Page 40 - Flathead Beacon // 11.23.16

EVENTS 42 MOVIE REVIEWS 43 PAWS & CLAWS 46 SIDE DISH 48 Arts&Entertainment
Drawing, Carving, and Writing History
Famed Norwegian artist and Kalispell resident Arvid Kristo ersen takes on new writing project recalling his time in Nazi-occupied Norway
WBY MOLLY PRIDDY OF THE BEACON
HEN ARVID “CHRIS” KRIST- o ersen was a 14-year-old boy in Norway, the Nazis had
taken over his country in the midst of World War II, and he and his family were hungry.
It was 1944, and Norway had been under heavy rations on most all food items for nearly ve years.
“The only thing you had on your mind was to survive,” he said last week from his Kalispell home’s basement, his words still heavy with a Norwegian accent.
He and his friends Thor and Gus- tav screwed their courage to the stick- ing place and decided to raid a German warehouse full of food for the invading soldiers. Kristo ersen had just gotten his hands on a ham and a couple of two-foot salamis, having already wrapped a string of sausages around his neck, when their presence was noticed.
“I made an Olympic time running away,” he said, laughing.
The boys ran for the nearby hole they’d made in the barbed wire to escape, with Kristo ersen the last to scoot under. As he was jumping down, a Nazi soldier ran at him, bayonetting his leg, as machine gun re ew overhead.
Using what he had, Kristo ersen made a stand.
“I knocked him out by hitting him in the face with a 20-pound ham,” he said.
The ham leg had a strap he had wrapped around his wrist, so he hung onto it, two of the salamis stuck in his shirt, and two dozen or so of the German sausages around his neck.
Norwegian artist Arvid “Chris” Kristo ersen. GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
them up, and in the 1960s, he artistically restored the Conrad Mansion, which at the time was slowly coming apart. The ceiling had gotten wet and was falling down, so Kristo ersen was tasked with repainting and replacing the original art and carvings.
The renovations were such a success that Kristo ersen was asked to do the same for Sam Bibler’s house by Foy’s Lake, now the site of the Bibler Home and Gardens.
Kristo ersen is also responsible for the art in the Fargo-Moorhead Sons of Norway Kringen Lodge, in which he painted murals on 90 feet of walls, then added more than 20 intricately carved, large trolls. He carved the Viking ship on the outside and painted the owers in the conference room. His work there earned him and his wife an invitation to break- fast with the Norwegian princess.
These days, Kristo ersen’s artistic leanings are more of the written kind as he works on a memoir about his time in occupied Norway, what he is calling “Incredible Years,” chronicling 1940- 1945. Weekly creative writing classes at Flathead Valley Community College spurred the project, and each story comes with illustrations.
He remembers a Russian prison- er-of-war camp stationed near where he and his blacksmith father had been hired to fashion parts for the Nazis as they drilled into the mountainside to build bunkers. The Russians were marched to the top of a mountain in the winter, with only used, empty cement sacks with holes cut out for eyes as their pro- tection from the cold, along with ratty
When dawn came, there was talk about the wieners stuck on the barbed wire fence at the German warehouse, and Kristo ersen’s doctor said he was lucky the three-inch wound didn’t knick a nearby artery.
This story and others like it are now the focus of Kristo ersen’s artistic e orts. Hailed as the No. 2 fairytale art- ist in Norway, Kristo ersen, a longtime Flathead Valley resident, is known for his paintings and carvings, especially his series of what he calls “Happy Trolls,” fol- lowing the silly forest creatures in lives less scary than their traditional coun- terparts. A series of three books recently came out chronicling essential Norwe- gian artists from the Iron Age to present
time, and Kristo ersen is in the third. Kristo ersen, 87, will make a rare appearance at a local art show, with plans to have a table of art at the upcoming Art- ists and Craftsmen of the Flathead show at the Flathead County Fairgrounds, Nov. 25-27. The booth will o er prints of his famous illustrations, and a chance to talk
to a legend in the eld.
He’ll be recognizable by the horned
helmet with blond braids he’ll be wear- ing, which garnered about 200 photos with people at the Norsk Høstfest in Minot, North Dakota.
Kristo ersen’s paintings of American Indian culture and early cowboys used to cover all four oors of the Havre Court- house rotunda until a renovation covered
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NOVEMBER 23, 2016 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM