Today is Marit (Nansen) Greve’s birthday. She would have been 93 years old.
Odd Nansen wrote about Marit in his diary on November 8, 1944, while in Sachsenhausen, using “fiskerjente,” meaning “fisher girl” as a term of endearment. After all, she had often accompanied him in the prewar era when he went out fishing, something he greatly enjoyed. Nansen worried in his diary that their long separation, and those crucial years in Marit’s young life—from age 13 to age 16—without her father, would cool her affection for him.
Nansen needn’t have worried. Marit was the keeper of the flame, and throughout her long life worked diligently, but unobtrusively, at the Grini Museum and the Fram Museum, to ensure that her father’s and grandfather’s legacies would endure. Without her help, the current edition of Odd Nansen’s diary would have been significantly poorer.
Marit passed away last March 26. She had lived a long and full and productive life, spanning so many important years in the life of her country and her family. She had left nothing undone. It was her time to go.
Nevertheless, to borrow the same words her father wrote 77 years ago today: “But all the same I miss you badly, my little “fisher girl.”
