When Ingeborg's parents built their home, called Fredheim, they made it large, to enable Johanne Hagen to run Sunday schools with groups of local children.
The house was finished the year Ingeborg was born - 1895.
The family moves in: the mother Johanne, the father Hans Petter, grandmother, also named Johanne, and the children Louise, Hjalmar and Gustav. Later, Ingeborg, Hilda and Ragna were born at "Fredheim".
Ingeborg's mother created a very special environment - for other children as well as her own. In one of Ingeborg's books, we find this description of Christmas preparations:
"As the hours passed, the house made itself ready, as if tuning itself like a fiddle, and Louise recognised the feeling from last Christmas. Candles in poles, light in the big hanging lamp, the stove murmuring -"
"Svenske-Marthe" telling stories.
Illustration for Ingeborg's book "Eventyr og historier fra Mostua"
Drawing: Olav Bjørgum
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Ingeborg grew up among good story tellers. Here is one of them mentioned, the baby sitter Antonette Stenberg.
"Hjalmar and Louise were insatiable, and Antonette told them long fairy tales like "Klokkedypet" and "Valdemar Daa og hans døtre", about "Dyndkongens datter" and "Jenta som trådte på brødet".
The stove murmured cosily, and the children did not move till they slided sleeping from Antonette's lap and were brought to bed."
Antonette was quite young herself, but had an amazing memory. The fairy tales mentioned above are by the Danish autor H. C. Andersen, and they are all quite long. Antonette knew them by heart.
They also had time for playing games:
"The next tremendous event Hjalmar and Louise always remembered, was the snow melting time at Tangen. How the water was flowing, from the roofs, in the wheel tracks, how the streams rushed! (...)
by the sawbench, there was already a large snowfree spot, where the boys were quarrelling and playing "kaste på stikka". Antonette taught them another game: "vippe pinne", which became popular and was almost risk-free."
The children were allowed to follow the grown-ups in their work:
"The farm was like a big beehive. Everyone was busy, everywhere something was going on, and everybody thought their work was the most important in the world."
(All quotations from Ingeborg's book "Louise and de andre". The book describes the childhood of her sister Louise, but certainly also gives us an impression of what her own early years must have been like.)
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