Kategori: Ancient monuments

Camilla Wergeland was born in Kristiansand on 23 January 1813.

When her father Nicolai Wergeland got the position of parish priest in Eidsvoll in 1817, the family moved to the vicarage.

Camilla grew up here, as the second youngest in a group of five siblings. Camilla's childhood was carefree and happy. She was good at walking on stilts, and could even walk stairs on stilts! She enjoyed dressing up and doing theater. She could be quite wild, and together with her siblings she was allowed to express herself freely in the nature around the home. Here they balanced on the railing of the bridge over the Andelva, and they coal sailed on the Vorma.

During her teenage years, Camilla alternated between a quiet life at home and hectic weeks of social life visiting friends in Christiania. At home, she spent much of her time reading, or going on horse-riding trips. She loved to ride and spent a lot of time on horseback around Eidsvoll. She was also visited by friends and together they roamed the landscape around the vicarage, which consisted of gardens, paths, gazebos and hiding places.

Camilla received more education than was usual for girls of the time. She was homeschooled with her siblings, and three years of schooling. The young Camilla was beautiful and talented, and gained entry into fashionable circles both at home and abroad. She received several marriage offers, but Camilla refused.

She didn't want a marriage of convenience, she wanted to marry for love. It was not until 1838, when she was 25, that she met Jonas Collett, who was to become her husband. They married on 14 July 1841 in Eidsvoll church, and settled behind the castle in Christiania.

Camilla is considered Norway's first feminist, and is one of Norway's greatest and most important writers. She made her debut as a writer in 1842, but her greatest work was not published until 1854. Amtmandens Døttre was Norway's first socially critical novel. It was published anonymously, as was the custom for the few female writers at this time, but there was little doubt as to who was behind it. Over time, Camilla consolidated her position in Norwegian literature, and she published her works under her own name.

 We do not know the exact year when this house was built, but it is assumed to be around 1850, and it is one of the oldest houses in Sundet.

It was at this time, around the time the railway came to Eidsvoll, that Sundet began to be built up. Dokkengården, the house behind Sundgata 6, had then been the only house here at Sundtoppen for several decades. The first owner is believed to have been David Olsen Vilberg. In 1843 he became the owner of Sundgården, which includes a larger area around Sundtoppen.

A little back in time, the house was referred to as Vilberggård. Later, the house went by the name Larsengården for a long time. That is because in 1913 the house was registered as Ludvig O. Larsen, and from 1951 his son Tormod Larsen was the owner. He owned until 1984. The house is timber-framed, and it is assumed that there was an external stairwell on the north side which was later built in. Where there is now an extension to the house, there used to be a separate small house. The basement and first floor, as well as the small house and later extension, have always been used for food of various kinds. The upper floors have been used for housing. The facade has changed slightly, the most visible being fewer windows than originally. 

This house is called Meierigården because there was a dairy here for a long time.

The dairy business started after a founding meeting on 12 August 1897, and the formal formation of Eidsvold Andelsmeieri on 14 December of the same year.

Then the construction of the dairy was also approved. Two years later, on 11 January 1899, the building was finished, and it was inspected and test driven. The dairy operation started. In the early years, the house did not look like it does now.

Henrik Wergeland (1808-1845) was the most important and colorful cultural personality in Norway in the first half of the 19th century. He was born in Kristiansand and lived his first childhood there, and he lived most of his short life in Christiania (Oslo).

Nevertheless, he considered Eidsvoll his home village, where he developed a close relationship with the people and nature. The family moved here when his father became parish priest in Eidsvoll in 1817, and here Henrik spent long periods both while he went to school and studied in the town, and after he had finished his education, but did not get a priest's position.

Henrik Wergeland was primarily a poet. He wrote constantly, and there were thousands of printed pages: poems, plays, historical books and booklets, information leaflets, newspaper articles and debate posts – just about every type of text except novels. Everything is not gold, but among the best are some of the finest poems written in Norwegian. Henrik wrote verses on all kinds of subjects: happy and unhappy love, friendship, illness and death, politics, religion and not least nature:

Few, if any, writers in the world have names of more plant species in their texts. His father, Nicolai, had helped write the Constitution during the National Assembly at Eidsvoll in 1814. For Henrik, it was a main task to contribute to building the new Norway, with political freedom, national independence and its own literature and culture. He was an ardent patriot, as it was called. That is why he was eager to make the Eidsvoll building a national cultural monument and to make 17 May a public holiday.

The children also had to go along: "We are a nation, we together, we little ones a cubit long." But Wergeland was also concerned with the fight for freedom in other countries around the world. Wergeland was often enraged when he saw injustice. He scolded rich and powerful men who he believed treated poor people badly, also here in Eidsvoll. It led to many and lengthy court cases that almost ruined the poet. Another thing that angered him was animal cruelty. Henrik was one of the first in our country to fight for animal rights, including in the poem "Cast off, where the hill is too steep" and in "Veslebrunen's speech to humanity in humanity". Weslebrunen was the horse of Wergeland.

Henrik Wergeland was deeply religious, and he was a strong supporter of freedom for all religions. They were true in their own way and deserved respect. The constitution, of which Henrik was otherwise so proud, among other things denied Jews entry to Norway, and therefore he wanted the Storting to change that section.

Henrik became the great poet and the center of many kinds of debates, with both friends and enemies in large numbers. The sister Camilla wrote the first modern novel in Norwegian literature and was the one who first raised the fight for women's rights in Norway. The memory of both is still alive in the village. The quote has been chosen by Geir Uthaug.