To Hove and Hove Not

 

The only existing photo of me being vertical on a windsurfing board.

NOTE: If you enjoy reading "One Brick Back" and would like to help offset research expenses for stories such as this one, please make a small donation to the cause and help keep posts like this free of ads. Maybe I'll use it to put down a deposit for a return trip to Norway.

© Tim Peeler, 2025

Like so many stories of unnecessary risk in each of our lives, it started because of a girl.

It ended with me huddled on a cot at a former communist youth camp on an island off the coast of Norway, trying to stave off hypothermia with hot showers and a some cold beef stew, left on a paper plate and put on my pillow by a fellow traveler.

Probably it goes without saying, but learning a dangerous new sport such as windsurfing in a foreign sea is not really a good idea — especially if it means learning from some teenagers who don’t speak the same language, in the 62-degree summer waters of the Skagerat Strait.

I can’t say I was trying to impress Ingjerd, a curly brunette with an electric smile and a curious nature. I just wanted her to notice me. It was hard because I never learned to correctly say her name, something that caused problems with our relationship later on.

Ingjerd and her friend Kristin worked the snackbar at a summer camp where my group of 14 American college students and two adult leaders were self-stranded for a week during July 1985, the global summer of “We Are the World” and Queen's performance at Live Aid. On this seven-week trip — during the summer of my sophomore year at NC State, long before study abroad was ever invented — we visited nine countries, including the old Soviet Union and divided West Germany, while staying in family homes, learning their cultures, participating in church services and eating four meals a day of bread, cheese, butter and jam.

I first met them both when we arrived after a 26-hour trip from Charlotte to Lillestrom, Norway, a small town of 15,000 people just north of Oslo that is best known for hosting hockey in the 1952 Olympic Games. Ingjerd stood out in a crowd, especially when she showed off her windsurfing skills at a lake where we all gathered in one of our first meetings with our new friends.

 Kristin and Ingjerd in the snackbar.

I was intrigued by the sport — and the girl.

We got to know each other better during a weeklong lull in our trip, when we were sent to this tiny island off the southern coastal town of Arendal. We were there with several hundred Norwegian youth, with little to do but play volleyball, swim and visit the snackbar, where Ingjerd and Kristin took daily turns selling ice cream, Snickers and objectionable bits of licorice-flavored gumdrops that were all the rage among the Norwegian youth. If we were one country over, I’d call the whole experience “Swedish Meatballs” — without, of course, Bill Murray.

Tromoya, the 11-square mile island where we stayed, was once a Viking playground. In modern times, it was a Nazi-occupied radar and anti-aircraft installation during World War II, a Socialist Youth Party getaway in the 1970s, a summer youth retreat for Norwegian church groups in the 1980s, a remote detention center for political asylum seekers in the 1990s and is now a popular tourist destination where you can rent a tent, cabin or yurt.

You find a lot of that in Europe.

For some stupid reason, I thought that exact location was the perfect spot to learn something new, and since everybody else who grew up on this Baltic port was out on the water windsurfing, I decided to give it a try. Had we done this on one of the 450,000 smooth-surfaced freshwater lakes in Norway, I have no doubt that I would’ve picked it up immediately and become a competition-worthy expert.

Instead, I tried to learn in the washing-machine waters off the southern tip of the island.

The instructors were teenagers with a loose grasp of the English language. They were all skinny and mostly blonde. The boys were named Per, Anders, Per-Anders and all combinations thereof. The girls — at least the ones I found most interesting — worked in snack bars.

Near tragically, the only English words of instruction the guys knew during my lessons were: “Do this.”

I could not.

The water was cold, and it was a typically windy day. Perfect if you are a 16-year-old Norwegian water bug, less so if you are an untrained American walrus. In water that cold, you have about two hours before unconsciousness sets in, though it’s a little longer for Norwegians and well-insulated Americans.

The only thing warm I had to hold on to was the memory of my last candy bar. I got into the water and was proud that I almost stood up. A couple of times. By the time I looked up, however, the beach was much further away than when we started. The mainland was much closer. The channel was protected by hundreds of oversized rocks that made it unnavigable for boats.

Luckily, I was floating north. Land, in the form of three-story boulders, was just ahead. Denmark was 100 miles behind me. Sweden, smugly smirking with its piping hot meatballs, was to my right. And Leif Ericson’s route to the New World was 4,000 miles to my left.

I thought I found relief in one of the big rocks in the channel, but as I drifted closer I found that it was protected by swirling seaweed. In appearance, it was a middle-aged Sigmund the Seamonster, with his balding head sticking above the waterline and his carwash-style arms constantly swirling underneath.

It was gross, and hardly a safe harbor. I tried to get back on the board, but I looked like a Navy plebe trying to climb the greased flagpole on the academy grounds in Annapolis.

The Per-Anderses showed me how to stand up on the board, but the wind was blowing in only one direction — opposite of where I wanted to go. I flipped and flopped for more than an hour on that thing, and only got further away from the island. After two hours, the teenagers threw me on the rocky mainland shore and went to get help on the island.

You know how Jesus was alone on the banks of the Sea of Gallilee, praying while the disciples went fishing? I was just like that, except that I was huddled between two rocks, freezing my butt off, trying to stay out of the chilly wind and praying that no one would make me get back in the water. It would have been nice just to walk across the water to the island.

After several failed attempts to get some boaters to rescue me, we came up with the brilliant idea to get me back to the island. First, two teenagers sailed over on one board, which they made look pretty simple. Then Per-Anders #1 sailed my rented board back to the island. That left me and Per-Anders #2 on one board to get back. Of course, I was too clumsy just to sit there and ride back, so I had to actually lie down on the board so the guy could stand on my back and sail us across the mile-long channel.

Since there was no sand for him to leave his footprints on at the rocky beach, they were near permanently scarred into my lower back.

I missed vespers that night because of the stinging hot shower that eventually raised my body temperature above 92 degrees.

Word got back to me that Ingjerd heard about my windsurfing adventure — so she eventually noticed me. She and Kristin have made fun of my adventure now for nearly 40 years. We all met up a couple of times after that week of summer camp. Ingjerd joined our well-chaperoned traveling party for a few days in Frederikshavn, Denmark. The next summer, she and Kristin were part of the exchange team that came to the U.S. to see western North Carolina. I showed them Boonville, Lincolnton and the magnificent wonders of Myrtle Beach. They went out on their own to fulfill their real dreams for that summer by seeing New York City.

But, like me and my God-forsaken windboard, we eventually drifted apart, separated by the rest of our lives.

POSTSCRIPT: Through the miracle of international social media, I was able to reconnect with my Scandinavian snackbar friends a few years ago and caught up with their lives.

Ingjerd did fine. She developed a love of weightlifting and, at the age of 23, won the World Women's Powerlifting Championship, along with several national and European titles. She even has a Wikipedia bio. Later, she was on a Norwegian reality television show. She has a daughter, about the same age as my sons, and owns a nice flower shop outside of Oslo. I still can’t properly say her name.

Kristin spent several years in North Carolina as a nanny, in the Triangle and at the Outer Banks. She went back home to Norway, where she has been a teacher. They are still as close as left-Twix, right-Twix to this day.

I went back to Scandinavia a few years ago exploring Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Finland and Estonia with my wife Elizabeth on a Baltic cruise. Sadly, we did not make it to Norway. One day, I’d like to take my family back to see the fjords, buy some fresh shrimp at the Oslo docks and cruise on a Viking boat in the North Sea. Maybe we could all get together with my Norwegian friends and their families for dinner.

Perhaps we’ll even go windsurfing.