(hammer knocking) (birds chirping) - Can you imagine giving up the life you know to be with a person you love?

- Yeah, I've given up something for love.

- That's a difficult question.

(speaking Norwegian) - I have, yes, but that's a secret.

(Dana and Per Christian laughing) - Don't worry.

This is a film about Norwegian boat building, but like almost everything in this world, it begins with a love story.

(lively music) My great-great-grandmother Lydia was born in Hemnes, Norway.

She came from a poor family, so they sent her away to be a servant girl.

Meanwhile, my great-great-grandfather, John B. Johnson, was from Nesna, Norway here on the coast.

He came from a successful fishing family, building boats in the Norwegian tradition.

(lively music) (hatchet tapping) John fell in love with Lydia, but their family didn't approve of it.

- If you flirted with somebody outside the class, no, that wasn't good at all.

- But John didn't let that get in the way.

He immigrated to Minnesota in 1884, and he started farming near Lake Koronis.

In 1888, he sent for Lydia, and he married her.

That's why I'm here today.

I was curious, what kind of life did John of the boat building Johnsons leave behind when he immigrated to Minnesota?

Most Norwegian immigrants left for a better life.

John already had a good life.

He left for love.

- Say, here we are in the Ford Transit.

We're journeying right now.

We're waiting in line for the ferry.

We can't wait, we're so excited.

We've got me, Kris behind the lens, Olav driving, Dana riding.

- [Dana] That's me, tired after a 12 hour flight from Minnesota and 90 minutes more by car and ferry.

We're on our way to meet some Norwegians who are building boats in the same way my great-great-grandfather did.

(seabirds cawing) - I'm Vebjorn Reitan.

I am a boat builder apprentice at the Coastal Heritage Museum.

I'm here to learn how to build boats in the traditional way of this area.

Here's our fine wood shop.

We have some classes sometime, and also have some of our tools.

This is a finished one ready for delivery.

(Vebjorn conversing in Norwegian) 200 hours, two guys.

So at the museum we have a exhibit, and storage of old boats and fishing gear and boat builder tools, and this boat builder has always been a part of the museum.

So Norway has a huge variation of boats all throughout the country, and even inside one region, you can have several kinds of boats, and every boat is unique.

(boat scraping) We build afjords boats, a kind of boat that's for rowing and sailing, and is used for fishing and transportation of goods, transportation of people, and has a very wide range of sizes.

We build them for private individuals that are ordering them.

- This boat building tradition almost died out in 1980s.

There was only one man who was using this kind of tradition to build this specific types of boat.

Our boat builder, Einar Borgfjord, was his apprentice.

- When I started to build an afjords boat, I learned this kind of boat building from Yuhan Horsha, and he was 72 years when we built first boat, and we built four boats together before he died.

- So it was, that bad that it was one man who used this real old tradition.

- [Dana] So it came really close to being gone?

- Yeah, it was very, very close, sure.

- Here we have the boat builder, Einar, and the Norwegian king and queen, a lot younger Einar.

Here you can see him slightly older but still young, and the queen and king of Norway, so they have been here two times.

We are very proud of that.

Luckily yeah, we had the Einar, and we can see the results of his work.

He has had many apprentices.

- We have 23 apprentices.

- [Vebjorn] It's not like going to a school.

You can't read a book to build these boats.

It's all hands on pretty much.

You have to feel it and see it.

(warped film music) - [Narrator] We start by laying the keel, put on the extensions from the keel, and onto that, we've got the stems.

Then we make ready the garboards for the boats.

- We plane down the upper side so that it has the lines that we want.

We use sticks to push the boards out, and clamps to bring them back in.

We put the frames in, which are naturally grown branches of spruce and pine.

We bring them together either with iron nails and ropes or wooden pegs and wedges.

Put in the seats, make the oars, the rig, masts, the yard, paint it, or send it off.

(birds chirping) - [Dana] Would you give up boat making for love?

(translator speaking Norwegian) (Einar chuckles) - For my passion?

Oh, to give up my passion for love?

No, I don't think so.

Maybe.

- I don't know, it's hard to say.

I guess you have to be in the situation.

- [Dana] Would you give up boat making for love?

- I think yeah.

I think that would be the right thing to do.

(compelling music) (Einar speaking Norwegian) (Einar and Dana chuckling) - [Dana] Yeah, that's a good answer.

(seabirds cawing) (compelling music) (music continues) We traveled another four hours north to meet one of Norway's last traditional sail makers.

- Sail cloth from wool, all this is handmade, so all this was made the same 1,000 years ago.

- Wow, that's amazing.

Does it naturally repel water too?

- Yeah, it's, they take fat from the sheep and into the wool.

My name is Frode Bjoru.

I live in isle of Joa in middle of Norway, and here we make sail of traditional boats in Norway.

This ship is, so it's the biggest Viking ship in modern.

This is a book about the building.

There were as many as 10 boat builder.

They make the ship, and we make a sail from silk.

Here's the silk.

It's a very strong silk, it's very strong.

- [Dana] Wow.

- This comes from India.

Very much work.

- A lot of details with the holes.

My name is Margreet Sloot.

It's a Dutch name.

I'm the wife of Frode Bjoru.

He's a sail maker, and I'm married with him.

When I came here I couldn't do that work, but I learn a lot, and I'm doing with all kind of sail making.

I was like we say in Norwegian, like a potato.

You can use it for everything.

(chuckles) So I helped with all kind of things.

This is cotton.

The idea is the same.

So here is the mast from the boat.

It fastens here and here up top, and the rope around, it should be too short, because if you want to sail, you have the bow in the sail.

You can't sail with a flat sail.

You have to have the bow.

- So when I'm saving, I take some little bit more fabric than the rope, little bit.

- It's how you see the sail is bowed, and bowed that also, but this is just wood, and then when the wind is coming, it's a longer way to go here.

- So I blow on here.

It's coming up.

And this is the same for a sail too.

- That's why the sail has to have this form.

(indistinct speech) (birds chirping) I went to Norway when I was 20 years, and then I moved to Joa Island in '83, and then we start with this company, because our farm we live on, it was too small, so we had to do something else, so we start with the sail making.

My husband is, I think the only sail maker in Norway who really understands about the square sails for the traditional Viking boats.

- My life, working life is with sail making, so we try to make it like the same method from Viking age.

- To work with all our problems in the world, the challenge is you have to know what your roots, what you come from before you can start with the future, and the handicrafts is a very important part of it.

- [Dana] Do you sail then?

- Sail, yeah, yeah.

(boat motor humming) - It's not enough to put the old boats in the museum.

Somebody must build new boats like the olds, and use them.

(ropes cranking) (compelling music) - If I'm making a sail, I am going to sail with the sail after, so I can see how the sail is, and maybe next I can make it little bit better.

(compelling music) - [Dana] Would you give up sail making for love?

(Dana and Frode chuckling) (Margreet laughing) (Frode speaking Norwegian) I think I can in combination.

(chuckling) - [Dana] You can have them both.

You can have your cake and eat it too.

(Dana and Frode chuckling) (compelling music) - The halfway point to our journey brought us to Nesna, my great-great grandfather's home.

It's a beautiful city, but seeing the church at the center of town put me in an existential mood.

So this is the church where my great great grandparents met.

They were also baptized and confirmed.

They came from different social classes, and maybe if it hadn't been against the rules, they possibly would've been married in this church.

And we can't get inside, it's locked.

(chuckles) What if my ancestors had felt welcome to stay in Norway?

What if I'd been born here?

(violin playing lively music) There was a fish down there.

I just saw it.

- [Olav] Oh, there is a big one down here.

- He's been nibbling on it like real hard for a while.

Well, it's gone now.

Dude, I almost caught a fish.

It was a big one too.

- But what happened instead was way more rewarding.

- [Dana] I'm not entirely sure what that means, but it's a metaphor for something.

The next day we crossed the Arctic Circle to meet another boat builder.

(Ulf speaking Norwegian) - My name is Ulf Miklasen.

I have specialized in building this Nordland boat mostly.

These are the traditional boats from my region and from northern Norway.

This boat that's built specially for fishing outside the Lofoten Islands along the Norway coast, and we got it as a gift from a friend of mine, but had just restored it, and we launched it yesterday, and had to take it up again today, because I forgot some nails, and there was some spring water coming in in all direction.

(Ulf and Dana chuckling) (Stefanie speaking Norwegian) (hammer tapping) (Ulf speaking Norwegian) - Think ahead.

(chuckling) - Yeah, I'm Stefanie Hein.

I'm coming from Germany.

I'm here working with Ulf, because he does a very nice job with the wooden boat here, and it's fun to work with Ulf.

(Ulf and Stefanie laughing) So I have two years more, then I'm ready.

(hammer tapping) (Ulf speaking Norwegian) - [Dana] Do you think it's important to pass this down to the next generation?

- Yes, but on the same time, I know that it's very hard.

You can't live there, live out there anymore, so you have to have something else to make money, and you have to combine it with the carpenter work or something that gives just cash in a short time.

(saw buzzing) The market is very narrow.

Not many are ordering boats like this.

Still, I find it important to deliver the tradition to a new generation.

We are, in all, you know, we're just five or six persons who know how to do it today.

To lose this tradition, this understanding, will be I think, yeah, very, very sad.

- [Dana] So my great great grandfather, he left Norway for love.

Could you give up anything in your life for love?

- Well, no, opposite, in fact.

