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“I remember the street almost as a large and picturesque stage: in the background the great chocolate factory, somewhat mysterious, from which it hummed faintly and gave off delicious aromas. The big chestnut tree on the corner, the Freia garage with the big gray-painted folding doors, all the little wooden houses with winding patios, fences, open-air bathrooms, stables, and high ceilings. Small workshops and shops. »
Odd Borgersen (1921-2017) recalled his childhood “stump” from Gøteborggata in the magazine St. Hallvard in 1997. The street originally consisted of a series of old wooden tenement farms, all of which were leveled in the 1970s / 80. You can certainly argue how picturesque the settlement was, but at least it has been given eternal life, as a backdrop in Arne Skouen’s 1924 action film “Street Boys.”
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Street boys on a scouting trip, Odd Borgersen on the left, Alf Folmer on the right. Photo: Private
Odd’s partner Alf Folmer, the man behind the much-talked-about book “The Boy from the Chocolate Factory,” has also written about growing up in Rodeløkka. When he was 2 years old, he moved from Sweden to the fourth floor of the Bergene farm in Københavngata 11. It was a brick farm originally built for Olaf Larsen’s chocolate factory.
Alf Folmer talks about growing up in Grünerløkka.
The chocolate factory was located on the 1st and 2nd floors, and on the 3rd and 4th there were 14 apartments in one room and kitchen, each measuring 24.5 m2. When the factory was completed in 1897, 14 families and 4 tenants moved in, and 65 of the 112 were children. The factory went bankrupt and in 1905 it was bought by «A. Bergene Drops & Peppermint Factory ‘.
Alf and Odd met when they started at the Sofienberg School in 1928 and became friends for life. The comrades were well acquainted with the trucks that brought “coconut soap” to factories in Lilleborg and “coconut cream” to Freia, like Karsten, Reidar, Gotfred and the other “street boys” in the shabby movie / book. Alf and Odd weren’t driving coconut hoses themselves, but they happened to get on a passing cargo bed to get a free ride into town.
Alf once misjudged the direction of the car. Terrified, he had to hold on when the annoying driver increased speed and didn’t stop until at the Bjerke jogging track in Aker. Cursed and embarrassed, Alf had to make the long way home.
Odds tregård at Gøteborggata 13 was a “gray painted boring box” with around 22 residents spread over six apartments and three floors. The apartments had running water, but no hot water tank. Strange well remembered the dubious pleasure of washing in ice-cold water by the kitchen sink.
When the youths were “forced” they had to go out into the backyard and climb a steep, slippery, partially recessed staircase to three bucket toilets in the attic above the barn. In the winter, the youths sat with “hands under their thighs to soothe the worst of the cold,” while they kicked “the boxes to keep the rats at bay.” But when the afternoon sun shone through the stained glass in the stairwell, it was like “a mysterious fairy tale cave with red, blue and green color schemes.”
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Residents of the Bergene farm also had an outdoor bath: “We had a bath on the farm. You had to rush to shit. If he was busy, he had to queue. In the worst case, turn the box. You had to bring brown paper. It was always a magazine from a newspaper. If I had forgotten the paper and there was nothing in the toilet, it would be a problem. I heard a story that the bathroom was once the ‘War Cry’ of the Salvation Army. Then someone wiped their ass off a magazine that said ‘Jesus is your shepherd.’
Alf also remembers being jealous when the Borgersen family had access to a toilet. They were able to borrow a toilet from the neighboring farm’s screen factory.
In Odd’s backyard, the carriers had stables with horses and a loft. In the winter, the youngsters climbed to the high roof and plunged into the snowdrifts. In the summer, girls would sit in the horse-drawn carriages and play with dolls or sparkly pictures, while the boys sat in the driver’s seats and played in the carriages. Kjørekara was not always happy with the young men, and neither were the mothers, because they had “pig” (meaning “fat” – oil) from the carriage axles on their clothes.
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One of the neighboring farms, which consisted of many small apartments with families with children, was called “Hælvete”. The background was allegedly drunkenness, fights, dating violence, and riots, causing local police to still run errands there.
But for the Nabounga, Hælvete was a perfect place to play hide-and-seek on dark autumn nights: “It was a jumble of outbuildings and outbuildings and outbuildings with trailer sheds and open-air toilets and with wooden stalls on two floors with outside stairs and bugang “.
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In the 1960s, Rodeløkka was still a jumble of backyards, fences, and log houses with stables, outbuildings, outbuildings, sheds, and outbuildings. Photo: Storløkken / Aktuell / NTB
The farm and backyard conglomerate also presented other tantalizing challenges for the growing family. Odd spoke of a popular game they called ‘go for a walk’, perhaps a precursor to the sport of parkour or freerunning: ‘On some of the farms, the fences, sheds and outbuildings were built so close together that we could climb and We moved long distances on the fences and roof without putting our feet on the ground. In a couple of places we had to jump in the air to get ahead, but that was part of the excitement. “
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Read also:
This area of Oslo has been owned by many great people for several hundred years.
When the Swedes seized Rodeløkka
The town of Carl Berner square
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