Viking Magazine - November 2012 - 22

month later by the death of their father,
Harald. Roald's mother, Sofie, was left to
raise two stepchildren and her own four
children, Alfhild, Roald, Else and Asta.
Their mother decided to stay in Britain
rather than moving back to Norway
with her relatives. That year, however,
she took the children back to Norway to
vacation on the island of Tjøme.
" Roald Dahl visited the Havna
Hotel on Tjøme every summer from
1920 to 1932, " said Otto Samuelsen of
Tjøme Historielag (the Tjøme Historical
Society). " He also visited the same
place, Havna Hotel, later in the 1930s. "
In Dahl's autobiographical 1984 book,
" Boy, " ( " Gutt " in the Norwegian version),
the author describes his summer
vacations at Havna, Samuelsen noted.
" The trip from Oslo was always with a
small steamer, and it took the best of one
day to get to Havna. In his impressions
from those summers, he called it 'the
magic island.' "
Many years later, in " The Witches, "
Dahl introduced his Norwegian grandmother
character as a tribute to Sofie,
whom he called " a rock " in his life.
" Dahl connects the grandmother's
Norwegian house with protection,
safety, coziness, love, comfort, and a
good adult and good woman, " Hill
said, " which sits in opposition to the
great British hotel where the terrifyingly
cruel witches meet. "
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Dahl described his school years as unhappy
times, first attending Llandaff
Cathedral School and then boarding
school at St. Peter's Preparatory School,
where he suffered from terrible homesickness.
As he noted in " Boy, " some
of his early memories included visits to
the sweet shop with school friends. As a
teen, he attended Repton Public School-
situated very close to Cadbury's chocolate
factory, no doubt inspiring his tales
of " Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. "
Lucky Repton students were often called
on to test new varieties of Cadbury's
chocolate bars.
At 23, Dahl enlisted with the Royal
Air Force (RAF) in Nairobi, after the
outbreak of World War II. His wartime
adventures were numerous, including
crash landings and surviving a direct hit
during the Battle of Athens. The author
described his war experiences in his adult
autobiography, " Going Solo. "
In 1942, the RAF transferred Dahl
to Washington, D.C., as an air attaché,
where he met writer C.S. Forester. After
the fateful meeting, Forester hired Dahl
to write about his war experiences for
the Saturday Evening Post. Dahl then
published his first children's book, " The
Gremlins, " just one year later. However,
Dahl saved most of his writing for children
until the 1960s, after he had become
a father himself. In the 1940s and 1950s,
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he wrote primarily short stories for
adults, in magazines such as the Atlantic
Monthly, New Yorker and Harpers.
Many Norwegians, such as Samuelsen
of the Tjøme Historical Society, note
that they remember Dahl's work well
from the TV series based on his short
stories, Tales of the Unexpected. Most
Scandinavians-as well as readers across
North America-still know Dahl best
from his children's books, however. " We
have published many of his children's
books [in Norwegian], " said Grete Rygh,
an editor who handles new editions of
Dahl's books at Gyldendal publishers
in Norway. " His books are still very
popular here, and we do very often make
new reprints. "
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Dahl initially crafted his most famous
children's book characters by spinning
bedtime stories for his daughters, Olivia
and Tessa. He published one of these
homespun tales, " James and the Giant
Peach, " in 1961. Dahl followed this up
with " Charlie and the Chocolate Factory "
in 1964.
" Children's books are harder to
write, " Dahl said, according to his online
biography. " It's tougher to keep a child
interested because a child doesn't have
the concentration of an adult. The child
knows the television is in the next room.
It's tough to hold a child, but it's a lovely
thing to try to do. "
Hold them he has, publishing a string
of favorites such as " The BFG, " " Danny
the Champion of the World " and " Matilda. "
Beyond Norwegian, Dahl's works
have been translated into 34 other languages
and continue to captivate young
readers and families around the world.
In addition to stories he made up for
Tessa and Olivia (Olivia died tragically
of encephalitis at age seven), Dahl spun
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Viking Magazine - November 2012

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