I gave up a love for coming to Kjerringoy.

So I was earlier married, but not that happy together, so when I got the opportunity to start working at the museum, she wasn't that eager to follow.

I think I go to Kjerringoy and start working hard, and you can keep the house in (indistinct) again, live your life there, so we divorced.

So it was the opposite way around.

(Dana and Ulf laughing) - [Dana] So you wouldn't give up boat building for anything?

- [Ulf] No, I don't think so.

So my new wife, I've been together with for almost 40 years now.

- [Dana] She helps you though, right?

She helps paint.

- Yeah.

- [Ulf] Yeah, she paint the boats, and she is a very skillful dealing with ceramics and a potter, and so she really understands why I get so fascinated by boat building.

- [Dana] Maybe you guys can talk like we're not here, like it doesn't matter what you say.

We won't use the audio.

(Ulf and wife laughing) - [Dana] So my great great grandfather from Nesna likely had a boat like this?

- I'm quite sure of it.

If you lived on Nesna, there were a lot of boat like this in different sizes, and the history of northern Norway in the 18th century had a deal about fishing was very important then as now.

In fact for a period in the Middle Age, the fishery of Lofoten, cod fishing in Lofoten was the highest income for the state in Norway.

So most people that could was dealing with fishing.

- [Dana] Our final stop in my journey of ancestral self-discovery is in Lofoten Islands, where my great great grandfather fished every winter.

Today we're visiting a stockfish factory and a stockfish museum.

(seabirds cawing) That's where I met Hanna.

Could she be an alternate version of me if my great-great grandparents had stayed in Norway?

- Oh God, that was not a question I was- (Dana and Hanna chuckling) My great-grandfather bought the fish factory from his father-in-law, so he started in 1874.

So we are now the fifth generation, my brother and I.

My father also works here.

He's the fourth generation working with the fish factory and the stockfish.

We start cutting fish stock when we were around seven, eight years old to earn some money for ourselves.

It's hard work, very hard.

It's cold, long hours.

- [Dana] Do you think that's interesting or unique to be living the same life your ancestors from the 1800s were living?

- [Hanna] Oh, if I could go back to see how my grandparents lived in the end of 1800s, I really would like to.

The hanging process of the fish is the same, but we don't use horses anymore.

We have tractors to take it out and take it in.

- Yeah, stockfish is the fish that are being landed in the winter, because you must only hang up fish in the winter to be sure to get prime quality fish.

And stockfish, that means they're hanging over the stock rack.

You can also say you can store it, stock it.

On Lofoten, you could maybe store them for 10 years.

But I've tried to beat it with a hammer and eat it dry, a fish that was 11 years of age, fantastic.

So the Vikings brought the fish along when they went on their rides around Europe.

(lively music) (indistinct chatter) So I have restored this building to show the tourists and to tell them a little bit about our culture, because this culture is very, very special.

So that was the only thing we had.

It was fishing, and when you grew up, you had two choices, being a fisherman, or working in the landing station, preparing the fish for salted fish, and dried fish, and fresh fish, and so on.

- [Dana] Have you ever left something behind for something that you love or someone you loved?

- No, I don't think so.

- [Dana] Would you?

- Yes, of course.

(chuckles) Yeah, I'm stuck here.

(Dana and Steinar chuckling) I'm stuck here, but I know, I know.

I want to, I hope my younger son will take over this business, because my business now is only tourism.

But I was, I've been dealing with fish from '73.

- [Dana] Have you ever had to give up something you loved?

- Yes, to move back, of course.

I lived in some big cities, and then we moved back here for three and a half years ago.

So now I live here with my partner and our son and a dog.

And our dog, his name is Panla.

It's one of the nicest stockfish (indistinct).

It's named after a stockfish.

(chuckles) The dog though, not the kid, yeah.

(Dana laughing) You never know before the stockfish is inside the house what kind of quality it is, and we have the same mentality in life.

You kind of just need to go with the flow and you see what happens.

You have to take risks.

That's what life is about.

- [Dana] When my ancestors immigrated to Minnesota, they gained their freedom, but they lost more than I ever imagined, building boats, fishing, their entire way of life.

I didn't truly understand until I came to Norway how important the sea is to them.

(lively music) - I think it's important that we preserve this tradition, because it's a part of our history, and it also shaped the coastal communities as they are right now.

There's still some traces of the history left in where towns are, and where the churches are, and such like that.

- In whole of Norway, we are only 5 million people, and we are living all around the whole coastline in Norway.

The sea was the main road.

- Norway is a society built on boats.

You couldn't live there without a boat.

- When a boat is finished, I normally have a very good feeling, but I'm even happier when somebody buys it and start to use it.

- I think about boats like, every day.

I dream about boats.

I find it would be weird to not do boat building.

(lively music)