At the end of the 1800s, Tuva’s Great Aunt Ragnhild opted for a traditional life, shouldering sole responsibility for a farm as well as for the care of her sick brother. The other sister, Tuva’s great grandmother, left the village and got an education, an exceptional accomplishment at the time.

One chose to stay, and the other chose to leave.

“I had to speculate a bit about the life choices Ragnhild made. She accepted a great deal of responsibility at an early age”, Tuva told her Valdres local newspaper in June.

In its grounds for choosing the first prize winner in 2024, the jury writes that they were “impressed by the thorough, nuanced and reflective picture presented of Ragnhild’s choices and life, and the good language usage. This is a cogent, engaging human interest story!”.

A member of the family

Have you ever wondered what it might be like to live in another time?

The history competition “My family in history” encourages adolescents to study precisely this. The competition is open to all pupils in lower and upper secondary school. Most of the entries come from history students who carry out the assignment as part of their course work.

“The participants take their point of departure in their own family or a person close to them. Then they tell a story – in text, or on a website, podcast or film.

They are supposed to describe something that really took place, then try to explain why", recounts assistant professor of History Karsten Korbøl. Korbøl is in charge of the history competition.

Pompous love letters found
“I actually signed up only because everyone else in my class did so. It was rather exciting to have someone from the outside read our texts”, she says.

She recounts choosing the issue and topic precisely because she was fascinated by the different choices made by her great grandmother and her Great Aunt Ragnhild.

“I had source material and knowledge about my father’s side of the family, not least from my relative, Anne-Berit. She is my primary first-person source. We talked a lot. Then I immersed myself in background reading before starting to write. We were given the assignment in September and handed it in in March, but my main focus on it was from January to March. The project was a lot of work!”

“Did you stumble across anything unexpected?”

“I came across some old love letters. I thought that was very interesting, because I was not even aware of their existence before. They were written by a man who was very much in love with Ragnhild. At that time, people used flowery language to talk about feelings. I remember the first love letter. It began with ‘My darling girl’.

“Perhaps his words were a bit more pompous than what people would use today!”

No expectation of winning

Tuva had no expectation whatsoever of winning. On the contrary.

“When our history teacher walked into the classroom with a cake and flowers, I thought he was going to announce that he was leaving!

“Especially when our homeroom teacher walked in as well. Even when he read the jury’s grounds, it simply did not sink in that I was the winner! It was very surprising – and fun", smiles Tuva.

“I learned a great deal from this assignment. I’ve never had any other assignment that lasted for six whole months. Naturally, I have learned a lot about my own family, and it was wonderful to feel so close individuals who had been nothing but names to me before.

“We’ve also learned a great deal about citing sources and analysing them critically, and about how vast amounts of information are available in reliable historical sources.”

Unearthing secrets

Liv Conradi Andersen from Kråkerøy won a shared 3rd place for writing about her Sámi grandmother Marit Elvira Little Laksemo, who was born in August of 1944 in Karasjok, shortly before the Germans burned pretty much everything in Finnmark County to the ground that winter. She lost her home. That was followed by Norwegianification – a policy to assimilate the Sámi into Norwegian society. Then she lost her language. Thus, the title of her paper, which begins like this:

Karasjok, August 1951. “A little girl stands in the town square, wearing a Sámi sweater and a little rucksack. A tear runs down her cheek. The seven-year-old is a Sámi child. She is being enrolled in boarding school, far away from her parents”.

“It was fascinating to learn more about my family’s history and about my late grandmother. I enjoyed writing this story, mainly because it is fun to write, but also to learn more about Norwegian history – not only the facts that almost everyone knows, but also about things that are are less well known.

“There are many topics that Norwegians rarely talk about. For example, the history of the Sámi people and how the war impacted them. I knew almost nothing about them, because we never learned anything about them at school", Andersen recounts.

Here, you can hear her talk about the assignment

The jury states: The prize laureate’s story revolves around two dramatic events, and the story had a powerful impact on the author. As she said: “Norway is not always the best country in which to live.”

""We applaud good storytelling techniques and how micro and macro stories can be interwoven, shedding light on each other. This story is based on thorough research that has been of importance to the prize laureate personally", concludes the jury.

Many sources, the little story and the big story

“The point is to have a clear hypothesis, then to weave in micro and macro perspectives alike, finding multiple sources and reflecting the utility value of the sources, as well as what one can learn from history”, observes Karsten Korbøl, referring to the history competition.

“In particular, it is important see one’s own family in a larger perspective.”

Have the prize laureates any advice to pass along to next year’s participants?

“Start early!”