Does an artist’s art define or impact his life, or does the artist’s life define and impact the art he creates? My Autobiography, Journey, and my two novels combine to tell the story of who I am.
Why is it important that I have taken the task to write my life history? In 1843 my great-great-grandfather and his family came to the U. S. He was three years old. One-hundred-seventy-six years and eight generations: my own great-grand-children now carry on the family name. Although a few of Hans Nordby’s heirs have explored our past there is—to my knowledge—no document that tells a Nordby/Norby story. Until this telling of my story there exists only genealogy records, census documents and photographs of our ancestors. It is possible there are scraps of paper, notes from past days, scraps of history which will never be authenticated or attributed to days long past. It is more likely, however, that there will be no great manuscript found in an attic or filed improperly, only to be discovered in another fifty or one-hundred years. So, how did this autobiography come about? What motivated me? What paths did I follow to document my life? How did I determine what to record and what to pass by? And, in the end, how does all this
impact ?
My life as an artist may have begun in my mother’s womb. Perhaps she sang, perhaps I listened to my father and his father as they played their fiddles in the summer and autumn of 1937; perhaps even on Christmas Day only hours before I was born and as my parents shared the holiday at the Norby farm with my father’s family. My first unremembered color experiences may have been from a baby blanket wrapped around me as an infant or seeing a sunset from my mother’s arms the first spring as we lived in a small shack on the edge of town. My inclination to be romantic in observing the world around me may have been planted as I heard the Norby men talk of life in 1938 or 1939, or from having heard my mother and her sisters sing in the Baptist church on Sunday mornings. On the other hand perhaps those memories came to me as a result of the art I have created my entire life. When I drew men and women skating or skiing on snowy hillsides it might have been those images which generated the memories of trying to stay upright on giant wooden skis as my cousins and I shared winter gatherings at the Canton farm, all the children romping on the pasture hillside while the adults communed in the warm living room of the huge Canton house. In final analysis, it may be just another case of “the chicken and the egg,” a mental puzzle which will be discussed but never solved; just another odd thought about an obscure concept. I admit that when it was first suggested I write my story I had already had thoughts of doing just that. Those who know me well know I have been concerned that the lives of so many contemporary artists will go undocumented and unremembered. So very few artists have an opportunity to gain recognition and even then their lives and actions seem to be judged only in passing observations. Over the course of my career I have, at times, thought I had little talent and could offer little to society with my art, while at other times I was sure my contributions were enormous, and I deserved great recognition. I asked,
“Who am I to judge my own life?” I answered, “If not me, who then?”
In addition to those questions I wondered why and how my life story would make interesting reading. My immediate family already knew (most of) what I was going to tell the rest of the world. Strangers would most likely say, “Who cares about the life of a stranger I have never met?” My autobiography came together with only a little pain and embarrassment. My first mystery novel was well in place and I had interrupted the second to make my life public. As soon as my autobiography manuscript was in editing I went back to work on the second novel. As I look at the collection of the three books I think they make a nearly single statement: all three books
are set in rural Minnesota. The novels are built around the history of my experiences and those of my family. I can almost see my relatives as those fictional characters: traveling from Europe, crossing the unsettled prairies and ending up in the twentieth century Chippewa County just as did my own family. They fell in love, raised families and faced hardships and dangers just as people do today.