The farming at Dalen fared no better than at Homme. Såmund the Sawyer had a trickle of income from the sawmill and more from Gunnhild's fine lacework and embroidery, but with nine mouths to feed, including a newborn daughter, he just kept diving further into debt. The tenants leasing his outfarms had no crops with which to pay their rent, though Såmund threatened them with eviction.

"You can't squeeze blood from a stone," said his firstborn, Burly Knut. "Let them be, or you'll have no tenants – and no income – when the weather turns favorable."

"Don't tell me how to manage my farm," Såmund the Sawyer snarled at the twenty-four-year-old. "You haven't inherited yet, and won't until the day I die."

"Your farm? You can keep it. Who'd want to inherit such a load of debt?"

The next day Burly Knut packed up his few belongings and moved into an outbuilding at Huvestad farm, having hired on as a common laborer.

"One less hungry body at the table," Såmund the Sawyer grumbled, though Gunnhild could see the pain of rejection in his haggard face.

She knew Huvestad had few enough bodies at their table. Fourteen-year-old Ingebjørg was the only child to survive past infancy. Nine years ago a baby daughter had died, and the year before that, so had the middle child Olav.

Gossip had run all up and down The Dales at Olav's birth, for the baby was born with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot, and he already had six teeth. An ill omen, superstitious folk said, for six-six-six was the devil's number.

Twenty-two-year-old Gunnhild sneaked off to see Burly Knut, along with her next younger sister and brother. They found him hauling stones from a steeply sloping field. "I finished mending your stockings," Gunnhild told him, handing them over.

"Your knife I borrowed." Bjørgulv returned it.

"A kiss for luck." Hæge stood on tiptoe and pecked him on the cheek.

He laughed. "Excuses! Come look around Huvestad and sate your curiosity."

The farmstead nestled between a wall of mountainside and hayfields dropping steeply toward a streambed below. Cattle barn, haybarn, summer cookhouse, two classic storage sheds: bur and loft. The cabin door creaked. Ingebjørg danced out to join the visitors. "Gunnhild!" she greeted. "And the twins!"

"I'm two years older than him," Hæge protested, nudging Bjørgulv in the ribs.

Ingebjørg giggled. "He's as tall as you, and you look alike." She turned to Burly Knut. "Did you show them the minnestein?"

"Huvestad has an ancient monument?" Bjørgulv asked in surprise.

She laughed. "Far had it carved not long ago, memorializing himself since he has no son to carry on his name. Over here." She pointed out a flagstone before the loft. At the edge of an inscribed compass rose appeared the letters H, O, and S, and the year 1810.

"He paid a stonecutter to do that. But there's more. Come up to the loft's balcony." On the door was a decorative carving of the same three letters, and another date. "Halvor Olav's Son, 1815," Ingebjørg interpreted.

"That should keep his memory alive a good long while," Bjørgulv said.

Ingebjørg grinned as she led them to the neighboring shack. "One more! This little bur has stood here for two hundred years, with twenty tar-blackened crosses someone carved who knows how long ago. Look here, by the inner door."

"H. O. S. 1780," read the carving in the pine panel.

"Far was nineteen when he carved that one, and not even married yet. He's not called Haughty Halvor for nothing!"

"Hmm," mused seventeen-year-old Bjørgulv. "Since you've turned your back on Dalen, Burly Knut, I'm next in line to inherit. Maybe I should carve my initials on our stabbur."

"On the back wall behind a bush," Gunnhild said, "if you want a long life."

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BEHIND THE SCENES

Photo above: Huvestad farm buildings of today.

Olav Halvorsson Huvestad was indeed born with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot and six teeth in his mouth.

These carvings of dates and the owner's initials is described in the Huvestad entry in the Gardsoga volume of the Kviteseid Bygdesoge -- the same source for the information on the old bur with its 20 tarry crosses.

Here are some "tarry crosses" on the loft at Holtan farm, a few miles away from Huvestad. Perhaps similar carvings adorned the old bur at Huvestad farm.