention of seeking special schools or subjects in a college.
Osvald is very interested in local history, geology, and geography. In the 10th class, there is more freedom to make special projects. He combined art and handicraft with these subjects and made exhibitions for the other students. The classes also made excursions to museums and places in the neighborhood. The area nearby the Oslo fjord was where the first Norwegians settled after the last ice age about 10,000 years ago. At that time, a large glacier had covered northern Europe. The Vestfold area was one of the Viking centers in Norway and has many interesting remains from both periods. These include stone carvings, places where a person can find flint, and small “hills” where the inhabitants buried their dead chiefs. Two big Viking ships, used as grave tombs 1,100 years ago, have been dug out of such “hills” in Vestfold about 100 years ago, and are now one of the biggest tourist attractions in Norway. Osvald’s pupils made some “copies” of stone carvings in iron and models of “hills” with Viking ships, Viking houses, and other artifacts. It was very interesting for the pupils and teacher alike.
When Norway discovered oil in the North Sea, the class created a large exhibition about oil and how it happened to be made in Norway. This led them to work with geology, and they wrote to all the mines and companies in Norway that were working with minerals, stones, coal, and related items, asking for samples of mineral. This resulted in a permanent mineral exhibition which still is at the school.
International understanding has been one of his main projects for many years. Through friends, he came in contact with Kailash Bodhi School in Kathmandu, Nepal. Osvald and Sissel have donated money to the school for a refugee girl from Tibet. Several years ago, they visited Nepal and visited the school built from money sent from Norway. It was very small, with the classrooms being filled with pupils of refugee families from Tibet. The teachers provided the pupils with a good education despite their low wages.
Their venture in Spain lasted for only one year. Many Norwegians live in Alfaz Del Pi in the Benidorm area, some of them because they had health problems; some worked there; and some families stayed there because they worked for a longer period in the oil industry in the North Sea and had a long stay ashore and preferred to live in Spain. As many of these families had school children, a private school was opened in Alfaz Del Pi. The Rydjords were so happy about the possibility of working there for one year. However, working conditions were very difficult. There was one classroom in a flat and one in a hot/cold garage. The equipment was simple and faulty. There were two or three levels in one class. Some of the pupils stayed for only a few weeks or months and, therefore, it was very difficult to teach and give the appropriate marks. It was a big challenge, but the Rydjord family has good memories from the experience and has made many excursions to the southern part of Spain. They have spent many holidays in the same area in later years and try to practise on the Spanish language which they learned that year.
Being involved in handball in his free time, he travelled with his club to many countries. One year, their pre-camp for the new season was held in Riga, Latvia. The co-operation with a handball club in Riga led to a very close relationship with two schools near Riga and his school in Sandefjord. At that time, Latvia still was occupied by Russia, giving an opportunity for the Latvian people to make contact with people from the west. His school and the two Latvian schools exchanged pupils and teachers for a week for many years. The Latvians went to Norway and stayed with colleagues and families of the pupils for a week in connection with the Norwegian Independence Day, May 17, and joined the children’s parade. Then the pupils from Sandefjord went to Riga and stayed with Latvian families. It was very interesting for the children and the teachers to see the facility of the Latvian school and homes, a big difference from those in Norway.
He taught pupils from 8-14 years of age in the beginning of his career, and 13-16 the last 35 years. He was also teaching in Vestfold when he retired in 2002.
He would tell a young person that, if you want to be a teacher, you must be able to understand the pupils and to present your knowledge in a way that the pupils can be interested in the subject.
Since he retired, he has been working with a former colleague on a local history project. They have made placards/posters and placed them on especially interesting historical places. (See: Kulturminner.) For all of his life, Osvald has been interested in and participated in different kinds of sports. Since 1964, he has been involved in handball. About 1990, he was on the leader board in Sandefjord Handball. His was the leading club in Norway for more than 15 years. Ten times they were the winner of the Norwegian Championship and played the European Champions League for many years. Being a member of the leadership, Osvald had the opportunity to join his club in such countries as Russia, Germany, Romania, Poland, Italy, and all the Nordic countries. They also arranged several international matches between Norway and other countries. Once, he was the host for the US handball team. It was interesting to meet people from many places. When the other clubs played the return matches in Sandefjord, he would invite some of the leaders to his home. In the beginning, before the Berlin wall was removed and East and West Germany reunited, some of the leaders did not leave the hotel and the players from East Germany because they where afraid the players would escape and leave East Germany. It was also very interesting to visit Moscow and see all the treasures in the museum of the Kremlin and such faraway towns as Krasnodar with old buildings and marketplaces.
However, his main project is working with genealogy. He has built a genealogy group with more than 100 members in Sandefjord. Some of them meet once a month, helping each other in finding ancestors and other family. He has made a genealogy base with more than 61,000 persons, many of them in his own family (wife, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, and others). He has made a GedView data base, where people from all over the world can ask for insight. During recent years, he has made contact with many people from the US and Canada who have been asking for family in Norway. Almost every day he is working with questions from people asking for help, or in enlarging his data base. He is very happy if he can locate a requester’s unknown father or an adopted inquirer’s biological parents or grandparents. He once found an American family whose forefather had left his family in Norway more than 100 years ago and had built a new family in the US. His friend had for many years been searching for his ancestor without success, and now he has a more extensive family in the US than in Norway. Some of his American family has visited the Rydjords in Norway and, in September 2012, the latter will return the visit in Seattle. Osvald and Sissel will travel from Minnesota to Washington following the route that so many Norwegians followed many years ago.
Being very interested in handball, they have, as members of the “Handballens venner” (The Handball Friends), had the opportunity to join the Norwegian supporters travelling to different championships all over the world. The red-dressed Norwegian supporters have ruled arenas in many places and the Norwegian girls are governing Olympic, World, and European champions; and they have seen them in many countries. The last trip was to Brazil in 2011, but they have also been in Tunisia, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. The championship in Sankt Petersburg, Russia, was very interesting. The family made several visits to the Winter Palace, a huge museum with incredible treasures, antiques, paintings, and furniture in many rooms and halls.
Looking back, Osvald says that he has had a very interesting and busy career, working in schools from south to north in Norway and participating in active sport and volunteer work in sport in his free time. Now being retired, he can work with genealogy and with their garden, from early spring, travel to their cottage in the mountains in Romsdal or their summer house near the Oslo fjord, or travel to foreign places.
(This page was updated in July 2012.)
