Together with The Dyre Vaa collections/ Vest Telemark Museum invites Rauland Historielag to the exhibition opening and new launch of Torbjørn Egners Old houses in Rauland.
The exhibition is in two parts, with material on loan from the Egner family. One part is original drawings with motifs from Rauland that are not part of the book. There are also two large tableaux featuring motifs from the book edition.
The project is a joint project between Rauland History Association and the Dyre Vaa Collections Association.
Old houses in Rauland was published in 1945 and in 1970. The Egner family has now given the rights to the book to Rauland Historielag, which is publishing a third edition of the book this year, a reprint of the 1970 edition.
With a bike, marker pens and drawing pads
The popular author and illustrator was interested in rural art. After cycling to and around Vågå with a marker pen and drawing pads, he published in 1943 Old House in Vågå. In 1945 kom Old houses in Rauland after a family holiday in Rauland. While the family spent nice days at Rauland Fjellstoge, Egner took his bike and took felt-tip pens and blocks of clay around large parts of Rauland and the neighboring villages. He summarizes the summer in his autobiography A self portrait:
"I visited the old fine farmsteads in the hamlet of Vå, where Dyre Vå lived in his time, and according to legend the troll rowed across Totak on Christmas Eve itself. I went further inland to Arabygdi, where Myllarguten lived most of his life, I drew the old houses at Kosi and Øygarden, and spent the night in the hay on Myllarguten's farm."
I was also lucky enough to join Sven Postmann on one of his weekly two-day mail trips by rowboat inland to the lonely farms on the north side of Møsvatn, and encountered exceptional hospitality. As I write in the book: "When a stranger comes to the farm on Møsstrand, he is served with the best, with sour cream, cheese, flatbread and butter and milk. At the innermost of the farms, where I stayed overnight and was given everything good to eat, I would have liked to pay a little for myself. "No. no," said the woman on the farm, "we don't have a boarding house."
Program
The opening will feature greetings from the Egner family, by Bjørn Egner, son of Thorbjørn Egner, and music by Stein Versto. More information about the program will follow.
The exhibition opening is free.
