“Nikolai’s Fortune”

By Solveig Torvik

306 pages

University of Washington Press

Let it be said that those invisible threads that lead us back to our family roots are often golden. Who are we and where have we come from?

Those questions tug on human beings with all the momentum of a clay bank sliding slowly and steadily into the eddy of a winter freshet. Solveig Torvik’s historical novel draws us along that golden path all the way back to the early 19th century and into snowy Finnish landscapes draped with Nordic hues of lovely deep blues as startling as the penetrating eyes of a fair Scandinavian maiden. Believe me, there are plenty of those in this superb family tale.

“Nikolai’s Fortune” is the story of mothers and daughters, and two centuries cloaked frequently in poverty and prejudice. The book opens with Marie, a handsome Finnish girl already burdened with a child conceived out of wedlock. Burdened – indeed, the woman had been raped. She is scorned by the church and spurned by her society. She has been shamed into submission, though truth be told, she steadfastly resists self-deprecation with all the tenacity that the world has come to expect from these resolute sons and daughters of the marauding Vikings of earlier centuries.

That trait appears never to be lost on Marie’s offspring. This family history, dominated by strong women, remains tough and resolute against oppressive circumstances through all 306 pages of his beautifully crafted drama.

To some degree, this book is an extension of “Kristin Lavrans Datter,” a novel by Sigrid Undsett that takes place during the previous two centuries. To an equal degree, little changes in that social atmosphere until the book and history charge into the 20th century and adopt the modern technology that accompanied it. As one might expect, World War II and subsequent industry significantly altered the society of the sled and reindeer.

The book is written in a simple sing-song voice we often associate with the Scandinavian language. It flows easily like a summer stream, flawless, as one might expect if he or she knew that Torvik had been a reporter and later editor of the Seattle Post Intelligencer, a strong female voice with which many in the Pacific Northwest are familiar. The language is simple and approachable, though not poetic in the same sense that one might associate with a novel like “Cold Mountain” or the huge family sequels by William Faulkner. One might even claim that the plot is dark and brooding, but that just happens to be the circumstance of so much of our grandparents’ world, a place relatively harsh in its environmental and economic realities.

Torvik doesn’t hold back any punches. Though this book is a historical novel, truth etches it as sure as the brittle winter weather that punctuates living in Scandinavian and Arctic settings.

Sisu, a Finnish word for grit and endurance, is the backbone of the book and its heroines. For women of the 21st century, this novel should remain an inspiration. In my house, shared with my wife of Scandinavian extraction – and in the Scandinavian communities of Astoria and Naselle, Wash., – this book will stand even taller as genetic links grab at the imaginations and histories of these strong and handsome immigrants of Scandinavia.

Early in the book, Nikolai Okkonen leaves Marie in poverty and with child (unbeknownst to the young entrepreneur) when he travels to America, a journey that ends in a lumber camp in Deep River, Wash., then in Astoria. He makes his fortune and settles in Seaside before becoming the impetus for the migration of the next three generations of this family of Finnish women, seeking financial freedom from the bleak oppression of the rural lives they inherit through the luck of the draw.

Familiar locations – Astoria, Naselle, Seaside – create that same sense of pride in the Northwest reader that one might expect in the base loyalty one feels for the home team. So does the list of villages and cities that dot the cold northern terrain of Finland and Norway as the reader tromps forward with the daughter and granddaughter of the hearty character of Marie Kurola.

Hardship is the common denominator in this harsh existence. Even the women who escape poverty seem never to escape the rigors of male and social oppression or the scars of difficult childhoods. Their struggles inspire the reader. Perhaps that is the greatest strength of “Nikolai’s Fortune.” These women rise up and stand tall against the obstacles of weather, drought and all the social implications of a 19th-century Lutheran upbringing. We stand beside them. We suffer with them. We, the readers, are made stronger, and if not stronger, then more appreciative of the luck that has befallen us.

When Kaisa, the 14-year-old daughter of Marie, leaves home and walks for weeks beside her itinerant uncle through the rugged northern tundra, we travel alongside. We live in her strength and help shoulder her burdens, and come away grateful – grateful for a time and place not so distant, but until now, lost in the rich steely blues of the Nordic skies and to our fertile imaginations. And now we are richer. Torvik gives us that, and such is the strength of a fine novel.