At Åe farm, Aslaug Siskin leaned back on her cushions with a sweat-soaked brow. Through a daze of fatigue and joy she watched as her husband took his firstborn son in his lap to give him a name the way Norse fathers have done since time out of mind. With a hitch in his voice, Tall Såmund Aslaksson said, "Like your farfar, and his farfar before him, you will bear an honorable old name. You shall be called Aslak." He handed the babe into his own father's arms.

"Little Laki," Old Aslak murmured, cradling the well-swaddled bairn. "You bring a bright light of gladness into a year of trial and sorrow. Your coming is like a harbinger of better times. May every year from now on prove warmer and more bountiful than the one before."

Old Aslak left that future for his namesake to discover without him. He died a few weeks later at the age of sixty-nine.

A christening, a funeral, and then a wedding for the family at Åe. Tall Såmund's sister Egeleiv, married the heir at Åkre farm -- the brother of Aslaug Siskin, Såmund's wife! The families hosted a wedding dance in the huge loft at Åkre, scraping cupboards and barrels to lay out a scanty spread of dishes.

Egeleiv dragged her other brother, Longlegs Halvor, onto the dance floor. "Once around with me, then you will take five more partners," she ordered. "If we can't feast, at least our feet can make merry."

He shook his head as he loped clumsily through the steps. "Two more partners. I don't want to flatten so many dainty feet."

"Four, or I'll tell Såmund to remove you from his will."

"Three, for I know Såmund would just laugh at you."

"Very well. Three." Egeleiv spun him toward the nearest waiting young woman, calling out, "Bachelor farmer, looking for a bride of his own! Catch him before some other hussy snatches him up!"

"Egeleiv!" His protest drowned in the stamp and whirl of the next springar dance.

Meals were just as meager at Brekke, across the ridge in Morgedal valley. Tough times did not bring out Hard Knut's better side, if indeed he had any.

Twelve-year-old Birgit slipped away as often as she could to spend time with her friend at Øvrebø farm, or with Jon's cousin, up the side valley of Byggland. Anywhere was better than home where reigned the bad tempers of Hard Knut and his eldest son Ornery Olav.

His next oldest son, Andres, was often gone a-courting to the home of the young woman he intended to marry, if only he could save up the bride-price.

"You're barely twenty-three," Hard Knut raged. "Too young to take a wife. How do you expect to support her? You're not bringing another hungry mouth to my table."

Andres meekly acknowledged his father's point, but secretly worked any odd job he could find. If he waited for Hard Knut's approval, he'd remain a bachelor farmer until his beard turned gray.

.

BEHIND THE SCENES

The new Aslak Såmundsson was born on Apr 28, 1816, and a few weeks later, sixty-nine-year-old Aslak Såmundsson died on June 20, 1816.

In Old Norse tradition, a newborn child would be presented to its father. If he accepted and acknowledged the child as his own, he would take it on his lap and officially pronounce its name.

Since the vast majority of Norwegians worked the land, any rural guy who remained single for long was known as a bachelor farmer: "ungkarbonde": ung + kar + bonde: young + fellow + farmer.