Revdals-Ane

The story of Revdals-Ane could easily have passed unnoticed among all the many stories about women who kept the family together, farmed, fished, harvested from nature and took care of their neighbours. The special thing about Ane is that she did all this with just one arm.

Anne Ulriksdatter, g. Pedersen Nordnes (1866- 1934)

Anna Ulriksdatter was born in Nordnes, and went to Revdalen as a 16-17-year-old to work as a maid. Her sister Karoline was married there, and Ane married in 1885 her sister’s brother-in-law Gustav Kjønsberg Pedersen, b. 1853, from Kvalvik. They had four children, two of whom died of illness in their teens. Ane’s husband was in poor health, so most of the work fell on her.

A fall in the mountains caused Ane to lose one arm. This did not stop her from climbing the mountains to get food and coffee in Skibotn, looking after the animals on the farm, fishing, picking berries, knitting and sewing.

With only one arm, ingenuity was required to get the job done. To get the hay down from steep mountain sides, it was wrapped in old nets and rolled down. One of the descendants says that Ane stuck the knife under the stump of her arm and cut potatoes for the animals.

Ane has been described as a young woman with great courage and strength. She had a good knowledge of the body’s musculature, and seemed almost like a physiotherapist. People came to her to have their stiff bodies massaged or to be cupped, which she was also good at. Ane’s little home became a natural meeting point and stopping point.

When her husband died, Ane and her son were left alone in Revdalen. Then she took her son with her and moved to a market house in Skibotn. Ane died in 1934.

On the farm where they lived, only the chimney remains. Later this became “Hotell Savoy”, the place where Jan Baalsrud hid for a long time from the Germans on his escape to Sweden. The original house was burnt down, and the one that stands there today is a reconstruction of it.

We had fish 6 days a week, and on Sundays we ate salted pollock, said Ane’s son Ragnvald about growing up in Revdalen.